THINKING ABOUT THE MIDDLE PASSAGE... Tamsin Barzane

Well, the Middle Passage Experience has been up for a little more than a week now, and this exploration of the African side of the transAtlantic slave trade is making me think. Its visitors are substantial in number, but they can't compare to the treasure hunt that just ended. Those who come often return, but many put themselves on pause, promising they'll do it "later."

Why? It's just too painful! Depersonalizing the slave trade was a convenience for textbook writers, but it also makes life a little easier for all of us by shoving history further into the closet. Who wants to think about the pain their ancestors went through, whether it be the Middle Passage, the Holocaust, the Armenian Massacre, or those who suffered various indignities because of poverty or wrong affiliations throughout the world? It certainly can't be classified as entertainment.

That's what I thought myself a few years ago, when I visited DC's Holocaust Museum. Not entertainment--and why do we human beings put ourselves through associated experiences in real life--and even pay to do so! The Holocaust Museum was so popular that we waited outside for well over an hour to get in, just in order to weep. Well, not just to weep. To feel a deep empathy, a sense of humanity, a tie to the small girl from the Polish ghetto, the skinny bridegroom from Berlin, the sophisticated matron from Budapest. Their photos, their stories--whether humble or dramatic--made history more than history. I was glad we went, despite my initial reluctance. I thought because I knew the history of the Holocaust, had read the books, seen the newsreels, visited sites in Germany and Hungary and Holland, there was no need to visit a museum composed mostly of text and photos. But there was. The building itself--a masterpiece of architecture matching function--gives you the feeling of crowding, of being herded, shuffling in the dark. Your senses, not just your intellect or emotions, get involved. It becomes visceral.

It inspired the Experience, and I hope some of the residual feelings it provided me will also stay with visitors. That, in its small virtual way, it will give a face (albeit partially fictionalized, as far as the African individuals are concerned--but fictionalized along accurate lines) to those who left Africa's shores. That it will give back some of their personalities, circumstances, even the landscapes of the past. Because these were people who came FROM someplace before they reached the United States and other diaspora points. They had families, they were bad-tempered, they were kind, they stole from the market, they created fabulous artworks, they were good cooks and bad laundresses--every possible combination one can think of. They were not faceless masses, but met their fate as we, with our many individual resources and weaknesses, might--or as many Iranians are doing right now.

Their lives didn't begin in the New World. And as such, they faced nearly insurmountable challenges of language, intolerance, strange foods and wicked expectations. Yet they managed, some even triumphing (see Olaudah Equiano upcoming talk below).

I sometimes think about little aspects of their lives. The woman who sadly realized her child could never have a naming ceremony because no one else around her spoke her language. The man who realized in horror his son could not be circumcised like all in his line had been--because there was no one with that expertise. The skilled herbalist who risked being called "witch." The expert warrior who would never again be allowed to touch a weapon. The drummer living under a law where drums were forbidden. The man who knew how to prevent smallpox by rubbing cowpox pus into an incision, because his cattle rearing people had done it for centuries, ridiculed by the ignorant around him. The pretty girl whose torso scarifications marked her as desirable receiving nothing but ridicule and mockery. The woman who wanted to teach her son to honor his ancestors, but could not--since the boy's father was also his owner and would never acknowledge paternity.

We know little about them because we skate away from the pain. Few popularly available sources except for Roots and Sankofa and Amistad have tried to give them a voice, though scholars find out more information day by day--Emory University, in conjunction with Harvard and several other institutions, has created an amazing database of all known ships, their ports, their slaves' origins and names if recorded. See it at: http://http//www.slavevoyages.org/tast/index.faces. As our knowledge of history is ever more tied to public entertainment (as our schools slip into quicksand), we need more novels, more films, more programs that examine the real and fascinating stories of those who wrested a life out of misery.

When building the Experience, I discussed the idea of shackles with Oliha. I didn't want to put them in--he felt I had to. I compromised, and stored them in an optional box on their own, rather than in each character's identity kit. I have never seen any visitors wear them, though Eladrienne Laval did, in character as the Kongo woman Nzinga, and blogged about it to great effect here: http://http//elinsl.blogspot.com/2009/06/remembering-middle-passage.html06/remembering-middle-passage.html

She shot this great photo of herself facing the Porte de Non Retour monument, which I take the liberty of reproducing here. It gave me chills that equaled my reactions to the most critical of photojournalist images. I talked over her article with Osuntomi Melendez, who said, "She echoed my own trepidation. I want to come and do it, but I find it unnerving to contemplate."

Cymindra Deschanel, a Saminaka resident, told me she found the Experience intensely moving. She went through it as Omo, the young Yoruba woman from Nigeria, but would like to go back again and experience the other characters, "just for deeper insight." Some visitors go to every packet, collecting not only the clothing, but the stories. A number of strangers have IMed me and their appreciation, despite the picking of the scab, means a lot. One commented that she had a rl ancestor who was on the first boat to Jamestown; his name, like Nzinga's, spoke to Central African ancestry.

I am going to gather the slide show into a Hippobook for Saminaka's bookstore. And I am going to think about the next experience, which I think may attract more avatars, for it lacks the tragic turn of the Middle Passage--the story of those who returned to Africa in the 19th century, to Liberia, to Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Benin Republic.

The Middle Passage Experience can be viewed through June 30. Do read the notecards in both the beginning and the ending boxes, even if you cannot walk the path of these giants, who had to make sense of the senseless world they were shoved into. We can all profit from their survival, as all of us here in the United States do, as do those in the many lands where their subsequent influence has reached.

My experience of the Experience recalled my reaction to a book title I read a few years ago--something along the lines of "How the Irish Conquered the World." I laughed aloud, for I'm mostly a Celt, and had heard plenty of tales of squelching, squashing and victimhood, in both the old days of the U.S. and the British Isles before that. But then I thought about it--the potato famine's dispersion of the Irish spread their culture (and genes!) around the world.

It applies to the Middle Passage, as well. The worst of incidents, the most heartless and inhuman behavior, the most devastating pain--all these can produce wonders and enormous impact.

Africa is conquering the world, too, though we may not yet realize just how completely its culture has spread and continues to affect and shape us. And as it does, it is those Middle Passage survivors who gaze at us from the world of the ancestors and smile. May we do as well as they in meeting what life metes out, and may they protect us from the worst of possible horrors.