SLAVE TRADE MENTALITY…Overcoming its Fantasy

By Lilian Chudey Pride

Africa is very beautiful, welcoming and accommodating. She is well groomed, rich, kind and lovely. She has a very good heart, her intelligence and hospitality are captivating, her splendour is highly inviting. She has so much to give out to her neighbours and people that come around. Her might is indescribably unmatched.  The more she gives, the more she is replenished. Her wealth is inexhaustible. Her human resource is enviable.

She is the mother of fifty-one countries spread across her continent. With rich natural and human resource deposition. In her simplicity, she transferred her enviable characteristics to all her children home and abroad. She taught them to be homely and contented.

Sometime ago, her motherly nature which she was made with, was abused and taken for granted by an invaded enemy with guns and weapons of mass destruction, materials she seldom used, because her love and openness did not need those.  So, her integrity was trampled upon, her strength, tried, stretched and taken for weakness. Her pride was rubbished and messed up with. Her name which meant so much to her was dragged to the mud.

All her calamity started at the time she was young and undented, naive and warm, when she was still trying to figure out how she could navigate life and harness all her God deposited in her bowel. It was in this state she was seized into slavery, misused, manhandled, mistreated, and the virginity of her loved young ones were forcefully taken, mother and child were raped repeatedly, without scruples.

SHE LOST HER VOICE:   This was a nightmare that left her speechless, wondering how it all began. It did not matter what she said, no one would listen or help, because she was surrounded by her captors. Her humiliation advanced, she was called an animal, yet, treated worse than that. Her mouth was bridled so she could not cry or eat from her hard labour which she did under the scorching sun. she was beating countless times and her tears were taken from her. This was man’s inhumanity to man.

HER COLOUR: Her skin colour was a pain and a thing of great disgust to her enemy. But it was not all about her skin colour but also about the strength, elasticity and durability of both her skin and her person. Her enemy did her so much evil to rip her off her skin and her integrity. Her enemy needed her strength and vigour to prosper, but called her a monkey, a strategy he used to tannish her self-worth.  Her enemy harassed her sexually over and over again, placed her in the zoo to make fun of her as well as make money off her. But she remained strong to the awe and amazement of her captor.

MORE LIKE AN ANIMAL THAN MAN:  Amidst her dilemma, she realised in no time that her captor was more of an animal than man. A man who could have sexual intercourse with an animal, as he called her, tearing her apart as he did to satisfy his sexual gratification, must be a worse animal, a beast or is sick and needed a higher doctor to cure his malady.

HER STRENGTH AND HER LABOUR UNDER THE SCORCHING SUN: Africa’s labour and strength built the world, under chains and caprices, she constructed bridges, made bricks for fences, hewn down stones and built monuments on her captor’s waste and desolate lands. Planted, cultivated and watered crops for food, for the household of her captor, while her mouth was under lock and key.

HER LOSSES SHE COUNTED AS GAIN: In her anguish, and awful dismay, her enemy forced, commanded and instructed her to make children for him. Though out of her own freewill, she made children for her enemy. She was warned never to come close to the children or lay any claim to them. She was forbidden to speak of it. But she knew that those were hers.

THE HYPOCRISY OF THE ENEMY OF AFRICA: Her enemy called her animal, but wanted children from her. It was somewhere around this conner that she became more aware of how important she is in the making and building of the world. She saw it as replenishing the earth, which was her original calling from her maker. Even though these children wear tagged “half-cast” at some point, she did not hold any grudge because they are her off-springs and she loves them equally. They will come home to me some day, was and still is her thought.

SHE HAS PUT THOSE INJUSTICES BEHIND HER:  I believe mother Africa has put those behind her, because thinking of it was sapping her energy and dragging her further backward. Moreover, she has her children all over the world where her captor took her. She cannot afford to bear grudged or lay curses on her captor. She would not those curses to limit her off-springs who neither caused or contributed to her pain in the past. She would rather prefer her off-spring to enjoy the land which her sweat built.

WHAT MOTHER AFRICA NEEDS HER CHILDREN TO KNOW: She wishes that her children who live in her bowel, {African Soil} should learn the many lessons there is in the that excruciating event. She wants them to bury the hatchet and move on, she is daily crying out, saying, children, what I built in distant lands can be done better here in my bowel. The beautification of the world was and still is my concept and strength. Africa’s wealth of intelligence does not run dry.

HER DIGNITY RESTORED: She wants her children to know how important it is for her that her dignity be restored by her children. She wishes that her children’s eyes be opened to the means to have this achieved. The means are in your head, heart, hand and soil. We were ill-treated, but we are alive, we can still strengthen the crocked places. We are raping ourselves over and over again when we don’t let go and let God.

OUR LIMITATIONS: She wants her children to know that their limitation is not money or resources. She is blessed with quality Gold, Silver, Diamond and so much more. We are not limited, if we will agree to work as a family, we shall overcome.  She wants her children to realize that the same naivety which gave her away to slavery remains the tool of the enemy against her and her off-spring. She knows it, and wants her children to know too. They told her that her skin is too dark and tough and needed to be bleached, but turned around to want children from her. She was called an animal, but came around to “love” her wild-life spaces. They raped her and called her cheep slot. But turned around to “celebrate” her culture. So, you see my children, we have the means, we call the shorts. We are enough.

STOP NURSING OLD WOUNDS: Africa’s children should stop nursing old wounds, but treat them once and for all and let them dry off. Though the scars may still remain, but that will serve as stones we pitched across the Jordan. The more we call back to mind the pain of the rape, the more we become responsible for raping ourselves over and over again. More so, the more we dwell in the past and shut our eyes to this present ant to the future which has a lot in store for us. We are no longer being held down by our enemies but our own selves. So, who can lift us up from the ground but we-ourselves?

ERASE THAT SLAVE TRADE MENTALITY AND EMBRACE YOUR ORIGINAL SELF.  Mother Africa wants her children to know the problems and challenges of holding onto slave trade mentality and the harm they do to the body, emotion and psychology of the sufferer.

1. It breaks down the guards of the sufferer and makes him perpetually week.
2. It destroys self-esteem.
3. It brings fear and destroys self-worth.
4. It dehumanizes the sufferer and makes him dwell in self-pity.
5. It tells the sufferer that he is not enough, then sets him on the pace of always searching for himself.
6. It creates self-delusion.
7. It creates open door for a long-term psychological trauma that further encourages breeding ground for insecurity, inequality and undue dependency.
8. It denigrates talent.
9. It heightens inferiority complex.
10. It under mines interests in and commitment to developing one’s own.
11. It’s lies and cunningness are adorned and coated in such ways that they attract, lure and trap the sufferer.
12. Slave trade mentality is a deadly romance.
13. It leads to transferred aggression, unending acquisition, wickedness, selfishness, impunity, corruption, egotism- the fact of being excessively conceited in oneself. This makes one not to consider his brother.

In conclusion to my thought on this matter, I am pleased to mention that understanding the demeaning effects of slave trade mentality and its enormours psychological impact, will pave way to overcoming its modern fantasy and erasing its long lasting toxic effects on the minds of Africans.