Conference then the Coast!

Hello, friends and faithful readers!  I hope that you enjoyed the "Slave Trade Triptych," you know, as much as you can enjoy something like that.  At the very least, I hope you found it informative and/or interesting.

I spent all of last week pitching in for the first Founders Institute, hosted at the Apostles of Jesus Scholasticate.  This event coincided with the anniversary of the deaths of Bishop Mazzoldi (25 years ago) and Fr. Marengoni (5 years ago) on July 27 (yes, they DID die 20 years apart to the day!).  Together, these two men co-founded 5 religious institutes: Sacred Heart Sisters, Brothers of St. Martin dePorres, Apostles of Jesus, Evangelizing Sisters of Mary, and Contemplative Evangelizers of the Heart of Christ.  This conference marked the first time ever that all 5 congregations came together for a common purpose.  It was like a giant family reunion!  Priests, Brothers, and Sisters came from Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa, Australia, the US, and Kenya to celebrate the lives of their fathers.  I volunteered my services as a general gopher for whatever they needed, and ended up in the role of official conference photographer and videographer.  It felt really good to be busy, and to have a clearly defined role.  As you know, I am a huge fan of East African hospitality, but this was the first time I really wasn't treated as a guest, but as just another member of the family.  It was marvelous!

Now the conference is over, and I am returning to the US in just 5 days, so it is time to make a final dash to see as many more missions as I can.  I am leaving any moment to travel to Mombasa with Fr. Peter Choi and Br. Peter Makau (seriously, you would not believe how many AJs are named Peter).  I can't wait to be back on the coast in "the city where that one part of Inception with the opium den took place."  Can't wait to tell you all about it!

Part III: Zanzibar and Post-Abolition Slave Trade

The horrors did not stop for the African victims of slavery with abolition in 1873.  This should hardly be surprising to me given my country’s history.  How long did former slave owners continue to treat former slaves like property in the antebellum south?  Abuse, segregation, hate crimes, racism.  The scars of slavery still flare up for the descendants of African slaves, as well as more recent immigrants to the US. 

But at least in the US, slave trade ended once and for all with the end of the Civil War.  Not so in Zanzibar.  As I mentioned in the previous installment, the majority of the profit of the Slave Market went into the coffers of the Sultan of Zanzibar.  In 1873, it was the Sultan himself who proclaimed an end to slave trade and closed the market, but it appears that losing all of that income was not really what he wanted, so he did what all capitalists ultimately do- he found a way to keep making money, morals, ethics, and laws be damned!  The slave trade went underground.

Literally.

Sometime in the early 19^th century, a slave boy discovered a cave when he was looking for a lost goat.  The cave, made entirely of coral, has only one opening.  After descending into the cave, it extends about 1km in one direction toward the sea, and about 3km in the other direction, farther in land.  Following abolition, it became an ideal hiding place for slaves.

I got to explore the cave a little bit.  In the US, such a cave would have had a clearly marked path and guide ropes and dim lighting.  Here, we have the flickering light of the guides’ torches and our own hands to steady us as we scramble over the jagged coral, deeper and deeper into the cave.  I used my camera flash to illuminate sections of the cave, and each time I did so, bats would swoop in and out of sight.  When we stood in complete darkness, I could still hear them wheeling and diving in the cave.  We probably didn’t go more than ½ a kilometer inland, but the guides told us that the size of the cave tapers down until you have to “move like a python” in order to get any further.  The only fresh water comes from a spring near the entrance, and the only food was lowered through the cave entrance.  Once they were trapped in the cave, the slaves were completely at the mercy of the traders. 

Less than 2km away, there is another site that was crucial to the slaving black market.  Two spaces were carved into the coral, creating subterranean rooms to hold the slaves.  From land, all you can see of the cells are their pitched wooden roofs.  From what I understand, slaves would be held in these cells until the tide and timing would allow dhows (sail boats) to pull into the secluded bay nearby, at which point the slaves would be loaded on under cover of darkness and sent to Oman.  Looking at the bay now, it is almost unbelievable to think it was used for such a cruel practice.  It is perfectly tucked away, surrounded by lush green trees, lined with white sand, the grey coral visible just beneath the cerulean water, completely hidden from the entire world.  My personal instinct would be to have a picnic there, not sell human beings into lives of pain and suffering. 

It took until well into the 20^th century for the slave trade to be eradicated once and for all.  It has been almost 100 years since Zanzibar has been involved in the sale of human souls.  Though the scars will never fade, they can do nothing to diminish the beauty of the island.  But I can’t let myself believe that slavery is really a thing of the past.  I know too much about the reality of human trafficking and unjust labor conditions to think that every human being on earth is truly free.  I hope that someday, all we have left are the scars, eternal reminders that all life is precious. 

Part II: The Zanzibar Slave Market

The only thing I had on my to do list when I arrived in Zanzibar was “visit the slave market.”  Mostly because it was the only thing I had been told I must see when I was preparing to travel.  This suggestion, coupled with my recent journey through the saga of Kunta Kinte and his descendants, had me excited for the opportunity to get to experience the memorial.   Maybe “excited” is the wrong word.  I was “excited” in the way I imagine one might get “excited” to visit Auschwitz.  Not joyful excitement, but anxious excitement at viewing this monument to human to suffering.  But no amount of mental preparation could really prepare me for what I encountered. 

During its heyday in the 1800s, Zanzibar was the largest and most profitable slave market in the world.  The Omani sultans who ruled in Zanzibar were the main profiteers, and many of the slaves moved through the market were sent to Oman for labor.  However, around mid-century, feelings about slavery in the world began to shift.  Dr. David Livingstone, whose search for the source of the Nile took him deep into the African continent, famously addressed the scholars at Oxford and Cambridge in 1857 and challenged them to become champions for ending slavery once and for all.  His stories about the horrendous treatment of the abducted Africans shocked and horrified all who heard them, and the abolition movement caught on like wildfire.  In 1873, the reigning Sultan of Zanzibar, under pressure from the British government, abolished slavery and closed the slave market. 

While it was in operation, approximately 60,000 slaved moved through the Zanzibar slave market each year.  Between 1800 and 1873, over 4.3 million souls suffered in the hands of the slavers in Zanzibar.

Most of the market was destroyed in the wake of abolition.  Out of the 15 holding chambers that existed beneath the streets of Stone City, only 2 remain, in memoriam of those whose lives were destroyed by slavery.  It was to these chambers that I was led by our guide, Benjamin, when Sr. Claudia and I arrived at the old Slave Market, just a few hours after I had landed on Zanzibar.  The first chamber we entered had been used to hold women and children.  When the market was in use, about 50 women and children would be crammed into the small space.  The room, if you can even call it that, is dominated by a waist-high cement shelf, 3 or 4 feet deep, that follows the entire perimeter of the room, leaving just a narrow passage open in the center of the floor.  The rough wood beam ceilings hang at a stifling level, no more than 5 and a half feet.  The only light comes from three miniscule windows, slits in the top of the far wall, like the windows you find in ruins of castles, designed to let arrows out but nothing in.  Chains and shackles, replicas of those used less than 140 years ago to restrain imprisoned slaves, are strewn casually around the chamber.  As I sat down on the cement shelf to listen to Benjamin, I was overwhelmed with the hundreds of thousands of people who were forced into this chamber.  Hands that clung to children in the darkness, hope disappearing in the bleak subterranean chamber, the reek of blood and feces and vomit and urine and sweat building into a soul-crushing cloud of defeat.  I sat in that chamber and I wept.  I wept for all of the people yanked from their homes and families and sold into slavery.  I wept for the tortures forced upon them and their children and their children’s children.  I wept for my country’s involvement in the slave trade.  I wept at the thought that any human being could ever justify such unimaginable cruelty to another person. 

We only spent a couple of moments standing at the door of the only other remaining chamber; this one is smaller, with the same cement shelf, this one having been used to accommodate around 35 male slaves.  Benjamin told us that the slaves only spent an average of 3 days in the chambers before they were shipped out on the slaving ships, destined for Oman, India, the West Indies, and America. 

In 1874, the Anglican Cathedral standing on the remains of the slave market was completed.  It was built by Bishop Sheere, a powerful advocate for abolition.  Most of the construction workers were freed slaves, and the materials came from the finest suppliers of sacred accouterments throughout Europe.  The church stands as a memorial of the bloody road to the freedom of the slaves and as a monument to the triumph of abolition.

When the slave market was still in operation, a tree stood in the center of the market.  The Whipping Tree.  Before they were sold to the slavers, the imprisoned Africans were tied to the tree and whipped to a pulp as a test of their physical endurance.  They were tortured to see how well they could hold up to torture, to see who was worth taking up space in the ships’ holds and who wasn’t.  When the market closed, the tree was cut down, but it’s exact location is marked by a white circle of marble laid in the floor directly in front of the altar in the Anglican Cathedral.  It is chilling to reflect on the suffering of those men and women, bound to the tree, whipped beyond consciousness for no crime, no reason, and to reflect on the similar tortures inflicted on an equally innocent man, who was also bound to a tree, and whose sacrifice is daily remembered on that altar.

Part I: Bagamoyo

Bagamoyo is a small, unassuming town a little ways up the coast from bustling metropolis of Dar Es Salaam.  Judging by the multitude of dhows tethered to shore, fishing and boatbuilding are prominent industries.  With the exception of some beachfront resort hotels (including the Stella Maris, recently constructed by the Holy Ghost (Spiritan) Fathers) the town is generally undeveloped.  Do not, however, be fooled by its humble façade.  Bagamoyo has an incredibly rich and important history.  It was here in 1868 that the first European missionaries landed to begin the evangelization of East Africa.  The French Spiritans came first, paving the way for German and British missionaries who followed quickly behind.  They came with the express intention to do everything in their power to end the slave trade and assist freed slaves.

Historically, the port of Bagamoyo was one of the gathering places for the Africans abducted from their villages throughout Tanzania, Uganda, the Congo, and elsewhere, before they were transported to Zanzibar, home of the largest slave market in the world.  They were mercilessly ripped from their homes and driven like livestock across the harsh African terrain.  Many died on the journey.  Once they arrived in Bagamoyo, they were crammed into dhows (sailboats) and ferried to Zanzibar; still more died before they made it to the market.  The iron pillars where the slaves stood shackled still stand next to the market in view of the Indian Ocean, an ever-present reminder of the horrific trade.

When the missionaries arrived in 1868, abolitionist action had already gained world-wide momentum.  They immediately set to work freeing as many slaves as they could, creating a community called “Freedom Town”.  Many of the freed slaves they helped were ransomed or purchased by the missionaries themselves.  When the slave trade was officially abolished in 1873, the missionaries continued to minister to the freed slaves, educating them and helping them find employment.  Few of them returned to their former homes. 

The original church built by the Spiritans still stands.  The house of the fathers has been converted into a museum showcasing their work to end slavery.  As I walked around the grounds on a bright sunny day in 2012, it was difficult to imagine the place being filled with so much pain and suffering.  The small cemetery behind the museum is filled with graves of Holy Ghost Fathers who passed away during their missionary work, many of them no older than 25 years old.  I was moved by their sacrifice.  They must have known the dangers of traveling to and living in Africa at that time.  The diseases from which I have been protected by simple immunization shots (Yellow Fever, Typhoid, Malaria) almost guaranteed agony for the Europeans. But they came because they knew that someone had to do something to help these oppressed people.  I can’t help but wonder would I have suffered so willingly if I thought I could help end slavery?  Would any of us? 

Prologue: Encountering the Slave Trade

During my previous trips to Africa, I have been blessed to explore some of the interior of East Africa- Nairobi, Kenya; Arusha, Moshi, Mwanza, and Bukoba, Tanzania; Kampala, Jinja, and Nakaseeta in Uganda.  I have eagerly learned about the history of some of the tribes therein, the colonization, the evangelization, the conflicts of East Africa.  Now, as I start to explore coastal East Africa, I am learning about a different chapter of Africa’s history, and very dark chapter, but perhaps the most relevant chapter for an American visitor in the 21^st century. 

The Slave Trade.

There are three different sites that I visited in Tanzania that still stand as memorials to the abhorrent practice, so I will address them in three different posts: Bagamoyo, Zanzibar, Pre-Abolition, and Zanzibar, Post-Abolition.  I will be writing what I saw in person at the museums and monuments I visited, which means that there may be some historical inconsistencies based on the information available to me.  I think these are interesting because they highlight the different perspectives that have been passed down through history, a jarringly recent history. 

Also, in the harried moments before leaving my house way back on June 30^th, the DVD box set I just happened to grab was the 30^th anniversary edition of Roots.  It seems now to have been serendipitous, adding a pointed relevance to my personal experiences in Africa.   If you haven’t seen the miniseries yourself (as I hadn’t prior to this trip), I cannot recommend it enough.

The Dorian

In my travels, I pride myself on being an adventurous eater, “foodventurous” as I like to call it.  True, my will has been tested from time to time.  There are certain foods that I just don’t like: coconut, anise, olives, fermented millet porridge.  My feelings about chicken gizzards are well documented.  I was nearly undone when I foolishly let Dave order lunch for us in Westvleteren, Belgium and was forced, for the sake of pride, to eat what can only be described as chunky chicken Jell-O.  But nothing, my friends, not one thing could have prepared me for the unholy, gag-inducing terror of… 

The Dorian.

The Dorian is a fruit that, as far as my hosts or I know, grows exclusively on Zanzibar.  It has some similarities to Jackfruit, with its green spiky skin and large seeds, but though it is not anywhere near as large as the mighty Jackfruit, its skin is much spikier and its seeds are much larger.  Its rind is actually so spiky that it is impossible to hold the fruit by anything but the stem.  I feel that humanity should have gotten the hint that this was a fruit not intended for consumption.  The unblemished fruit gives off a vaguely sickening odor, yet another helpful hint for humanity to leave this fruit alone.  When you cut into it, the odor builds to a pungent scream of noxious fumes: DO NOT EAT THIS FRUIT!  The fruit’s flesh is amorphous white slimy pulp, clinging half-heartedly to seeds roughly the size of walnuts.  The overall effect reminded me of monkey’s brains, which are popular in Cantonese cuisine.

Was it intended to be a treat? A joke? A prank gone awry, played on me by the kindly sisters with whom I was staying?  I just don’t know, nor do I expect to.  I can say with all certainty that there was no malicious intent when they placed a plate of the reeking fruit in front of me.  I wish I could accurately describe the toxic smell.  The closest comparison I can come up with is a combination of sweat and gasoline.  I was cajoled into taking an infinitesimal taste by choruses of, “It’s sweet!  It smells bad, but the taste is sweet!”  They weren’t completely wrong- it tasted like sweat and gasoline with a hint of off-brand artificial sweetener.  Sr. Eunice told me it is good medicine for the stomach.  I can see the benefit if, say, someone took a goodly amount of poison and you didn’t have any activated charcoal around.  Personally, I don’t think I could hold a good dollop down. 

Eating cottage cheese was heaven compared to this heinous experience.

When I asked the sisters if they make all of their visitors try Dorian, then informed me that it is seasonal, so it isn’t available for visitors to try during most of the year.  When we parted ways, I assured them of my eventual return, promising to come in the Dorian’s off-season.

Epilogue

When I took the boat to Zanzibar on Monday, I thought it was cute and kind of funny that they handed out sick bags to all of the passengers for the 2 hour ride.  When I boarded the return shuttle, one quick sniff told me someone was taking a Dorian to the mainland.  I clutched my bag the entire way home and focused on breathing through my mouth.

Burying the Hatchet

Coconut and I have been at odds for as long as I can remember.  With the notable exception of coconut milk in Thai curry, I have loathed every food I have ever tried that has even the smallest traces of coconut.  “You can’t even taste it!” “It doesn’t even taste like coconut!”  Oh, how I detest those wheedling phrases, but I always relent.  I always give it a try.  Coconut shrimp, Caramel Delite/Samoa Girl Scout Cookies, Piña Coladas, Mounds candy, coconut rum… no, thank you.  Part of it is a texture thing- I can tell instantly if a cookie has coconut in it- and part of it is good old fashioned flavor.  I admit that I occasionally tell people that I am allergic in order to justify not eating proffered coconut treats. (Remember that episode of Wishbone when Sam had that awful reaction to the granola bar with coconut in it?  I was crazy jealous.)

So, naturally, when I was offered “coconut juice” on my first day in Zanzinbar, I politely but fervently declined.  “But Jo, it doesn’t even taste like coconut!”  *sigh*  So I relented to my sweetly insistent guides, and the driver pulled over to the side of the road.  He got out and came back a few minutes later with a large green coconut whose top had been whittled down and with a hole in the top.  He handed it to me and told me simply to drink.  When I looked inside, all I could see was clear liquid, and it didn’t smell anything like coconut, so I figured, what the hey?  I drank deeply from the awkwardly large seed, and it tasted magnificent!  Which is to say, NOTHING like coconut!  From my experience, I would say it tasted like very slightly sweetened water.  Had the coconut stayed on the tree for another 6 weeks or so, all of that water would have been absorbed making the hard coconut flesh that torments me so, but when it is still young enough, the “juice” is a delightfully refreshing treat. 

I feel that this is a big moment in my life, philosophically speaking.  If I can find a way, after all of these years, to enjoy raw coconut, then surely there must be a way to world peace!  But, you know, a way that doesn’t involve cutting down a growing thing in the flower of its youth to drink its life source.  That seems a little extreme in any other situation.

The Spice of Life

One of the things that I have always enjoyed about Africa is that they grow the kinds of things that America needs to have imported from faraway lands.  Bananas grow in the back yard.   Mango trees frequently dot the landscape.  Fresh, locally grown passion fruit and papayas are in fruit bowls on dining room tables.  I have eaten a lot of fruit, and I haven’t seen a single plu# sticker.

Zanzibar really kicked it up a notch. 

On my only full day on the island, my new friend Sr. Eunice and I started with a tour of a spice farm.  When you have been handling the red-capped McCormick spices almost exclusively your entire life, it is really mind-bending to see the spices in their raw, natural, living forms.  Our guide, Sisso, invited us to smell the alluringly sweet aroma of the ripening vanilla bean hanging from the vine.  He whittled a sliver of bark away from the cinnamon tree, bragging about the superior spicy quality of Zanzibar cinnamon, and handed it to me to chew. Better than all the Hot Tamales in the world!  Then, he used his knife to dig up a small bit of cinnamon tree root, and it amazingly smelled exactly like Vicks vapo-rub!  How could two such distinct flavors come from the same plant?  Cardamon, ginger, lemon grass, turmeric, cloves- each smelled more amazing than the last!  Sisso explained how the color of the pepper (white, green, or black), depended on when the peppercorn was harvested. We saw Henna, used for the elaborate painted skin decorations we saw on the arms of the Muslim women around town.  And the fruit!  We tried pickle fruit, shaped like a jalepeno, sour like a lime; star fruit, just shy of it’s true sweet ripeness, saw a young pineapple just starting to make it’s way in the world, and ate lichi by the dozens.  When lichi are ripe, they turn bright red, their spiky flesh making them about the size of a kiwi fruit.  Sisso would remove the rind so that I could eat the fruit, which looked and tasted for all the world like a peeled grape. 

A young man followed the tour at a distance, barefoot and wearing a trucker hat that read “Sex is not a crime.”  He hung back, weaving palm leaves together, and appearing magically at Sisso’s elbow whenever a tree needed to be climbed to retrieve out-of-reach fruit.  Towards the end of the tour, he twisted a rough looking rope around his feet, and scrambled straight up a towering palm tree to cut down a couple of coconuts.  There was something kind of aboriginal in the way that he climbed so easily, which made it all the more jarring when he answered his cell phone midway down the tree. Sisso led Sr. Eunice and I to a bench where we sat and sampled more local fruit- tangerines and custard apples (tasted exactly like apple Laffy Taffy- new favorite fruit!).   We capped off our taste adventure with samples of lemon grass and masala teas.  We dallied at the table of spices for sale for a while, but eventually had to tear ourselves away from the aromas and bid farewell to the spice farm.