Life as a Riggan

“Fredom to roam in the wide open space of the communal yard was the very first experience of the boy. In his young mind he could conceive only of days without restriction on his desire to play.”

 
“The boy grew up to know that he was born free. He knew that he was a native son of the vast continent of Africa.”

“By the late 1790s tribal villages had become aware of the growing demand from Arabia and Europeans for captured African to supply labour to slave plantations.”

“Young African men and women were the prime targets for the traders along the tribal territories and villages near the west coast. The boy had reached seven years when he came into contact with European slave catchers.”

“The boy would no longer walk in the freedom of his childhood under the African sun. He would no longer be a child. He would no longer be free.”

“Through trade and sale transaction he had reached the slave plantation of a family who was descended from Britain. He family was Roman Catholic and gave Christian names to all their slaves. Some captives were given names such as ‘Peter’ and ‘Thomas’ and ‘Mary’. The plantation owner gave the West African boy the name ‘George’. He was thereafter forbidden to answer to any other name on the plantation.”

“The slave plantations near the Martha Brea River were more than fifty miles away from the hills settled by Maroons who escaped slave captivity in St Anns. After failing to fulfil the dream of finding a way back to Africa from the plantation, George sought methods to sabotage and resist acceptance of his captivity”

“The average lifespan o f a slave was around thirty-five years. George was now around thirty years old and desired a wife.”

“House slaves were becoming aware of the increase in meetings taking place between estate owners and suited men from the government during recent weeks especially. They were also aware that some of the children in the family had been sent away on journeys and that they were not expected to return. But they were quite unaware of exactly when they would be freed from their captivity and servitude.”

“The new freedom that George found came after a continuous period of more that three hundred and fifty years when black Africans were stolen from their homeland by Europeans and forcibly transported into slavery on colonies secured from indigenous tribal peoples in North America, Central and South America and the Caribbean. “

“More than one million captive Africans were delivered to the slave plantations of the island through the main ports of Kingston, Port Royal, Morant Bay, Port Antonio, Falmouth, Montego Bay and Lucea in Hanover.”

“George Jnr. was of the generation born free after the slave emancipation. He did not agree that exslaves should continue to be held in the debt of their previous owners. He had made his intention to migrate westward known to  his older brother Peter. But Peter was not of the same intention and he remained in the parish of Trelawny with their mother and fatherwhile George Jnr. set off in anger on his journey westward of the Martha Brea River.”