CHAPTER I
THE HÉBRON PLANTATION
Dawn is breaking on the Hébron Plantation, and while the eastern sky is blushing at the caress of the rising sun, the doors of the slave huts begin to open one by one, and small fires can be seen under their lean-to shelters. Faya watra is being made: hot water into which a shoot of molasses is stirred. Here and there an appetizing scent arises from a cooking pot, signalling the presence of an aniseed leaf or some herbs in the water.
Now, outside all the huts, men, women and children are standing, some talking, some just looking around. Eventually they make their way to the southern edge of the plantation, where a canal has been dug at right-angles to the river, serving for both the supply and the drainage of water. Alongside the boathouse, where the river shore slopes gently, they enter the water to bathe: the adults more serious, the children laughing gaily and splashing each other until they’re wet through. With loincloths slung around their wet bodies they return to the huts, mostly in small groups, the children following on, naked. Now it’s time to drink the faya watra. The leftovers from the previous evening’s meal serve as breakfast.
In the hut where the fifteen-year-old Amimba is living with her mother, brothers and sisters, Mama Leida throws a handful of dried herbs into a gourd and pours boiling water over them. This is a drink for Amimba; as happens every month, she is suffering terrible abdominal pains. She has lain on her mat moaning and groaning the whole night through, tossing and turning, now lying, now sitting up. Now she is sleeping a little. Luckily. But Mama Leida herself has hardly caught a wink of sleep the past night.
After the faya watra and breakfast, people begin drifting in the direction of the warehouse, the occasional woman breast-feeding a baby, another with a baby already tied to her back. The warehouse doors are still closed, but it isn’t long before the white overseer, Masra1 Mekers, arrives with the keys. The rations for the evening are now distributed to each family head, and instructions are given for the day’s work.
But first the roll-call. Where’s Kofi? Oh yes, he has a sprained ankle and won’t be going onto the land but will have to work in the carpenter’s shop. Amimba with stomachache? What, again! No messing about! Come here and now, or be fetched with a whip. Why doesn’t Afi have her baby with her? He was sick the whole night long with fever. Afi would prefer to leave him with the nurse today. She’ll give him a herbal bath for the fever. Tenu? Where’s Tenu? Come here! Basya2 – five lashes of the whip for Tenu, thirteen years old, who sees to the chickens. He has stolen eggs. There were six too few yesterday, and the empty shells were still lying next to the chicken-run. Tenu protests vehemently. It’s a lie; he’s stolen no eggs. Didn’t masra know that a huge sapakara3 has been lurking around and has stolen the eggs? If he, Tenu, had indeed stolen eggs, then he wouldn’t have been so stupid as to leave the empty shells lying around near the run, now would he! Even so, five lashes for Tenu! For isn’t it his job to look after the chickens? How had a sapakara managed to steal six eggs if Tenu was there? Of course: because Tenu was not there! Hadn’t he spent half the day yesterday fishing in the creek? Five lashes! And this evening not a single egg missing and Tenu to present the dead sapakara! Five lashes, too, for Kobi, a year older than Tenu and helping Felix look after the horses, mules and cows in the stalls. Kobi cut too little grass for the animals yesterday. And no wonder: he was sitting fishing at the water’s edge along with Tenu! Five lashes, and this evening a double portion of grass to have been cut. That was all.
Once the basya has delivered the lashes the slaves can depart. And after the whip has descended on Tenu and Kobi’s slender, bare backs and the two boys stumble off tearfully to their workplaces, the group, about sixty strong, disperses. The field group, about forty in number, leaves first. This group begins to move off silently, most of the slaves chewing on an alanga tiki4. Two of them are carrying a bunch of bananas on their heads, another a bundle of various root crops for the meal to be cooked in the fields, in two huge iron pots. The basya, with a whip in one hand and a machete in the other, follows at the rear. Another group, comprising six slaves, goes to the sugar mill, a few others to the shed where the sugar is boiled up with water. Yet another group is off to the carpentry shop, two to the boat house, and two of the more elderly to the grounds around the plantation house to ensure, armed with rake, hoe and watering can, that everything there is neat and tidy. Five-or-so women and girls go towards this white house, too, as well as the domestic slaves and the errand boys, and Sydni, the master’s personal slave. The house still presents a rather sleepy prospect, its doors and windows all closed. The overseer, Mekers, goes first to his own house, where his slave-girl has breakfast waiting.