young men, women and children to
enable them trade with the foreigners.
The slave trade was sustained by political
ambitions and greed of the kingdoms and
it forever fomented tribal suspicion as the
kingdoms sold only their criminals but to
get enough slaves to trade they needed
to raid the other tribes to acquire the
numbers.
Greed came again into play when the
shippers found ways to cram six hundred
slaves in a ship with a capacity to carry
only fifty. The consequence of this was
that a quarter of those shipped died on
the voyage due to unhygienic conditions,
starvation or mishandling.
Another quarter would die within two
weeks of arrival due to disease contracted
from the sickly British sailors who had
exotic diseases picked up in ports they
sailed to especially venereal diseases since
they raped the women on the voyage.
Another quarter would die due to the
harsh and cruel working conditions on
the plantations that the slaves endured to
the point of exhaustion and this created
a permanent shortage of slaves hence
the reason there was greater demand for
slaves than could be supplied.
Africans created the
conditions that made
progressive discrimi-
nation against black
people possible and
we continue to suf-
fer the indignity of
what we created.
Some morally up-
right whites have
done their part to
redeem the situation
but only the Africans
can reclaim their to-
tal dignity and pride.
This shortage was a phenomenon that
had not been anticipated and which had
unexpected results. Slaves were being
shipped faster and in quantities that were
ever increasing as the plantation owners
expanded to meet the huge demand for
sugar and cotton.
The supply started to fizzle out as there
were not enough wars to sustain the trade
so the British traders hit upon a plan to
pay local slave catchers who now raided
villages and kidnapped any able bodied
African that they could catch.
A new venture had been set in motion and
the trade that had been started with the
cooperation of the Africans suddenly had
evolved into the scourge of Africa. Caught
between the West Coast slavers and the
East Coast slavers no African was safe
anymore.
The same guns that the kings had ordered
to subjugate their neighbors had become
the terror of the kingdoms as paid African
brigands scoured the countryside stealing
and snatching every African who was
unwise enough not to be behind fortified
towns. The trade was out of control.
`The hunter had become the hunted and
since the traders had originally been
welcomed graciously by the kings, they
assumed in their naivety they were in
control. By the time they appreciated the
enormity of the problem they had created
and tried to ban the trade in humans they
were too late.
Ochieng had another disturbing question;
he could not understand how millions of