That Africans, widely dispersed, believed Europeans to be cannibals and perceived them as devils and evil spirits upon encountering them for the first time is supported by Cugoano who describes his own terror and bewilderment in a poignant passage: ‘I saw several white people, which made me afraid that they would eat me, according to our notion as children in the inland parts of the country.’1 Olaudiah Equiano was Igbo from modern day Nigeria, Cugoano was Ashanti from modern day Ghana, and Asa Asa was from present day Sierra Leone.
From the narratives we get to experience what it felt like to have been a captive aboard a slave ship crossing the Atlantic. Olaudiah Equiano describes in his narrative the experience of being chained in the hold of the ship and on deck and we can generalize this experience to include those thousands of other victims who were not privileged to narrate their experience through the written word:

‘I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life; so that, with the loathsomeness of the stench, and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was unable to eat…’2

He narrates that some of them, when taken up for exercise and fresh air, were chained on deck, and those who were not were watched very closely by the crew lest they leap overboard, an urge he himself, and we must suppose that many other victims, had. Indeed, he narrate that he had ‘seen some of these poor African prisoners most severely cut for attempting to do so, and hourly whipped for not eating.’3 Cugoano, too, describes the experience on the slave ship. He tells us that ‘it was common for the dirty, filthy sailors to take the African women and lie upon their bodies.’4 In fact, the rape of the African woman by the European male began on the African coast itself, in the barracoons and in the dungeons of the slave forts, like Elmina Castle. The Governor would select he woman he fancied and have her brought to his quarters at night. We also have the account of Asa Asa to give us an idea of just how cruel an experience the Atlantic crossing was:

‘The slaves we saw on board the ship were chained together by the legs below deck, so close they could not move. They were flogged very cruelly: I saw one of them flogged till he died; we could not tell what for…The place they were confined in below deck was so hot and nasty I could not bear to be in it. A great many of the slaves were ill, but they were not attended to. They used to flog me very bad on board the ship: the captain cut my head very bad one time.’5

The thousand of faceless, nameless, even voiceless Africans brought to Grenada, Carriacou and Petit Martinique may not have written about the Atlantic crossing but they did preserve and transmit the experience in the form of drama, accompanied by a chant. In the ring game tradition, they dramatized the experience of being brought up to the deck of the ship to exercise in a dance that involved moving around in a circle, jumping and chanting:

‘Up and down the deck, keep movin
Up and down the deck, keep movin.’6

The writer grew up playing this game without understanding the coded meaning. Generations of children in Grenada, Carriacou and Petit Martinique grow up without an inkling of the rich histories contained in our ring games, folklore and songs of the Nation Dance and Big Drum tradition. We have not been taught to see such sources as authoritative sources of our story.
Upon arrival in the Caribbean, Grenada or Carriacou, for example, the African was often geographically confused, totally disoriented. This geographical confusion and bewilderment sometimes lasted for years, the African having lost his sense of location. In his book Seven Slaves & Slavery, Trinidad, 1777 – 1838, Anthony de Verteuil narrates that Daaga was able to persuade a number of fellow captives into revolting by convincing them that by marching eastward in the direction of Mayaro they would eventually end up in Guinea.7 Guinea was the metaphor for Africa.
Eventually the Africans did acquire a sense of place, a sense of geography, but that only exacerbated the pain of their exile and desperation. We have, in the oral tradition, songs that lamented this separation from Africa and the realization that they would never be able to return and reunite with their kin. A patois song of the Nation Dance of La Poterie was translated to this author to mean:

‘The Yoruba people are on an island, mama
The Yoruba people are on a rock.’

The source was an old sängo drummer whom the author encountered at a Nation Dance in Mother Annie’s yard, circa 1990.
In the Carriacou Big Drum tradition we have a lament that conveys the resignation and despair of the African who realizes that all hopes of return to Africa were futile. In the lament the protagonist, whose identity we do not know, and his sweetheart, Louisa, attempts to escape back to Africa to reunite with their or his parents and realizes that Carriacou is but a small island: ‘Alas, the waves and the water separates us’, he laments and consoles her by offering to take her to the tomb of the revered ancestors – the tomb of Kromanti Kojo and Mne Nu, the originators of the Big Drum tradition in Carriacou. The Big Drum tradition was the medium through which the African nations (they did not refer to themselves as tribes) united, asserted their identity, communicated with each other and expressed their pain and joy.
It is evident from Olaudiah Equiano’s Narrative that the victims of kidnapping and slave raids sought out their kinsmen aboard the ship who spoke their language. The company and kinship comforted and assured the victim. Olaudiah Equiano tells us: ‘I found some of my nation, which in a small degree gave ease to my mind.’8
Any bonding that would have taken place during the Atlantic crossing was shattered upon arrival when the victims were taken to the auction block and sold to different plantations. As Olaudiah Equiano testifies: ‘In this manner, without scruple, are relations and friends separated, most of them never to see each other again. I remember in the vessel in which I was brought over…there were several brothers who, in the sale, were sold in different lots; and it was very moving on the occasion to see and hear their cries at parting.’9
An African from a small nation or one whose kin was not represented in large numbers on a plantation or on the island, suffered more acutely than others the aloneness and despair of exile. The anguish and feeling of loneliness and abandonment is a recurrent theme in the oral history. From the Carriacou Big Drum tradition we have, for example, this lamentation:

Igbo Grenade, O
Bury me as I am
I have no mother
Bury me as I am
I have no father
Bury me as I am

Where members of the same tribe were in large numbers, such as the Kromanti and Yoruba, there was greater community and a greater possibility of retention of African values and traditions, religion and other cultural practices, native vocabulary and indigenous culinary habits. In Carriacou,the Kromanti10 dominated in numbers so they were the first to enter the Big Drum circle of nations and ancestors to perform their rituals and honour Kromanti Kojo and Mne Nu and ask their ancestors pardon for their sins. The last to enter was the Temne, the smallest nation represented on Carriacou. The Chamba, too, were small but a large number of them were concentrated on Dumfries estate. According to Lorna McDaniel in her dissertation, Memory Song11, Dumfries estate, owned by George McLean, housed 400 enslaved Africans, half of whom were Chamba. The Chamba exist today in northern Togo and north-western Ghana. In the oral history that has survived we do not get that sense of loneliness and despair that we get from the lamentation of the Igbo quoted above. The Chamba dance and song is happy and uplifting. Those readers who have seen the Chamba dance in both Carriacou and Grenada ad understand their salutation would appreciate the vigour and energy with which it is performed and the sheer joy it conveys:

Chamba Dumfries O, Kuma yç yç yç
Chamba Dumfries O, Kuma yç yç yç
(Chamba of Dumfries O, how are you? I am well)

The presence of others of the same nation on a plantation was important in ways other than the comfort and community they provided. The older members of the language group or nation transmitted to the new arrivants survival tactics that could make a difference between starvation and the satisfaction of hunger, between life and death. Carriacou is an arid Island with hardly any surface water and the dry season could be devastating. During the era of the slave trade and plantation slavery almost the entire island was under cultivation and there was little room for provision grounds in which the enslaved could grow their own food. They had to depend on the plantation to supply them with imported foodstuff. The supply was often inadequate. In order to survive many of the enslaved Africans had to resort to a diet alien to the one they knew in Africa. For example, they were forced to eat the tiny black crabs that clung to the rocks of the coastline – the tululu crabs. So it is not surprising that one of the Big Drum songs advises the newly arrived Kongo from Central Africa to eat the tululu crab to starve off starvation:

Kongo, O, Kongo, O
The tululu crab is good to eat

The plurality and inclusiveness of the Big Drum tradition of Carriacou and the nation dance of Grenada did not preclude divisions, differentiations and even animosity among the nations. We get the impression from another Big Drum song that members of the Igbo nation and the Dahomey nation (the fon) despised each other. Here we have a member of the Dahomey nation castigating members of the Igbo nation:

Igbo is a bad nation, Dahomey
I am not of that nation, Dahomey

For the new arrivants adaptation to life on a slave plantation was often traumatic. The slave pens in which new arrivants were quarantined and broken still survive in Grenada. There is one in Mt. Rich and one in Hermitage, for example. The new arrivants had to undergo a period of seasoning. Especially, he or she had to learn to communicate in the patois of English or French (depending on the language of the enslaver at the particular time) vocabulary as well as words and expressions from the various African dialects in order to communicate with the enslaver and fellow enslaved. Despite the suffering, the victims never lost their sense of humour and found wit in the inability of new arrivants to master the patois and respond as expected. For example, the song and dance about Zabette and Jeanette Lundi, two young Temne girls, newly arrived, make fun of their tendency to react with insolence when kind words were spoken to them and with politeness when they were being insulted because they had not yet mastered the patois:

Aha, how are you
Zabette Lundi?
Jeanette Lundi,
How are you?

The Atlantic crossing was physically and mentally traumatic for many of the Africans, especially the women. The abuse and hardship delayed menarche (the onset of menstruation) and coupled with the harshness of life on the plantation resulted in low fertility rates and even barrenness among the enslaved women. This is argued convincingly by Barbara Bush in Slave Women in Caribbean Society, 1650 – 1838.12 Barrenness was seen as a curse and the unfortunate woman was targeted for reproach. As Barbara Bush explains: ‘In West Africa infertility in a mature woman is regarded as a terrible stigma and prolific childbearing is honoured.’13 This trauma and the curse of barrenness is recorded in a Carriacou Big Drum lament. In the song, the unfortunate woman responds to the taunts of her neighbours:

‘I am Claris, I have no children
Papa God did not give me any
Don’t shout my name in the crowd’

There is another version of the song which conveys the same experience of anguish at being barren:

Dandi, I have no children
If I could buy a child I would
God did not grant it to me
For me to shout my name among my kin’

Not only was barrenness a consequence of the trauma of the Atlantic crossing and the harshness of plantation life, infant mortality rate on the plantations were high and so was the incidence of mothers dying in childbirth. This disturbing fact of life on the plantations, which must have caused unfathomable pain and sorrow, is what is coded in the douen (dwen) and mama maladie myths. The douen is the still born child and the child that died soon after birth. It is usually represented as a spirit whose feet are turned before behind. It has its origins in the Kalabari (Efik, Ibibio) term for the spirit of dead babies. In St. Lucia, the bolom is the spirit of the aborted child. Many women on slave plantations aborted their fetuses for various reasons – some did not want to give birth to children that could be separated from them or made to suffer the indignities of slavery; others were impregnated by rape and did not want to bear the child of the enslavers. On the other hand mama maladie is the woman who has died in childbirth. She is often heard outdoors in the dark of night, groaning in agony, dramatizing the labour pains that resulted in her death. Those of us who are ignorant of the coded messages and the history behind the myths dismiss them as mere superstition.
Not only were pregnant enslaved African women expected to work in the fields until they hour they were ready to give birth, holes were dug in the ground to accommodate their pregnant stomach while they were flogged as punishment for alleged or perceived misdeeds. Then they were forced to return to the fields soon after giving birth, if they survived. Under such conditions it was no wonder that infant mortality and fatality among birthing mothers were so high and myths to remind future generations of these conditions encoded.
Ironically, the anticipation of the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 forced the enslavers to ameliorate the pre- and post-natal conditions for the enslaved woman to enable her to survive childbirth and her child to survive and grow to provide continued labour to ensure the profitability of the plantation.14
Historians have described in great details the cruelties of the slave plantation and some of you readers may be familiar with them, especially those meted out as punishment for insubordination, malingering, conspiracy, running away and armed rebellion and other forms of resistance – the whippings, the treadmills, being drawn and quartered, being broken on the wheel, being put in the stocks, being hung by the neck and by the ribs and amputation.
One of the cruelest of punishments was separation and transportation – separation from family, transportation to another island. It was doubly painful for those who had been torn away from their kin, their village and the continent of their birth, to be separated a second time from those they had bonded with on the plantation – siblings, children, spouses. We can share the despair in the lamentation of the mother in the Big Drum song who is being separated from her children and transported to Trinidad or Haiti. We do not know why she was being punished or whether she was being punished at all. Defined as chattel by the law, she was liable to be sold or given in exchange by those who owned her; she was totally at the mercy of their whim:

Weep for me, Lide, weep Maiwez
Lament for me Lide, lament Maiwez

Sunday next, the schooner sails to Haiti
Friday the schooner leaves Haiti

Whoever loves me, console my children for me
Whoever loves me, console my Zabette for me
Whoever loves me, console my Walter for me15

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