[buckbeak14]

My days of torment

It was exactly 318 days ago when the first of many days of torment for me began …

I was out with my mentor , tanoushou nasouri , the village elder , and he was giving me a lesson about the different plants and their healing properties . On this day we had strayed quite far away from our camp to gather all the plants we needed for my lesson .

When suddenly we saw a group of white men coming towards us with nets in their hands . we knew who these beings where, we'd heard rumors of them from people fleeing inland from the coast . These where the white mozambies , the white devils , they kidnapped black people and took them on large canoe with roof then where never seen again .

As we turned around to escape we found another group of them behind us closing in on us where we lay in a deep valley then suddenly a net was thrown over us and I fainted in fear .

When I awoke I was lying on a wooden bench and chained to it with heavy metal around my hands and throat with caused pain and blood to come out of my body , my mentor tanoushou nasouri was lying chained beside me pale as sand beside the sea and yet awake, I whispered to him to ask him what had happened to us but all he could say in a weak strained voice was " son I shall leave ye
soon , the only thing I leave for you is this peace of advice be true to yourself and fall not under the captivation of the over lording mozambies for they are the oppressors, and may god be with you . " And with that he fell in a deep sleep never to awake again .

I remember little of what happened on the next three months , but I remember that it was as close to hell as is achievable here on this earth . we lay chained on the benches with the grit and splinters rubbing on our backs and injuring us for weeks at a time .
Then every once in a while we'd be taken onto the deck washed unceremoniously using freezing salt water , exercised a little then chained back under deck in our cramped positions on the benches that we had come to hate almost as much as our captors , yet what troubled me most was that I knew not where we were heading and indeed at many a time it crossed my mind that we where heading straight to hell but it was not to be so .

As I said after three months we arrived at a distant land exhausted and having lost hope some of us also suicidal .

Yet at this land although we understood none of what was going on we where treated slightly better then we had been on the ship , yet many a person came and started examining us in the most funny of methods by poking us looking closely at our gums and teeth , then one day we where all taken to a courtyard where many mozambies stood and as I had started to learn a little of the mozamibes barbaric language I understood that we where to be sold and hence it was to be so . I was sold to a fairly nice gentleman yet I was still never treated as a human . for months I worked like a pack mule , I worked on the fields ploughing , gathering and seeding . I looked after the animals and even cleaned up after them . and even after doing all this I was still punished for the smallest of mistakes , I was whipped , I was starved for days at a time but the thing is all this was not done to me by the person who had bought me .

A black man just like myself was in charge of us and he was the 1 that punished as all when we did not work well. After a while when id almost lost hope in life , I heard about slaves who'd bought their freedom . so I went to our master and talked to him about it , and he agreed that should I get him the sum of 500 pounds , and pay it to him he would give me my freedom . so I started working at a local shop in my free time saving up for the day when I would be able to buy my freedom , and so after about 215 days I finally had enough money to buy my freedom . which I willingly and without regret did .

Yet even though I bought my freedom I have continued to work for my former owner yet now I get paid a wage and do not have any slave restrictions imposed upon me as I sit in my small yet comfortable house , I am capable of going out for some fresh air without chains and I keep in mind the time when I myself had been a slave and so any time I see a slave that needs help I rush to his aid , for he like me is human .