PEOPLE HAVE BEEN HERE

Humphrey still remembered vividly, the theatrics, when he sat beneath a shadowy tree, observing a fruit he had never seen in London, then an object basked from a height into the River. He had imagined it was a piece of rock that broke loose, not till he notice a dramatic rippling on the water. Then a young lady emerged; naked, pure and ripe. She had jumped from a cliff and it was a way she caught fun. She was in the company of another damsel who seemed like her sister, swimming, chuckling and chattering in a language that sounded like those of monkeys. They looked utterly pallid and their black skin seemed forbidden but there was an enigmatic atmosphere of nature that hovered over them. Suddenly, they scampered to their cloths once they sighted him. Terrified, they ran off. He flounced after them to assure them no danger, and in a little distance, they surged in to a clutch of kids romping on a sandy soil, barely clothed, dirty and happy. It was there he was apprehended by the barbarians.

While in chains, he realised that among those romping kids where the children of the Ruler of the barbarians, and he cherished such symbiotic society of no class division where the high and low mingled equally; a true life of commonness unlike that of the European society where the lines between the upper, middle and lower class is ever blazing. He was from a Peasant Scotish family, learnt combat skills from his father who was a hunter and in search of better life, went to London and was hired as an expediting crew member for Captin Welminburg whose penchant for exploration, especiall in the said Dark Continent - Africa - was unquenchable. Humphrey, thus, was well known to the humiliating positions of the poor in a societal strata. He often would whisper to himself, "Africa is a home for all."

When their ship voyaged through the Atlantic, heading for the docks of Liverpool, he would smile out of a muse as he comprehended the primitive but simple African life. While he was in chains, after his capture by the barbbarians, he had had the liberty of watching the dances, singing and musical euphonies of a wedding between the Ruler's first daughter and one of their prominent warriors. The females had only a piece of fabric enough to clad their woman parts and their bodies vibrated to the sound of music. The influenza was overwhelming enough that he could realize his manhood became as rocky as ever, itching to tear off from its hold; stiff and erect. His head even swayed to the rhythm of the incomprihensible music tones and for a moment he forgot he faced a fate that could mean death.

His ruminations became distracted by the mournful throes of women in the Ship. They were maidens captured from what remained of the barbarians after his British friends forayed into the lands, killing every male that could wield a weapon and claiming the Land in the Name of Her Majesty, the Queen of England. These maiden had become a means of canal satisfaction for the wild and fetid crewmen who dug them interchangeably, like worthless holes. Humphrey shrunk in awe of how the Civilized Britons could exhibit such a barbaric deeds on this black skinned people, a people they called Barbarians. The foray into a peacefull, though unsophisticated but happy land of a people is a crime in Europe, much more the extrajudicial murder of them only to make it a British Colony. Worser too, to take female slaves for sex, to be ravished on the vouyage to England is a thing never to be heard of among a said civilized people. The worst of it was that the maiden he had earlier seen, who swam with her sister, was among the unfortunate slaves. Having more than a score men inside her daily, she couldn't live beyond a week. Anyone who became so weak was  counted useless and thrown into the ocean. This was so till not one maiden remained.

Although Humphrey did not know what would have been his fate when in the custody of the barbarians, if he might had been killed without the intrusion of his British friends who in a bid for his rescue, laid waste the land. Whatever it was, he regretted that their advent; the expedition of his’, in the company of his fellow British crewmen had only truncated a wonderful, simple, though primitive but serene and unstressed African life; a life of sparingly dwelling in huts, hunting the meat they ate, growing the crops they ate, treading barefooted and enjoying an undefiled air of nature.

At London, Captain Welminburg’s (Now Vice Admiral) left hand was held high by the Attorney on a podium before a cheering crowd and he was saying something about Welminburg’s contribution to the British might by taking a brave and unbidden expedition to discover a virgin part of the Dark Continent – Africa – and becoming the earliest person to set foot upon its lands and its waters. “Those were absurd,” Humphrey thought, “they may have been the earliest Europeans to tread those parts but they certainly didn’t discover it. Surely, Africa have been the dwelling of humans, ages long before even their forefathers were conceived. They merely found a place they didn’t know it existed.