The Condor Mission (completed)

Chapter 11 - Africans Slaves

It was the year 1510. Days after the dramatic events with the foreigners on the beaches of the only newly baptized Brazil, not far from there, less than two leagues from the Tupinambá tribe where, now, the surviving castaways lived, a group of Africans was gathered in a cloistered wooded capon for an important decision. They were seven men because some survivors had already died, some because of minor mutilations and infected injuries, others bitten by poisonous animals in the hostile environment.
They had been hiding in the forest for weeks, since when they also survived the shipwreck of the French boat with the help of our hero. They did not know where they were and even less how they would cross the great ocean again and return home to mother Africa.

After those terrifying days of landing, they only managed to settle in the bowels of the jungle. They built cabins of clay and wood, improvised with materials that they had in the surroundings. They gathered on the banks of a piscoso stream and made some basic tools: bows, arrows, harpoons and spears. They were survivors, however, quite capable of adapting to the new conditions of the environment.
The Africans were adapted to those latitudes and after some expeditions of recognition, they organized a simple scheme to provide their own subsistence. They managed to find quite easily at least the most important things for the prosperity of the small group, as sources of drinking water, linels of non-poisonous fruits, edible roots, and some possible hunting and gathering fields.

But two lunar cycles had passed and the black men decided to look for Wythuya and some answers to their doubts. Some of these blacks descended from advanced cultures of the African continent, Malés, Nubian, and were as intelligent as the officers and nobles of Europe who brought them captive on the ships. Had feelings subtle and, despite the enormous capacity for resistance, they really suffered from the current condition in which they were.
The blacks were divided between trying to return to their homeland or finding a place for a definitive settlement. The oldest and wisest representative of the group, Kunte, advised them to flee to the center of the continent until they were forgotten by the world. They were only slaves and should act with prudence, avoiding at any cost a new contact with white men.

The idea of captivity terrified those free men.In fact, everyone agreed that no one would help them. The idea was to escape from the exhibition of the coast and look for a more secluded place, suitable for the construction of a village. Nevertheless, they would delay in finding the ideal place for the installation of a kilombo, or a village, with flowing water sources and fertile lands, where they could hunt and practice agriculture. It was unanimous that only with these conditions could they think of starting a new chapter in their miserable lives in this mysterious new world.

The black leader believed that to find this place they should go up some great river to its source, away from the beaches and the dangers of European slave smugglers. And also away from the areas inhabited by the native peoples, who also seemed to prefer the coastal areas. Would take shelter in the mountains, and hopefully, over time, after countless solar cycles, they would be forgotten and completely ignored by white men.
But most of the exiles wanted to return to the African continent, to their homes and their ways of living. Those lands were similar to yours, but there they felt insecure and lonely. They did not really feel free, hidden in the woods like wild animals, protecting themselves from hardened men from other races and cultures, and from a myriad of new natural and unknown threats from Africans.

There was a general fear that they would retreat as a society, living again as barbarians a thousand years ago. And as they thought about the problem, it seemed to them an unacceptable fate. Especially for those civilized men. After countless deliberations, they decided that a group of warriors would leave and find the red man who had saved their lives.
Zulu, a representative of the Yoruba nation, presented his arguments.
- Kunte is right. I am not saying that it is impossible to build a boat and return to our African lands and beaches. But without the resources, without the tools, without the help of the locals, we won't make a good vessel. You may remember the storms we went through in the middle of the great ocean. We need time to build a boat reliable enough for this crossing.
For the survival of our group, I advise we do as old Kunte says. But first, I have a feeling that the red-skinned man will help us; he is a generous soul and also shares feelings common to us. We need to find him and ask him to intercede with the Bay natives. Alone, we have little chance of survival and even less of returning to Africa. But we must not trust the white man, who is unfortunately a friend of our enemy.