Zam, in: Kingdom of the Congo (and the Pygmies, 1809)
Zam, in:
Kingdom of the Congo
And the Pygmies
(1809)
In the Congo, the Congo King welcomed the Europeans, especially the Portuguese traders, and many slaves were taken from this area, war criminals, debtors, captives, and so forth, sold by none other than Congo clan chiefs, and the Congo King, in particular, whom where then transferred to America, on Portuguese ships often; this of course dwindled the size of the population of the Congo down, and one of larger traders of Congo slaves were the Muslims.
Zam, was six years old at this time, he had never heard of such goings on, nor his friend Samba, nor his mother Zambia, they lived in the jungle, and within a tribe, a village. A distance away from Zam’s village, were a group of pygmies, among other groups and villages throughout the area. In all respects, the pygmy village and Zam’s village were made up of simply peasants.
Samba was a pygmy, and lived within a village of a half dozen huts, small in size compared to Zam’s, village, and Samba he himself was small in size compared to Zam, yet they were of the same age in reality.
Zam liked going to Samba’s village, they sang and danced a lot. It would seem to Zam, they were a deeply stratified society compared to his village, an ethnic group in essence.
Very small people they were, even at adulthood, Zam’s mother towered over the tallest adult of the pygmies. And they live, many of them live in servitude to the more populace majority, a form of slavery to the Elite; so Zam’s mother told him, yet slavery was just a word to Zam, one he could not understand, or sense, feel. On the other hand, it was a common slavery within a country that took their own kind, and sold them to strangers to be sold abroad; thus there resided—not far from Zam—discrimination of the minority, and a serious pattern developing, one nobody really saw.
Perhaps it is because the Pygmies were uneducated and the Elite group was the more populace, advanced, that they could and did dominate their own kind. This was the first time Zam, had come into the knowledge of freedom vs. enslavement: whereat, when he would become older, it wouldn’t completely be out of the ordinary to him anymore, although he was a stranger to its sentiment at this very moment.
The pygmies made up about ten-percent of the Congo at this time, and it was by way of Samba’s parents, Zam learned how to hunt and fish, they being very skilled in this area.
Gondi, an Elite Pygmy, had twenty-five slaves, and wanted Samba and his mother to be part of his group. It was said, he did give parcels of land to his slaves, after so many years of bondage.
It happened, during Zam’s sixth year of life on this earth, that Gondi took Samba and his mother, forcefully took them, and incorporated them into his African plantation, had his mother carry baskets of manioc roots, a starchy staple of the Bantu people, the elite of the pygmies, and felt he was generous, at paying fifty-cents a day for her sufferings, plus allowing her a hut to live in with her child (not all that much different than what Zam would experience in future times).
Zam wanted to do something about this, but what could he do, he was six-years old, helpless in an adult world, a cruel world, a world that he would get to know quite well in due time—and what could his mother do likewise but observe from a distance, and his father, as I have previously mentioned, was killed by a great ape. Consequently, he was learning at a very young age, he would need somewhere along life’s line, a helping hand, right now it was his mother.
Accordingly, he was born in time people did not see, or were blinded to such things as personal liberties, fixated in the interest of self-interest. It really was simple I suppose, men had learned how to dehumanize using color or the majority vs. the minority, thus, it was, or it became easy if you could get into such a box to dehumanize in the name of profit, use as a means to an end. And as Zam would find out in time yet to come, Samba was not the only one to feel the lose of freedom, he would have a life time to feel it himself, or close to it.
7-20-2008 (The Bantu language, of the Congo dates back to 3000 BC)
Kingdom of the Congo
And the Pygmies
(1809)
In the Congo, the Congo King welcomed the Europeans, especially the Portuguese traders, and many slaves were taken from this area, war criminals, debtors, captives, and so forth, sold by none other than Congo clan chiefs, and the Congo King, in particular, whom where then transferred to America, on Portuguese ships often; this of course dwindled the size of the population of the Congo down, and one of larger traders of Congo slaves were the Muslims.
Zam, was six years old at this time, he had never heard of such goings on, nor his friend Samba, nor his mother Zambia, they lived in the jungle, and within a tribe, a village. A distance away from Zam’s village, were a group of pygmies, among other groups and villages throughout the area. In all respects, the pygmy village and Zam’s village were made up of simply peasants.
Samba was a pygmy, and lived within a village of a half dozen huts, small in size compared to Zam’s, village, and Samba he himself was small in size compared to Zam, yet they were of the same age in reality.
Zam liked going to Samba’s village, they sang and danced a lot. It would seem to Zam, they were a deeply stratified society compared to his village, an ethnic group in essence.
Very small people they were, even at adulthood, Zam’s mother towered over the tallest adult of the pygmies. And they live, many of them live in servitude to the more populace majority, a form of slavery to the Elite; so Zam’s mother told him, yet slavery was just a word to Zam, one he could not understand, or sense, feel. On the other hand, it was a common slavery within a country that took their own kind, and sold them to strangers to be sold abroad; thus there resided—not far from Zam—discrimination of the minority, and a serious pattern developing, one nobody really saw.
Perhaps it is because the Pygmies were uneducated and the Elite group was the more populace, advanced, that they could and did dominate their own kind. This was the first time Zam, had come into the knowledge of freedom vs. enslavement: whereat, when he would become older, it wouldn’t completely be out of the ordinary to him anymore, although he was a stranger to its sentiment at this very moment.
The pygmies made up about ten-percent of the Congo at this time, and it was by way of Samba’s parents, Zam learned how to hunt and fish, they being very skilled in this area.
Gondi, an Elite Pygmy, had twenty-five slaves, and wanted Samba and his mother to be part of his group. It was said, he did give parcels of land to his slaves, after so many years of bondage.
It happened, during Zam’s sixth year of life on this earth, that Gondi took Samba and his mother, forcefully took them, and incorporated them into his African plantation, had his mother carry baskets of manioc roots, a starchy staple of the Bantu people, the elite of the pygmies, and felt he was generous, at paying fifty-cents a day for her sufferings, plus allowing her a hut to live in with her child (not all that much different than what Zam would experience in future times).
Zam wanted to do something about this, but what could he do, he was six-years old, helpless in an adult world, a cruel world, a world that he would get to know quite well in due time—and what could his mother do likewise but observe from a distance, and his father, as I have previously mentioned, was killed by a great ape. Consequently, he was learning at a very young age, he would need somewhere along life’s line, a helping hand, right now it was his mother.
Accordingly, he was born in time people did not see, or were blinded to such things as personal liberties, fixated in the interest of self-interest. It really was simple I suppose, men had learned how to dehumanize using color or the majority vs. the minority, thus, it was, or it became easy if you could get into such a box to dehumanize in the name of profit, use as a means to an end. And as Zam would find out in time yet to come, Samba was not the only one to feel the lose of freedom, he would have a life time to feel it himself, or close to it.
7-20-2008 (The Bantu language, of the Congo dates back to 3000 BC)
posted by Dennis and Rosa Siluk at 11:20 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home