Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

WHYDAH, DAHOMEY, WEST AFRICA

Hands shoved her roughly forward and Afia stumbled, her feet hampered by the shackles round her ankles, the pain from her wrenched ankle screamed up her leg and made her whimper. Omari beside her, reached out with his shackled hands trying to steady her, but the chains between his hands and feet didn’t allow him to touch her.

He bent his head towards her, and she shuffled closer, desperate for the comfort of his touch. “Your ankle still hurts?” he murmured.

She nodded biting her lip against the pain. Her head ached too from the blow to the back of her skull. He reached again with his hands to take hers, she reached with hers, their little fingers entwining, all they could reach of each other with the confining chains that bound them.

They, along with at least fifty others, were being herded towards pens in an open courtyard. They had been in the wagons for several days as they journeyed towards the coast, given meagre rations of water and bread. The fresher air and cooling breeze, with a hint of salt, told her they were now in the port city of Whydah.

The ground beneath their feet was dusty, hard-packed, red earth. The press of sweaty bodies, warred with dust and the stench of human waste, as they were shoved closer to the pens. Two men with wicked crops, were sorting them as they got closer, shoving the men into one pen and the women and children into another.

She shrieked as Omari was pushed away from her, their linked hands slipping apart.

“I love you, Afia!” he called as he was pulled away from her, his dear face a mirror of her own anguish, and shoved towards the male pen.

“I love you Omari!” She echoed his words, they seemed inadequate to the situation. Her heart clenched with pain and fear. “Oh, Azaka keep him safe!” she prayed, tears streaming down her face as she was shoved into the female pen.

The pens were ringed with stone walls to waist height. Within them, were iron rings set in the ground to each of which, four women were chained. They could go no further than a couple of feet from the ring. She could see Omari, but she couldn’t get close enough to talk to him. Like her, he was anchored by a ring with three other prisoners.

The women wailed and the children whimpered or shrieked.

How long would they be kept here? The stench of human waste and the buzz of flies was horrendous as the chained and helpless prisoners peed and defecated where they were held. The sun beat down on them mercilessly. She squatted on the ground and closed her eyes, trying to block out her surroundings. Is this where her parents and sisters had been brought? What happened to them? Were they still alive? She curled in on herself, her bound arms wrapped round her knees. Azaka help us please?