The king hosted a meeting with the chief guard who later, in collaboration with the king, ordered reinforcements. Heavy resistance was encountered while trying to recapture those who had been captured in areas where the slave merchants were staying.
Most of the guards were either killed or injured, and the surviving ones fled for their dear lives. Soon, water scarcity was becoming common. As a result of this, the king ordered for the withdrawal of the guards and that the warriors should engage with the slave merchants.
A seriousl war broke out as the warriors raided the slave merchants’ camp. The slave merchants had sophisticated weapons (as a result of their nature of trading with the Europeans) and the battle lasted long enough that both sides suffered heavy casualties. During this period, the slave merchants’ weapons were captured and used by the warriors to drive away the beasts (as the slave merchants were often called) from their lands. But their trials were in vain.
Soon, most of the kingdom territory was captured and taken by the slave merchants. More warriors were being captured, one after the other. As a result of fear, people fled their homes to the innermost parts of the kingdom where they felt safer and secured.
One cold, faithful night, I heard someone screaming. I immediately came out to see what was going on, and beheld that my clan was under attack.
“Quickly this way,” I heard someone whisper into my ears. Immediately I turned around, only to see my older brother, Agufia, standing behind me.
Agufia had been named after our legendary ancestor Agufia. He was the second oldest son, and my immediate older sibling. The eldest girl was Udochi, but the first born was Agumbe. Agufia came after Udochi, then came me, and finally our last born, Mzu.
I immediately followed him with haste down the hilly parts and into a safe zone. During the commotion, we lost contact with most of our family members, so we decided to stay together. We ran into a deserted place near the communal market place where we spent the night till twilight. After that, we decided to go back home to see if everything had calmed down.
Moving at a good pace, we heard someone calling our names. We turned back, only to see that it was our uncle, Madueke. Uncle Madueke was my father’s older brother. He also owned a lot of land and numerous farms that were inherited from their father, as it was the custom of the land. But he was not satisfied with his lot. He also wanted his younger brother’s possessions.
This created bad blood between the two of them. The death of my father took place a week after an encounter with Madueke, and it was rumored that Madueke was responsible for his death. I dismissed it as a mere coincidence.
After the death of my father, Madueke wanted to take over my father’s estate but was repelled by Agumbe, who took over my father’s ropes. Two weeks after the encounter he went missing and was never found again. Madueke even shot his first son Akuri, who openly told him about his wicked ways and that he, Akuri, would never have anything to do with him again. Madueke, was so provoked that he drew out his hunting gun and shot the poor, innocent young man. Madueke was said to be remorseful after the incident.
Since then, his hatred for me and my siblings had increased tenfold because he considered us as the ones who made his son defy his authority. But in that situation we were in, Madueke seemed to have changed.
Only the gods knew what he was up to.
“I am glad to see the both of you. I am happy that you both made it this far,” Madueke said.
Agufia was speechless. He couldn’t say a word because it was surprising that his greatest enemy had turned into a friend overnight.
“Now stop wondering because this is not the right time to discuss things. We’ll talk about it when the right time comes,” he added further, so we both followed him silently, like zombies. “Please, let’s move faster. The road is not safe at night, and we have a long way to cover,” he advised.
Surprisingly, our route took us from the paths into the bush, leading to the river. Just then, Agufia spoke out.
“Uncle Madueke, this is not the path that leads to the clan. Why are we following you here?”
Madueke simply smiled and pointed ahead. “You see that?”
Up ahead we could see a place that looked like a slave merchants’ hideout. So we silently followed him, as long as he could lead us out of danger. We soon broke into a run. We ran amok like deers down the path and crossed into the evil forest paths. That was the shortest path to the river, we didn’t think, we were ready to take chances with the ghosts. We didn’t think about the chance that we would become ghosts ourselves.
We later ran into Maduka and Eslem, brother and sister. They both had different mothers
but the same father. Their father was a polygamist who married two women. They were from the Akan Clan and Maduka and Agufia were the same age, while his younger sister and I were the same age as well.
“Did you guys see them?” Maduka managed to ask us amid panting, gasping for breath.
“Yes,” Agufia replied.
“Come on, let’s go to the river side and join the others. We’ll be safe there,” Uncle Madueke interrupted our conversation.
We all trooped after him like dummies. I now regret doing that, I wish I never listened to Uncle Madueke. If I never followed him, I wouldn’t have passed through all these predicaments that I passed through. On our way to the river side, we saw young men, women and children sitting down on the bare ground. At first, I thought that I’d met my people, but later it dawned on us: our uncle is a traitor.
He sold the four of us for twenty pounds, coupled with two guns and gun-powder.
Early the next morning we were led on a straight line onto a ship hidden by the harbor. With heavy chains on our hands and legs, it was hell and it was slow, as most of the slaves were moving slowly.
The slave merchants started flogging us. Soon, we all managed to walk onto the ship. We were all kept in a dark room, deprived of light, apart from the candle light.
We sat down in chains, and the weight of them made life a living hell. Soon, a lady in a gown came in with a big basket on her head and started distributing food, it was corn and water. Each slave got two ears of corn and a little water. It was an awful thing to eat for the number of weeks that we spent on the open sea and only once in a day. We often spent most of our time sleeping or whispering. I actually don’t know the number of weeks we spent at sea because we were never allowed to go out of the room, except when we wanted to use the toilet.
One day when we were all fast asleep when the door burst open and the rays of a bright afternoon light flashed all over the dark room. We were all told to come out of the room. We did this with difficulties, and soon we were all standing on the deck.
The smell of unwashed bodies floated all over the air. I later realized that we were the ones smelling, due to the number of weeks we spent without taking a bath. Later, Eslem, Agufia, Maduka and I were sold to a white man named Clifford. We were branded on our arms with a fiery, hot, iron rod. One part of the mark showed the sign of slavery, while the other showed the letter “C”, the mark of our master.
Clifford had bought the four of us, claiming that he didn’t want to scatter the family. At the age of twelve, I later came to understand who and what I really was.