MY CAPTURE
My name is Bobo Mandela, I am from the tribe of Zulu. To start with my day was as good as any other, nothing out of the ordinary. My parents had gone to work in the fields and I was left at home to look after my seven year old sister, she started to wonder off into the woods next to my hutch. I was able to hear a twig snap in the deadly silence of the almost deserted woods. I turned around and at that moment I was grabbed from behind- my mouth was covered and my wrists were tied! When I regained consciousness my wrists and ankles were shackled. My captors were my own people, one of them being my old friend Zuba. I then realised all the captors had guns. We were required to march along the entire West cost of Africa, we were also forced to eat strange white man food which made me want to vomit the first time I ate it! We were persuaded to march with our ankles chained up. I tried to communicate with other captives but we were all from different tribes, therefore speaking different languages. After we eventually reached the coast there were white men waiting in their ships. It seemed that the white men paid the Africans to capture their own people, paying them with guns and expensive jewellery. There were approximately two hundred black people being held in bamboo baracoons. The conditions were cramped and the air was dense. It was like hell, why would you do this to your own friends and people?
MIDDLE PASSAGE
We had been waiting in the baracoons for a matter of weeks now, until the white men had prepared our holding cells in the hull of the ship. Slowly, we were loaded onto the ship one by one. There were about two hundred people packed into the hull just like sardines in a tin. After each captive was loaded onto the old and battered ship we started the long journey over the long and treacherous sea. Unfortunately I was placed on the bottom rack of the ship were all the bacteria thrived. The hull of the ship was an ideal breeding...