REMINISCING IN DAKAR, SENEGAL

By Ramoutar  Seecharran 
 
Sitting at this spot in Dakar, the westernmost part of continental Africa is similar
to being at one of the Hindu pilgrimage sites in India. As I look westwards into
the Atlantic Ocean a multitude of thoughts crossed my mind. I feel myself
drifting back 250 years in my imagination. Growing up in Palmyra Village on the
boundary of Plantation Rose Hall in Guyana, this was easily accomplished.

The sheltered harbor in Dakar in West Africa from where hundreds of

thousands of slaves were taken across the Atlantic Ocean to the New
World to work on sugar, cotton and tobacco plantations

I imagined I was a captured African slave awaiting transportation to the sailing

ship anchored offshore. In the holding pen in which we are bivouacked, I heard
all types of dialects, unintelligible to me. Such dialects were punctuated by the
occasional schizophrenic scream which was exacerbated by the untrammeled
crack of the white guard’s whip. Such superciliousness is alien to African society!

I recall the elders in my village saying that insidious White Men were kidnapping
our people and taking them in large “canoes” across the water to strange lands
where they put them to do hard back-breaking work. They only looked for young
men and women. The captured youths had to work from sunrise to sunset. They
were an eclectic mix of various tribes so they could not communicate and chat
with each other, such tactics led to enhanced productivity and most of all; it
stymied the planning of rebellion or sabotage! Typical divide and rule syndrome.

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They had to learn a new language and start eating new food. They had to
obsequiously worship the white man’s God. Our people were forbidden from
worshipping our Gods and ancestors. At nights, our pretty young girls were
collected from their barracks by the coterie of White supervisors and taken to the
big house where the White owner of the plantation lived. After a few hours, the
girls often came back to their rooms crying, but they never revealed why they
were aggrieved.

Many of our daughters became pregnant, although they were not married. Very
often, the babies were white, with African hair. Seeing such babies, the owner of
the plantation invariably gave, or sold, them to another plantation. Only the pure
black babies were kept on the plantation. As soon as the babies were strong
enough, they started working in the fields also.

Plantation Versailles during the harvesting season

Those workers, who were good at playing music, became the favourite of the
White master. He used them to entertain his friends when he had parties. Often,
when he went to visit his fellow plantation owners at their parties, he would take
his talented African to entertain the guests there also.

A story is told about Boubacar, he was a great stick fighter from my village and
an accomplished stringed instrument player.

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He was captured and taken across the water. When he was sold to Mr. Versailles
in Demerara, his new owner soon discovered his musical prowess and gave him
a European instrument he called a violin. Boubacar played it so well that he
became the main attraction at all parties within the colony of Demerara. One
summer Mr. Versailles daughter, Angelique, was visiting from college in
Marseilles where she was studying accountancy in preparation for a management
role at Plantation Versailles. She was the guest of honour at the party Mr.
Versailles hosted for his plantation friends. As usual, Boubacar was the centre of
attraction. On this occasion, he was most conspicuous. Mr. Versailles had written
to Angelique and asked her to bring a bull fighter’s uniform. This uniform he
gave to Boubacar to wear on this auspicious occasion. Since Angelique was the
one who travelled all the way to Barcelona in Spain to buy the outfit, she could
not help admiring it, and the athletic Boubacar whom it fitted perfectly.

After dinner, as the guests were drinking coffee and smoking cigars made on the
plantation, Angelique asked Boubacar to take her for a stroll under the bright
August full moon. She instinctively held his left hand and remarked how
masculine and strong it felt, not like the feeble French boys’ of Marseille.
Boubacar was so flattered that the violin and the bow fell out of his right hand.
As he bent down to pick them up from the dusty footpath, Angelique bent over
and kissed him on his head. Boubacar remarked, “Oh, thank you Missy
Angelique, I’ve never been kissed by a white woman before!” Angelique replied,
“Boubacar, you deserve it, you are a strong, talented, mannerly man. It was my
pleasure to show such affection, it just came instinctively.” At that point, she
grabbed Boubacar by the hand and pulled him into the thicket. There she started
kissing Boubacar on the lips. She started undressing him and giggling loudly as
she felt his rippling muscles. At that point, field overseer Mr. DeGroot of
Plantation Zeerust was going home. He pushed the leaves of the thicket apart
and saw the couple semi-naked. He immediately called to the big house for help,
claiming that Boubacar was raping Angelique. All the gathered guests rushed to
the scene bearing oil torches. Mr. Versailles was livid. He immediately ordered a
public flogging, his idea of closing entertainment for his esteemed party guests,
and a lesson to show the other slaves the repercussions of being disingenuous.
Boubacar was suspended around his shoulders from the massive silk cotton tree
and flogged 100 times across his back.

Angelique pleaded with her father to forgive Boubacar but he was too drunk on
Demerara rum to show any remorse and be stymied by his favourite daughter.
At the end of the flogging, Boubacar was bleeding profusely. Mr. Versailles then
ordered his guard Mamadou to take Boubacar and put him in his cabin. His anger
was so profound; he broke the violin across his knees and threw then into the
tobacco bushes. He ordered Angelique to retire to bed. Mr. Versailles
immediately ordered his secretary Mr. Benoit to book Angelique a return ticket to
Marseilles. Next morning at breakfast, the Versailles family was surprised to hear
loud wailing in the slaves’ quarters. Mrs. Versailles dispatched her maid servant
Rosieanne to investigate.

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On her return, Rosieanne replied that Boubacar had died. Mr. Versailles ordered
that he be buried immediately, without any pomp and pageantry, an affinity
African slaves had.

Mr. Versailles
inspecting his
harvest, note the
ubiquitous
use of child labour

Boubacar was buried at the far end of the cassava patch, in an undignified
obscure spot where a healthy young Tamarind tree was growing. Mr. Versailles
then broke the news to Angelique that she had to pack her trunk and get ready
to return to France. The next ship, the Cité Soleil, was sailing in 3 days time. She
had to on it; and her mother was to follow in 4 weeks time when the La Plume
Verre sailed, that ship was to be loaded with their Muscovado sugar for France.

Every remaining day Angelique would slip out of the house after breakfast and
go to Boubacar’s grave and sits next to it and pays a form of tacit homage. Her
parents did not miss her; they were busy adding up the weights of the
Muscovado sugar produced in preparation for shipment.

Angelique returned to Marseilles, completed her degree in accountancy. During

the two remaining years of her studies, she kept minimal contact with her father.
She never returned to Demerara.

On graduation, she received an honors degree, Cum Laude, and was sought
after by many companies with businesses overseas. A company called Fabergé
which was involved in the ivory trade in Brazzaville sent her out to Africa as Chief
Financial Controller. She loved the climate there and the immense Congo River.
She made the company very profitable and it soon grew. Her shareholders were
impressed at her business acumen, not realizing that it was in her genes,
because Mr. Versailles ran the most efficient sugar plantation in Demerara.
Angelique fell in love with an African musician called Kabadiabo. They got
married in African custom with great pageantry. Angelique looked resplendent in
her African outfit, and Kabadiabo looked dignified in his European garb.

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He continued to play his music and Angelique increased profit for the company
several fold. They had three children, Monique, Mwate and Mapulanga in quick
succession.

After 10 years of marriage, Angelique was promoted the Faberge’s head office in
Paris. She migrated with her family. Kabadiabo found the cold climate depressing
but the children loved the city and the challenging schooling. Kabadiabo
continued to play his music, but his sadness was reflected in the genre he
played. To cope with his depression, he turned to alcohol. Within three years,
Kabadiabo died of liver complication.

Angelique brought up the children to be professionals. When Mr. Versailles died,

Mapulanga became deputy general manager of Plantation Versailles. He went out
to Demerara and loved the flat open country. He married a Black school teacher
called Josephine Boobakar and they raised a family there. Not being the
descendant of a slave, Mapulanga earned the respect of all his workers. He
encouraged them to dress neatly at all times and ensured they had adequate
recreational time.

He was one person looking for acquisitions. He bought Plantations Wales and
Lusignan from their faltering absentee owners and made them extremely
successful. His sugar plantations were the show pieces of the county. Whenever
the colonial government’s commissions were carrying out investigations into the
gruesome conditions under which the shaves lived and worked, Mapulanga’s
three plantations were used as the benchmark reference of what good run sugar
plantations should look like.

Under Mapulanga’s
management the
workers dressed with
dignity, and exhibited
pride in their jobs…..
But child labour
persisted!

Angelique visited Demerara when she was 65 years old to bond with the grand
children. She had the plantation workers build a swing under the shady Tamarind
tree which had grown next to Boubacar’s grave. She must have spent 100
nonchalant hours sitting on that swing and quietly mumbling something, looking
relaxed, replete and at peace with the world.

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She was
w extrem mely proud at
a the accoolades her son
s Mapulan nga was receiving in
the colony.
c She accepted the
t credit fo al rectitude she impartted as a
or the mora
single parent to
o her mixed race kids growing
g up in France.

Plantation
Versailles
today

Todaay, centurie
es later, Plantation Verrsailles still exists, but in a more mechanized
m d
form, Plantationns Wales an nd Lusignann have merged with ne eighbouringg estates fo
or
enhaanced efficie
encies resulting from economy
e off scale, a ploy Angelique would
have
e approved, as she, an nd her son Mapulanga,
M , did with innimitable ve
erve
centu
uries earlierr.

The resilience of
o the Africa an slave andd his firm belief
b mily values has led to
in fam
him carving
c w World disstinct from that of his African
outt an identityy in the New
relatives. His ou
utlook of lifee is more pragmatic
p and adventu urous, leading to his
ultimate suuccess.
Today as heh has
become su uccessful
and affluennt, he is
trying to find his
African rooots, and
original ide
entity, this
gesture is highly
appreciated d.

The author on
pilgrimage in India,
the land of his
ancestors

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As the descendant of that despicable form of slavery which replaced the trans-
Atlantic slave trade, Bound Coolie Indentureship, I have made such journeys
back to India and I know the profound feelings involved in such pilgrimages.
Each trip I made to India emboldened me and enhanced my resolve to succeed.
I cried the first time I landed on Indian soil at 0245 AM on 26th March 2004,
something I saw successful African American entrepreneurs, academics and
professionals doing on Gorée Island in Senegal on many occasions, but with
more intense and emboldened emotions than I did in India!

Penelope Hunter-Gault, a bank

manager from New Jersey in the
USA, on pilgrimage on Gorée
Island, Senegal. Her swollen left
eye is indicative of her earlier,
dispassionate crying

The colony of Demerara merged with the adjoining colonies of Berbice and
Essequibo to form British Guiana. Demerara is now the capital county in the
Republic of Guyana.