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There is so much to remember from Sierra Leone, I scarcely know where to begin. My friend Samuel Benson Yokie (one of the security guards from Freetown who is joining us on this trip) gave me a nickname: Kpamanya. The K is silent. It is a Mende name given to girls who were born on a farm; they have a lot of palm oil.
On Saturday, February 2, we went to Bunce Island. We rode Ivan’s boat “Amistada,” a lovely wooden boat with high sides and a tarp that offered shade from the sun. Elijah (who had helped interpret the Amistad story when the ship was opened to the public, before I arrived in Freetown) came with us and showed us around. The ride down the river was amazing, passing villages, palm trees and many fishing boats. We past brightly painted dugout canoes filled with people waving at us, hopeful messages about God or Allah painted on the side. A small canoe paddled up to us, one of Ivan’s friends got off the boat, climbed into the canoe, and rowed away.
We reached Bunce Island, a protected spot on the shore of West Africa, one of the earliest slave fortresses in the area. Elijah, Samuel and I walked around, into a small part of the structure that used to hold valuables and ammunition. The entrance was a small crawl space; one had to crouch down to pass through. Elijah went in first, and then I crawled past a spider and through the two-foot opening into the smell and sound of bats. Leaving that space, we continued to wander. We walked to gravesites and past enormous cotton trees whose roots towered over us. We rejoined the group to find that the caretaker and his grandson, an adorable young boy with expressive eyes, had begun to tell the history of Bunce Island. The caretaker, weathered face, yellowed teeth, wearing a winter cap that toped his bright, equally expressive eyes, spoke passionately in Creole and Elijah interpreted. He told us how a man who had worked for King George of England had been meditating and then realized slavery was wrong and needed to be abolished. “God wants all people to be treated well. Not kill life.” The caretaker’s son came, and then there were three generations together. I caught a glimpse of the father playing with his son. The young boy liked looking at the pictures I took, seeing himself in the digital image. I gave them Amistad wristbands. The caretaker collected our plastic water bottles so he could use them to store water. As we left I saw the boy had been given a Coke by the documentary filmmakers (led by a German girl investigating the current state of Sierra Leone: a struggling country with rich resources that has the potential to be a paradise). As we left the young boy was saying something to me, but I couldn’t understand. I am not sure there are words to describe walking around a place whose history is so horrific. Green is slowly taking over parts of the structure, but the memory is still there.
That night, after sadly not making it to the Gullah cultural event due to a delay in transportation, I had a beer at “Julius’” with Dani, Eliza and Paul. A man that Eliza knew joined us. Reggae music, Daddy Sarge and some Christian Reggae played in the background as a few people danced. Julius’ place is a small bar with outdoor seating that overlooks the harbor. It is in the old ferry terminal. We drank the Sierra Leonean “Star” beer. A few days later I had the chance to go into Freetown in the afternoon. I rode in with Mohammed who had been driving Dani around to buy groceries and help with other ship errands. Mohammed briefly (because there was not much
time) showed me around Freetown before taking me back to the market. We drove past the big cotton tree at the center of town. I stopped to take a photograph on a hill that overlooked the city. A group of young boys in school uniforms ran up to me, wanting me to take their picture. After I did, they said thank you (though I felt I should thank them for letting me take their picture). We drove past a man and his son on a roof, doing their afternoon payers. Mohammed drove me to a place to change money, tucked in the back of a building. Some men sitting outside directed me back to where Mohammed had parked.
The market, again, was overwhelming. We returned to the shop where the lady had dressed me the other day so I could look at the cloth she was selling. I was dripping with sweat from the heat and my mind was spinning as it tried to comprehend the zeros at the end of the Leones. Someone brought me fans to buy. A little girl surprised me from behind with a hug. She looked like the girl I had met the other day, and she said her name was Nancy. However, she shook her head “no” when I asked if I had met her before. We walked to Mohammed’s sister’s stall and I bought some more cloth and later some jewelry. As I ran out of money people continued to try to sell me their beautiful items. I went to Nancy’s mother’s shop as I had promised the other day, and it was the same young Nancy sitting there, posing in funny sunglasses a little big for her face. Mohamed threw in 5,000 Leones so I could buy a necklace, and told the man he would bring people to his shop if he gave me a bracelet I was looking at (I didn’t quite realize the negotiation until after we had left). I had spent the last of my Leones and US Dollars, save a 5,000 note that has Sengbe Pieh’s picture on it. We drove back to Aqua Club in Aberdeen. We drove through Murry Town where Johnny is from, past houses crowded together and children in uniforms walking home.
I hadn’t had a chance to eat “African food.” My friends told me I had to try monkey soup and cassava, among other things. I was especially interested in cassava. Tuesday was our last day at Anchor, off of Aberdeen. While working I heard Sia speaking to a man in a canoe that had rowed alongside our ship. I thought Sia was negotiating to buy fish from him. I continued with my work and did not pay much attention. The man came back to the ship a little while later. The old, thin, weathered-faced beautiful man rowed his dugout canoe back to Amistad. He handed Sia a plate of cooked cassava. I realized that Sia had earlier asked the man to go home (to the town at the shore off where we were anchored) and bring back cassava so I (and everyone else) could try some (I think she told him I hadn’t had a chance to taste it yet). He did, for a perfect stranger. I gave the man two Amistad bracelets, and wished I had more to give. He was a Sherbro man. Sia mixed in butter and we ate the Cassava. It was delicious, and I crave it now. It reminds me of Yucca. One of my most touching memories, the kindness of one stranger going out of his way simply because someone asked him to.
Another day, while at anchor, some children rowed by in a canoe. They shouted and smiled. I waved back. Brima said they were greeting me in Timini, “Seca, Seca.”
It is amazing to be here, in Sierra Leone, hanging out with my new friends: Samuel, who is a Mende man, Brima, who is Timini, Sia who is Kono, and Vincent who is Limba. These tribal names I had heard before as I studied Amistad’s history, but now I am meeting people, descendents from the same tribes that many of the Amistad men and children had come from. I told Vincent he looks a little like Grabeau. He pulled out the portraits of the Amistad men, and looked them over slowly. I wondered what it is like to look at those portraits through his eyes. In my friends’ eyes, facial structures of the people around me, I see similarities to the faces in the Amistad portraits. I have long recognized the horrors of the slave trade, of robbing people from their homes and torturing them. However, it strikes me deeper being here in Sierra Leone, Lion Mountain. I have studied and felt the weight of this history and told Amistad’s story, Sengbe’s story, while the African continent was a far off place an ocean away. Now, being here, greeted by one friendly, kind face after another, it hits me harder. Though in a different place in time and space, any one of the people I meet could have been ripped from their lives, were it an earlier century. The people here are beautiful, and it hurts to see what life and possibilities had been ripped away from the millions stolen from this continent. How many lives were forever altered or destroyed? Modern day Sierra Leone continued to suffer deeply during the civil war, the effects of which are still felt. Yet this country is home to extraordinary beauty and an abundance of kindness. To see the future that was robbed from people in the past drives the magnitude of the history home even deeper.
The day of the closing ceremony (before we left the government wharf and went to Aberdeen), Johnny returned to the ship with doves/pigeons. We could only catch glimpses of the dancing and the crowd that gathered on the dock for the ceremony since we were at anchor. We lowered the Sierra Leonean flag and Johnny and Sia brought it to the shore. Just before we left, Johnny released the birds off of the jiboom. As we raised anchor, officially leaving Freetown, Johnny led us in a call and response. He shouted “Amistad!” and we, the crew, called back “freedom!” He then shouted to the people on shore, and they began to call back “Freedom!” It brought me to tears to share in that chant with the people of Sierra Leone. I have shouted those words many times on Amistad, with many groups. This time we shared the words and the spirit with people on shore in Freetown, as we prepared to depart the country that is truly Amistad’s home, with four new Sierra Leonean crewmembers onboard, all of us ready to sail together.
I expected to be amazed and surprised by Sierra Leone. I expected heavy emotions, to enter a completely different culture. I expected the heat and the tropical life. I expected to meet amazing people. I have traveled quite a bit. I am always amazed and touched by the kindness of the human spirit, despite all of the horrors that humans continue to inflict upon one another. Yet with all of my expectations, my heart was blown open. The kindness of the people I met, juxtaposed with the weight of the history of this country, renders me moved beyond words. The beauty and light that shines through in the most horrible of moments, the power that emerges in spite of a situation, touch what for me is at the heart of Amistad: the possibility of hope and strength prevailing in the most unlikely of circumstances.
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