Huddled beneath an expanse of acacia bushes about 100 feet outside the village, Amahle lay as still as possible, holding her newborn close to keep her quiet. Her older children understood what was happening and kept their eyes closed as the Hunters came near their hiding spot. After their father was taken she had schooled them religiously on staying safe and created this hideaway by digging out a space under the foliage where they could be comfortable until the danger had passed. Sadly, she judged by the sounds around them that some of her tribe had been found and were being trussed up to travel through the jungle, never to be seen again. She knew too well how the Hunters were alert to even the slightest noise or change, and her heart began to race as her thoughts shifted to that other day. She snapped herself out of the memories as one of the Hunters came closer, then stopped. No! Amahle thought, they had heard her sniffle! She looked over at her children and saw them looking back at her in pure terror, and she slowly closed her eyes again, choking back her tears of frustration and mounting horror, hoping they would do the same, praying the Hunter would pass them by…
When she came to, Amahle was stumbling in the trusses with many of her tribe mates, getting poked and prodded to wake up and take her share of the weight. Her feet started to shuffle automatically and she considered the scene that confronted her with a worsening fear and an intensifying pain in the back of her head. Gazing wildly around while trying to make sense of it all, she suddenly realized she couldn’t see her children anywhere and looked down at her empty breast for the baby that should have been there. Crying out, Amahle begged anyone listening if they knew anything, sobbing and nearly falling down as she realized why they weren’t answering her, why they couldn’t tell her. One of the Hunters snorted and told her “Whitey don’t need your babies” and the others laughed with him as if it was a big joke - until it was cut short by the sound of her keening and wailing into the skies. The women around her tried to quiet her down but she refused to be consoled, and finally her crying was reduced to small hic-cupping sobs, then she fell silent.
At nightfall they made a camp of sorts and were allowed to sit, albeit in the trusses that bound them, looking like a caterpillar of people. One of their captors brought around a water bottle that was exquisitely painted to resemble a Bird of Paradise flower, which grew around her village, and gave them each a small drink while another was giving them some kind of elk meat that was dried and tasted like dust in her mouth. It didn’t matter though; nothing else mattered anymore but finding her children or learning of their fates. After a while Amahle fell into a fitful sleep and sagged back into the woman behind her, whose knees were up and poked her in the back, waking her up again. This continued throughout the night and after another drink of water and the same tasteless meat in the morning they were allowed to use the bathroom as a group, right where they stood - and without even covering it up they were off again on a journey that seemed to last a lifetime of days just like the last one.
The sameness of days and the inability to get a good night's sleep, combined with an inadequate diet had reduced them - even Amahle - to human robots doing only what they were told, questioning nothing, just silently trudging along with no hopes or thoughts of the future. They were completely resigned to whatever fate awaited them now, and simply put one foot in front of another until told to stop. They even eliminated on command. One day they started to hear strange noises in the distance, which became clearer and louder until after a few days they came to Cape Town, the English colony and pride of the British Empire. The sites, smells and clamor of a city was beyond any of their experiences and was enough to bring them out of the stupor of enslavement momentarily, and they looked around at their surroundings for the first time in weeks and got their first glimpse of the white men who would soon be their new owners.
The Hunters brought them to the harbor where the leader met with a scrawny little man of indeterminate age and origin who shuffled ahead as their captives brought up the rear to keep anyone from escaping, as unlikely as that was. They were allowed to have a drink of water and some more of the tasteless meat while waiting, for what they didn’t know. The short conversation between their captors and the other man were muffled by all the noise that was going on around them in the city. They gestured towards the prisoners and then to a small ship, and soon the Hunters led them to a ramp and made them go up. Everywhere they looked there was some activity happening, and the noise was deafening.
Amahle couldn’t believe they could hear each other over the din, but she had little time to contemplate this phenomenon before they were led down into the belly of the vessel. She couldn’t see anything at first and just followed blindly until her eyes adjusted to the low light below deck. She began to see others like her and her tribe mates shackled to a cross beam of the ship and were slumped along and crammed in tight. Many of them moaned in pain, either physical or mental anguish. It smelled of unwashed bodies who were wallowing in their own feces and urine. She started gagging involuntarily and lost the small bit of food and water in her belly, and then the smell of vomit mingled with the other odors and she nearly retched up again. If that wasn’t enough the majority of those she came on with had the same reaction and they were now tramping through the muck.
Soon they were brought to a place that was mostly empty and they were released one at a time from their trusses and fastened to the ship like the others. Amahle felt relief at first to be off of her feet, but soon found the ship bottom to be anything but comfortable.There was no standing up in here though, not even enough chain to move away from your eliminations, and that of your neighbors. Feeling sicker than ever, and weak from exhaustion and malnutrition, she simply collapsed and fell unconscious for hours. When she awoke Amahle felt sick again, but she managed to keep from puking this time. She surmised that during her sleep she had become more used to the hodge podge of noises and smells surrounding her. Testing her voice, she asked the woman on her right what was happening, but her answer was just a shrug. Looking around her then, it appeared that every shackle had someone in it, all of them looking like she was feeling. Any thoughts she had once had of finding her children had long since been torn away with each mile they went away from the village. She only prayed that somehow they had survived and would be able to find a way to keep on surviving, and escape the dark, unknown future she now faced.
There had been a noticeable swaying of the ship as it sat in harbor, but soon it was evident that there was something different. The small ship was moving in the water, and the waves were getting bigger and more turbulent. The tiny spots of light that were oil lanterns hung in the rafters every twenty feet were rocking around so much she feared the flames would catch them on fire. She found herself watching the lights dancing around as if mesmerized, taking her mind off of the current situation. They had enough chain to move their arms, but their feet were given only about a foot of space to move in. A nasty man whose face had scars running down it and a patch over one eye and who smelled somehow worse than their surroundings would bring them food and water once a day. Amahle had taken a piece of what remained of her once beautiful clothes and made a packet of sorts to store what she didn’t eat right away for later. Her only thoughts for the future now was that it be on dry land, because she was more than sick of feeling so nauseated all the time.
Weeks later she got her wish, and Amahle felt a tiny glimmer of hope after all this time as they were being taken off the ship. There was a structure of some sort where she saw others like her, but from different tribes, most of whom she could not identify - mostly because they had all been stripped of anything that had once identified them. They were in fact naked and tied up in lines, which were leading up to the structure she had noticed. In front of and below them were a sea of white faces looking up at them, pointing to various ones and yelling at each other.
Then the person they had pointed at was led out of the line and given to one of the white-faced people on the ground, only to be led away again to a group of others like them. In the distance there were strange contraptions that were loading up similar groups and taking them away. Amahle began to understand that her future hadn’t changed for the better after all.