Middle Pasage

I found myself on the way to the new world from the ports of Morocco. I was held captive and enslaved by European settlers. I didn?t exactly know what was going to become of me, but I was truly terrified. Me and a more than 300 hundred other slaves were brought aboard on a big wooden vessel. We were placed very cramply in the cargo area of the vessel. I was only given a few inches of space from the hundreds surrounding me. It smelled bad down in the pit and there was no ventilation. The body heat and bad odor of the slaves made it practically unbearable to breath. As the journey took off we were only feed bananas and bread. But there wasn?t much to go around for everyone, a few buckets of water were carried down but again not enough. When it came time to use the bathroom there was no place to go but were you were sitting. Half of the slaves were affected from the crashing waves along the vessel causing the slaves to vomit and get seasick. As the weeks went by, it became worse and worse. Slaves were dying of dehydration. At some point a few tried to escape and jump off the vessel and die out in the ocean than to die in the pit. The hot summer weather would only make conditions even more grueling, many lost there minds and desperately tried to end it right there and then by bashing themselves

in the head. The trip lasted more than a month and a half. We docked along a chain of islands that were called the west Indies. Many couldn?t move there legs because they remained in the same position for along time that cause there leg to become temporarily paralyzed. For the few that survived that trip, would later die off of diseases that were spread along the slaves with weak immune systems. Those conditions were very inhuman and left deep emotional scares on many of the slaves.