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GREAT STORIES:
Journey
Yields Glimpse of Missing Past Africans in America
The
Miami Herald
November 7, 2004
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Photo
by Sarah J. Glover
While traveling from Niger
to Sierra Leone, Miami Herald columnist Leonard
Pitts had a layover in Senegal. He visited Goree
Island, known as an exit port for African slaves
that were forced into slavery. Pictured is the
Goree Island shoreline and visitors enjoying the
beach. | To local villagers
slave trade is
unknown
It is morning and we are on the
road again. We have a full tank of gas and are
provisioned with tall bottles of water and sandwiches
from the hotel. We have a new driver. We also have a
passenger, Kedidia's 51-year-old cousin, Oumaarou
Souleymane, a farmer and Koranic scholar. He is a tall
man with a gentle, gracious air. I have been asking him
questions about his life. Then, through his cousin, he
says something that stops me cold.
"They've heard
that in America there are a lot of black people and that
the black people originated from this continent," says
Kedidia, translating, "but how they got into America,
they don't know. Whether they went there by themselves
or somebody took them, they don't know."
He
doesn't know how Africans got to
America?!
Sarah and I trade a look and then
speak simultaneously. "Can we tell
him?"
But how are we supposed to do that? How
do you convey it in 25 words or less to someone who has
no conception? How to make him understand buying human
beings on credit and building a pit so that a pregnant
woman can lie her belly there as her back is whipped to
tatters? How to explain black children in cages swinging
above the fancy dinner table to fan flies from the white
diners below?
We try, but I can see from his face
that he does not understand. Kedidia adds some thoughts
of her own, explaining to him that when Europeans went
to America, they discovered native peoples living there
and subjected them, too, to brutal
mistreatment.
The natives' ordeal doesn't
register either. "They were human beings?" he
asks.
Yes, we say. They were.
Souleymane
is not unique. It turns out that the fate of the
Africans stolen away from these shores remains something
of a mystery to many of those who have spent their lives
in rural villages. Two hours later, Koulbeye Ousseini,
Kedidia's aunt, wants to know about "our black people in
America. What are they doing? What kind of work are they
doing? What's the kind of life?"
So Sarah and I
try to tell her, to capture in a few words that delicate
dance between progress and pain that characterizes black
life in America. Many African Americans are succeeding
beyond the wildest dreams of their forebears, we say.
Many others are mired in poverty and
prison.
"They should continue to do the good
jobs," she says. "That way they won't have
problems."
Sitting in his open market, her
husband, 84-year-old Ali Mossi, also has questions about
America. "He has heard your ancestors were here and
taken to America," says Kedidia, translating. "He says
that unfortunately in this culture there is no written
history, so they don't know what happened
exactly."
So yet again I find myself trying to
condense 400 years of African-American history. Finally,
I tell Mossi that I am here because I am trying to
understand my heritage – because I took a test which
said that I am Songhay like him.
The old man's
eyes flicker, but he doesn't respond to this. Instead,
he launches into a speech extolling the fierceness of
the Songhay warriors, the fact that they were unbeatable
in warfare until their arrows and spears came up against
guns. He even sends for some of his war weapons and
poses with them for Sarah's camera.
Afterward, I
turn to Sarah and ask if she is ready to leave. But
suddenly, the old man is speaking energetically to his
niece. I wait for him to finish, then look to her for
the translation.
"You've told him your ancestors
came from here and he has heard also from his own
grandparents that some people were taken from here to
America. And because you took the time to come here to
see him, he is very grateful that he has seen people who
were lost. He says he is very, very thankful because you
recognize that your ancestors came from here, that you
honor him and he's very grateful to God for
that."
People who were lost, he says. And the
first thing that comes to mind is a lyric from an old
hymn that is often sung in the African-American church.
"I once was lost," it says, "but now I'm
found."
I glance at Sarah, but I can see that
she, too, is struggling for words.
I ask Kedidia
to tell her uncle that the honor is entirely mine. |
