Читать книгу Shackles From the Deep: Tracing the Path of a Sunken Slave Ship, a Bitter Past, and a Rich Legacy - Michael Cottman - Страница 11

“WHERE IS YOUR VILLAGE?” the young girl asked me. It was 1997 and I was traveling through Timbuktu, which is a city in the country of Mali in West Africa.

While there, I met this girl, 10 years old, with brown skin and tiny earrings. She lived on the banks of the Niger River.

She was curious about me. She probably noticed my unusual clothes and correctly concluded that I wasn’t from there.

“I’m from Detroit, in the United States,” I told her.

She paused, then told me that she came from a family of kings and queens, that the men in her tribe were the village elders, and that the women taught young girls to read and write.

“Who are your people?” she asked.

This time I paused. I didn’t really have an answer to her question. I told her about a slave ship called the Henrietta Marie and how I was led to Africa because of this ship. And I told her that we’re all connected through the spirits of our African ancestors regardless of where we live or which villages or towns we come from.

She smiled and whispered to her friends in her West African dialect. I didn’t understand what she was saying, but all of the children smiled and waved to me as I left their village.

Are my people Igbo from Nigeria, or Fulani from Mali, or Wolof from Senegal, or Ashanti from Ghana? Sadly, I may never know. But somehow, as I stood on African soil, I felt at home.