Alex Haley - Roots - The Saga of an American Family

So Lamin made few moves now without either his mother’s or his brother’s sharp eyes upon him. And Kunta now had only to ask Binta or Omoro any questions of Lamin’s and they immediately told him the answer.

“Why is father’s bullock’s hide mat of that red color? A bullock isn’t red.”

“I dyed the hide of the bullock with lye and crushed millet,” replied Binta.

“Where does Allah live?”

“Allah lives where the sun comes from,” said Omoro.

“What are slaves?” Lamin asked Kunta one afternoon. Kunta grunted and fell silent. Walking on, seemingly lost in thought, he was wondering what Lamin had overheard to prompt that question. Kunta knew that those who were taken by toubob became slaves, and he had overheard grown-ups talking about slaves who were owned by people in Juffure. But the fact was that he really didn’t know what slaves were . As had happened so many other times, Lamin’s question embarrassed him into finding out more.

The next day, when Omoro was getting ready to go out after some palm wood to build Binta a new food storehouse, Kunta asked to join his father; he loved to go off anywhere with Omoro. But neither spoke this day until they had almost reached the dark, cool palm grove.

Then Kunta asked abruptly, “Fa, what are slaves?”

Omoro just grunted at first, saying nothing, and for several minutes moved about, in the grove, inspecting the trunks of different palms.

“Slaves aren’t always easy to tell from those who aren’t slaves,” he said finally. Between blows of his bush ax against the palm he had selected, he told Kunta that slaves’ huts were roofed with nyantang jongo and free people’s huts with nyantang foro, which Kunta knew was the best quality of thatching grass.

“But one should never speak of slaves in the presence of slaves,” said Omoro, looking very stern. Kunta didn’t understand why, but he nodded as if he did.

When the palm tree fell, Omoro began chopping away its thick, tough fronds. As Kunta plucked off for himself some of the ripened fruits, he sensed his father’s mood of willingness to talk today. He thought happily how now he would be able to explain to Lamin all about slaves.

“Why are some people slaves and others not?” he asked.

Omoro said that people became slaves in different ways. Some were born of slave mothers—and he named a few of those who lived in Juffure, people whom Kunta knew well. Some of them were the parents of some of his own kafo mates. Others, said Omoro, had once faced starvation during their home villages’ hungry season, and they had come to Juffure and begged to become the slaves of someone who agreed to feed and provide for them. Still others—and he named some of Juffure’s older people—had once been enemies and been captured as prisoners. “They become slaves, being not brave enough to die rather than be taken,” said Omoro.

He had begun chopping the trunk of the palm into sections of a size that a strong man could carry. Though all he had named were slaves, he said, they were all respected people, as Kunta well knew. “Their rights are guaranteed by the laws of our forefathers,” said Omoro, and he explained that all masters had to provide their slaves with food, clothing, a house, a farm plot to work on half shares, and also a wife or husband.

“Only those who permit themselves to be are despised,” he told Kunta—those who had been made slaves because they were convicted murderers, thieves, or other criminals. These were the only slaves whom a master could beat or otherwise punish, as he felt they deserved.

“Do slaves have to remain slaves always?” asked Kunta.

“No, many slaves buy their freedom with what they save from farming on half share with their masters.” Omoro named some in Juffure who had done this. He named others who had won their freedom by marrying into the family that owned them.

To help him carry the heavy sections of palm, Omoro made a stout sling out of green vines, and as he worked, he said that some slaves, in fact, prospered beyond their masters. Some had even taken slaves for themselves, and some had become very famous persons.

“Sundiata was one!” exclaimed Kunta. Many times, he had heard the grandmothers and the griots speaking of the great fore-father slave general whose army had conquered so many enemies.

Omoro grunted and nodded, clearly pleased that Kunta knew this, for Omoro also had learned much of Sundiata when he was Kunta’s age. Testing his son, Omoro asked, “And who was Sundiata’s mother?”

“Sogolon, the Buffalo Woman!” said Kunta proudly.

Omoro smiled, and hoisting onto his strong shoulders two heavy sections of the palm pole within the vine sling, he began walking. Eating his palm fruits, Kunta followed, and nearly all the way back to the village, Omoro told him how the great Mandinka Empire had been won by the crippled, brilliant slave general whose army had begun with runaway slaves found in swamps and other hiding places.

“You will learn much more of him when you are in manhood training,” said Omoro—and the very thought of that time sent a fear through Kunta, but also a thrill of anticipation.

Omoro said that Sundiata had run away from his hated master, as most slaves did who didn’t like their masters. He said that except for convicted criminals, no slaves could be sold unless the slaves approved of the intended master.

“Grandmother Nyo Boto also is a slave,” said Omoro, and Kunta almost swallowed a mouthful of palm fruit. He couldn’t comprehend this. Pictures flashed across his mind of beloved old Nyo Boto squatting before the door of her hut, tending the village’s twelve or fifteen naked babies while weaving baskets of wigs, and giving the sharp side of her tongue to any passing adult—even the elders, if she felt like it. “That one is nobody’s slave,” he thought.

The next afternoon, after he had delivered his goats to their pens, Kunta took Lamin home by a way that avoided their usual playmates, and soon they squatted silently before the hut of Nyo Boto. Within a few moments the old lady appeared in her doorway, having sensed that she had visitors. And with but a glance at Kunta, who had always been one of her very favorite children, she knew that something special was on his mind. Inviting the boys inside her hut, she set about the brewing of some hot herb tea for them.

“How are your papa and mama?” she asked.

“Fine. Thank you for asking,” said Kunta politely. “And you are well, Grandmother?”

“I’m quite fine, indeed,” she replied.

Kunta’s next words didn’t come until the tea had been set before him. Then he blurted, “Why are you a slave, Grandmother?”

Nyo Boto looked sharply at Kunta and Lamin. Now it was she who didn’t speak for a few moments. “I will tell you,” she said finally.

“In my home village one night, very far from here and many rains ago, when I was a young woman and wife,” Nyo Boto said, she had awakened in terror as flaming grass roofs came crashing down among her screaming neighbors. Snatching up her own two babies, a boy and a girl, whose father had recently died in a tribal war, she rushed out among the others—and awaiting them were armed white slave raiders with their black slatee helpers. In a furious battle, all who didn’t escape were roughly herded together, and those who were too badly injured or too old or too young to travel were murdered before the others’ eyes, Nyo Boto began to sob, “—including my own two babies and my aged mother.”

As Lamin and Kunta clutched each other’s hands, she told them how the terrified prisoners, bound neck-to-neck with thongs, were beaten and driven across the hot, hard inland country for many days. And every day, more and more of the prisoners’ fell beneath the whips that lashed their backs to make them walk faster. After a few days, yet more began to fall of hunger and exhaustion. Some struggled on, but those who couldn’t were left for the wild animals to get. The long line of prisoners passed other villages that had been burned and ruined, where the skulls and bones of people and animals lay among the burned-out shells of thatch and mud that had once been family huts. Fewer than half of those who had begun the trip reached the village of Juffure, four days from the nearest place on the Kamby Bolongo where slaves were sold.