“Mammy!”

His voice echoed around the sleeping plantation. The cry was followed by hoarse sobs and joined by the desperate pleas of his mother who was being restrained by a well-muscled overseer. “Masah Pleeease don’t take him…. pleeease.” The boy could hear her beg, through his own hysterics and as the crack of the horse’s whip jerked the crudely constructed wagon forward… into the pitch-black night, he cried out her name for the last time.{{more}}

Soon the flambeau that illuminated his struggling mother became a tiny dot then disappeared and with it the Plantation – the place where he’d spent all his life. He huddled to one corner of the wagon, trembling. It had begun to drizzle and he was cold.

He should be glad to escape the plantation. He would never again have to witness the crop-time murders; when gravely sick slaves would be dragged from their filthy make-shift hospital to make up numbers and flogged to death when they were unable to produce. He would be spared the agony of watching his uncles humiliated, his aunties disgraced, his weak, malnourished cousins succumb to the slightest disease… he would never have to stand at another tiny grave…. However, as the plantation became a distant memory, he was plagued with guilt; because he had been but a mere observer of the crimes against his people. All his life there had been an invisible hedge of protection around him – until tonight.

He had grown up with the cut-eyes and the whispers and he had seen the truth of the rumours looking back at him from the mirror… the truth that the only differences between his face and his Masah’s face were the shade of their complexion and the colour of their eyes. Still, he was never sure exactly what to believe until the Cooper, one of the slaves in charge, was punished by the Masah for whipping him and then soon after when he’d found the Masah staring at him and their eyes had met. It was then that he had known with all certainty that the Englishman who had passed him by a hundred times without acknowledgement, his master, was his father.

Now he was in the back of a wagon… unaware of his final destination. The rain was heavier and he was soaking wet. He shouldn’t be afraid… he had known this day was coming…. He had heard the whispers…. The Masahs’s wife, who lived in England, was due to take residence on the estate and the Masah could not have evidence of his infidelity walking around his small plantation.

Suddenly the wagon stopped, the Masah disembarked and lifted him from the back. That was the first time his father had touched him.

“Listen I have to let you go… I am giving you your freedom…” He was almost shouting above the roar of the now wind-whipped, pelting rain. The shivering boy remained silent.

“Boy, do you understand what I am telling you?” The Masah shouted…

The boy nodded, though nothing made sense. His father pointed below to the valley that was dotted with a few flickering lights.

“There is the town,” he said.

Then he put a freedom certificate and some money into the child’s hand. As the little slave boy watched his daddy walk away he tried to call out; but despite his recently acquired freedom his voice remained imprisoned in his tight stomach and he could do nothing but stand sobbing in the rain until… finally… the truth exploded inside spilling out as a breathless whisper… an almost silent “Daddy” … which was quickly blown away by the vigorous Caribbean Wind.

And through the years the plight of the little slave boy would be repeated… again and again…. Sometimes he would be a barefooted six year old girl standing in the streets of Georgetown, gazing with wonder at the conductor that she was told was her Daddy; sometimes he would be three years old, camped out at family court with his distressed mother; sometimes he would be the ‘swell-belly’ son of a jail-man wandering the mountains for food; sometimes the ten-year-old about to start secondary school without any books and sometimes the little boy whose Daddy would never dare acknowledge him in public because of the social consequences….

Children with one thing in common – the fierce desire to be accepted, loved, guided… to be blessed with their father’s presence. Children with great potential and abilities: the society, the government, the visionaries of tomorrow – by far our most valuable resource.

The little slave boy is still standing there please… please look around, open your vision and see him… see them. Today I give them a voice! If we don’t do something about this epidemic, this heritage of absent fathers, our vision will remain impaired.