Faty Ba

We were born into slavery. We have not known a social qualification other than the term slave. We ourselves say that we are slaves. Moreover, after the death of my paternal aunt, my father wanted to get me back. But the late aunt’s co-wife asked my father to let me continue to live with their family, as they had no children except a boy. My father agreed to leave me there. At dawn, we wake up to go to the fields. The fields were behind the river and I stayed there from morning till night. Look at the scarring that’s there on my face, they gave it to me, the years I spent morning till night in the fields under the sun. At sunset, I had to cross the river with my bundle of wood on my head. When I get home, I prepare couscous for dinner. There was a lot of couscous to prepare and I had some girlfriends who offered to help me, so that I would finish quickly, so that I could go play with them. They would help me cook dinner and then I would go out with them to go play. I could go a month without eating, when the family I lived in had the means. Since I was young at the time, I was given the task of climbing the termite mound to watch the monkeys, so that they did not destroy our harvest. We would bring down the termite mound to come and serve them to eat, without feeding me. My parents were not aware of this situation. When, I ran away and I returned to my parents, my father took care of bringing me back there. We stayed that way, while my eyes were hurting from the sun. When I fell ill, someone went to say to my father: “You, don’t you love your daughter, whom you entrusted to such and such a family.” He told my dad, “They are mistreating your daughter.” That’s why my father came to get me.