Someone Knows My Name

After the loss of Thomas Peters, the Nova Scotians hold a meeting where the Englishmen are not welcome. Speakers condemn the Company for siding with slave trade, and some call for an armed rebellion. Though Aminata doesn’t want the Company to allow any more slavers to enter Freetown, she knows a rebellion would do them no good. The meeting ends without any decision before the doors are open to Company officials, including John Clarkson and Alexander Falconbridge. Clarkson speaks to the crowd, mourning the loss of two respected Nova Scotians and promising to pay for funerals and support their widows.

After the meeting, Falconbridge approaches Aminata. He expresses his condolences and invites her to his ship. Falconbridge once worked as a surgeon on a slave ship, after which he publicly denounced the slave trade. Falconbridge speaks of redemption, contemplating his sins and claiming his soul died aboard the slave ship. The most he could do was fight for cleaner water, better food, and more frequent cleaning. After he could stomach the work no longer, Falconbridge tried to abolish the slave trade and was published with the help of abolitionists including Clarkson, whom he calls the saints. Falconbridge then hands Aminata his account of the slave trade. Aminata reads a few passages aloud until Falconbridge’s wife Anna Maria senses Aminata’s discomfort at the descriptions of the “ship that smelled like death itself” (408). Falconbridge offers to help Aminata go home but notes that it would require returning to Bance Island because the traders are the only ones who know the way inland.

After their first meeting, Anna Maria and Aminata begin to visit regularly. Anna Maria shares the opinion that slavery saves Africans from barbarity. She cites the example of Olaudah Equiano, a former slave who wrote an account of his life and become famous. She also refers to Aminata’s literacy, worldliness, and intelligence—many Englishmen would argue that without slavery she would not have been so well read. Aminata doesn’t believe her literacy justifies the theft of men and women, to which Anna Maria argues that this theft began with the Africans themselves. Aminata then shares an expression from her village: “Beware the clever man who makes wrong look right” (409). Though they disagree often, Aminata admires the way Anna Maria speaks openly and seeks her opinions

Aminata tries in vain to find a Temne to help her travel inland before accepting Alexander Falconbridge’s offer. She heads to Bance Island wearing her best clothes to “feel as far removed as possible from the skinny, naked girl who had been penned and branded in the Bance Island slave pen some forty years earlier” (412). The castle’s size and ornamentation rival the Government House in Halifax. She meets William Armstrong, who doesn’t seem like a slave trader. Aminata is bothered by how relaxed Falconbridge seems. While Falconbridge and Armstrong talk, Aminata starts to panic. She realizes that they could easily enslave her. She loses her appetite and inserts herself into their conversation to seem less like a potential slave. Afterward she wanders to the dining hall’s back window, where she sees a fenced pen full of naked, shackled slaves. Aminata tells herself that she is powerless, but the sight makes her feel complicit and guilty, and she wonders how she could possibly end the slave trade.

Armstrong closes the shutters and apologizes for the sight. He leads her to his study, where he asks about her desire to go home. He tells her candidly that it would do her no good because men are wicked—she would be sold back into slavery and most likely wouldn’t find her village. When Aminata asks why he does what he does, Armstrong explains that if he doesn’t, others would, and that only blacks are capable of the hard labor needed for British luxuries. He then mocks the deep pockets of abolitionists like Clarkson who don’t know a thing about Africa and Freetown’s inability to produce a single export or be self-sufficient. Armstrong goes on to say that the claim that slaves are branded is propaganda. Aminata then shows Armstrong the raised welt above her breast, saying, “This is what I remember about Bance Island” (421). Ashamed, he examines the brand and tells her that the two letters, G and O, stand for the company that runs Bance Island—Grant, Oswald.

The next day Armstrong takes Aminata to where African traders trade slaves for imported goods. She sees African slave traders of different tribes speaking a myriad of languages. The details of the transactions disturb her, and she contemplates the prices at which she has been sold. She wonders who is to blame for the evil and where it all truly starts. Aminata negotiates with Alassane, a Fula trader, to take her inland. A few weeks later Aminata meets Clarkson and learns he is returning to England. He asks Aminata to accompany him—the abolitionist movement needs her story and voice. Though touched, she refuses, sharing her plan to have an African trader take her inland. Clarkson yells angrily that she should believe Armstrong if he says the journey is dangerous. However, he senses her resolve and decides to provide the payment she promised Alassane.