thoughts from a toubob

"Over the side of the big canoe, down on the dock, Kunta could see dozens of toubob stamping, laughing, pointing in their excitement, with dozens more running from all directions to join them. Under the whips, they were driven in a stumbling single file up over the side and down the sloping plank toward the waiting mob. Kunta's knees almost buckled under himas his feet touched the toubob earth, but other toubob with cocked whips kept them moving closely alongside the jeering crowd, their massed smell like the blow of a giant fist in Kunta's face. When one black man fell, crying out to Allah, his chains pulled down the men ahead of and behind him. Whips lashed them all back up again as the toubob crowd screamed in excitement."

As I read " Roots", by Alex Haley, the words send shivers throughout my body, but also want me to read more, because of the parallels that I draw. The word "Toubob," which is the word used for white person, appears hundreds of times in the book and it startles me because that is what I am called here. This is what Kunta Kinte, the novel's protagonist, and his Mandinka tribe, call the evil, strange looking and smelling, white skinned people that are stealing their people and bringing them across a big water on a big canoe. I am shaken now everytime a child yells "Toubabou" at me, and shaken everytime my eyes come across the word, and it's negative connotation, in the 800 page novel but slavery has played a huge role in the U.S. and West Africa, and although it hurts me to learn about its distruction and cruelty, being here has encouraged me to stare it in the face. I have had to put the novel down on numerous occasions because my eyes fill with tears learning from the horrorrs that happened.

The novels setting is the late 1700s, at the height of the African slave trade, in the Gambia. And although the Gambia is two countries away from Guinea, the description of life in Kunta's village, Juffure, is so similar. Country borders don't separate ethnic groups and tribes, and the Mandinka that are described as great warriors and farmers in "Roots," are the same Malinke, or Maninka (the true name in their language), that tell me about their battles against slave captureres and rival tribes, and invite me to harvest their millet, okra, and groundnuts. The baobob tree that marks each village in the novel is the same one that greets me every morning as I leave my hut. The village elders that meet to discuss and resolve the dissappearance of a neighbor's cow in Missamana are the same one's that gather in Juffure to discuss the second marriage of a recent widow. The drumming , rights of passage ceremonies, respect for elders, and tools used for farming are also so similar and I feel like I'm living in the same village as Kunta. The book's opening is beautiful and does a wonderful job of painting a visual image of a functioning society and the interconnectedness of all aspects of Mandinka culture. I feel honored to be living amongst, and learning from, of people that have endured so much and enriched so many other cultures; the descendants of slaves throughout the Americas have given so much to the "New World."

Another aspect from the book that has opened my eyes is that Islam was a prominent pillar in Mandinka/Malinke culture well before the slave traders and colonizers arrived in West Africa. This has made me respect its intricate role in daily life here much more. Islam has shaped how people name their children, how people greet each other, conversate, eat, pray, and view life. It is also affected how many view the negative effects of poverty. It hurts me to witness, but many deaths that have resulted from malnutrition, lack of health care and medicine, and disease have been accepted by the people because it was believed to be God's will. One of my biggest obstacles is convincing people that seeing bodies being carried away on a wood board is not normal, and that we can prevent many of these hardships from occuring. I do admit that this is not easy because with each dead body that I have seen carried out of the health center I have become less shocked, and it has become more normal. But motorcylce deaths can be prevented by wearing helmets and malaria can be stopped by investing in a mosquito net. This is the message that my counterparts and I want to spread.