Notes and literature research on a presentation by Dr. Lisa Aubrey (2015).
Information in the article was assembled by the PEACE Team in 2014 and was published in the 1st. Edition of the PEACE Magazine in 2016

Introduction

The Bimbia village in Cameroon has been traced back to being the avenue where over 20 prominent European countries were the actors of slavery and slave trade in Cameroon. European Nations like the Netherlands, Denmark, Portugal, France, England, Germany, and Spain took part in the mass transfer of millions of Africans kidnapped from their land and families to serve as a workforce for the colonial powers of the world. The “Slave trade” may have come and gone, but relics of this callous activity, which saw the buying and selling of human beings like commodities, can still be spotted in the old-time classic village of Bimbia.

Though in ruins, a four to five-century-old slave market still has relics that can be used to tell the story to future generations. There is an outlet still standing, which we coin, the “door of no return” calling into cognizance that captured Africans never returned after passing through it. From Dr. Aubrey’s preliminary research, the first documents of the slave trade in Cameroon estimated about 160 slave vessels passing through Cameroon for overseas. Africans in the Diaspora who are descendants of captured and enslaved Ancestors are currently tracing their roots back to Cameroon. Some trace their roots back to other African countries like Senegal, Ivory Coast, Ghana, and Gambia.
From historical perspectives and interpretations, Bimbia’s prominence and rich critical history would add Cameroon to the list of places where Africans in the Diaspora could imagine their ancestral roots even if they cannot enjoy the certainty provided by expensive genealogical tests.

Slave route

Dr. Aubrey’s research shows that Ambers Bay boarded boats sailed to many parts of France, in particular La Rochelle. Bimbia is not the only spot on Cameroon’s slave routes. Wouri a large area in the Littoral region, was another important place on the slave route with most of the slave ships leaving from areas such as Sanaga, Mongo and Dibamba. Bimbia nevertheless is still considered to be the most important slave port because most of the enslaved Africans leaving Cameroon passed through it on the way to Rio del Rey and Nigeria. Archival records document ships leaving Bimbia to several European countries that could be identified through their flags

Dr. Aubrey’s research concentrates on Africans in the Diaspora with case studies in over 14 African countries and visiting over 20 African countries. She always makes a point of visiting the slave sites as spaces of historical importance that embody the sense of a people’s uprootedness. It was during her research in many sites discovered in Ghana, Senegal, Angola, and Benin that Bimbia was discovered and through DNA testing, it has been realized that a substantial percentage of the genealogical DNA test leads to Cameroon’s ethnic groups such as the Tikar, the Bamileke, and the Hausa-Fulani and other smaller ethnicities.

• Importance of slave trade in Cameroon (Bimbia)

Due to its vast nature, Bimbia’s unfolded history is yet to be fully uncovered. Preliminary findings have proven there is room for further serious and genuine research, and need the expertise of a multidisciplinary research group and the support of several institutions that can secure the conduct of such research. The importance of Research in Bimbia is amplified by the hunger of both Cameroonians and Africans in the Diaspora to know more about their ancestral roots and routes of the enslaved through their homeland and across the oceans.

The horrors of the “slave trade” and enslavement in Cameroon and Bimbia in particular are multifold; leading to the understanding that Bimbia is a Sacred ground and a burial ground for enslaved Africans many of whom, are our direct blood Ancestors. It is important to remember that Africans did not only die aboard the slave ships. They fought vehemently and forcefully against their enslavement by Europeans, resisting with every means before being forced aboard the slave ships. In some cases, it is recounted that ships disappeared after being destroyed by Africans with their bare hands.
Among others, British slavers were more systematic in their selection of slaves. Documents show clear criteria about whom to be captured and whom not. In many cases, the slavers chose the slaves according to their own needs for entertainment and sexual satisfaction. Dr. Aubrey reported from her research for example, that, the Europeans captured a mother with her child, killed the child, threw it to the sea, and carried the woman along with them.

• Murder at High Sea

The high mortality rate was another aspect of the atrocities as Africans were taken to Europe and the Americas, filling the ships in large numbers. Many critical scholars have described this form of mass inhumane transportation as floating concentration camps. Archives documenting the mortality rate show that the transfer was more of men and children, in some cases just a couple of months old, than women, although other documents suggest an almost equal ratio or number (Dr. Aubrey).Africans were considered commodities; they were seen as black ivories while elephant tusks were referred to as white ivories. Africans being merchandised meant they could be insured and in the course of this, European merchants murdered Africans (who were sick at sea) at high sea in large numbers to claim higher insurance for lost “Goods”. The enslaved that were perceived not to be able to make the journey in good health were tied together to their feet and thrown into the sea to claim loss of “Goods”, the reason being that it was more profitable to claim the insurance of dead enslaved Africans than to arrive with weak and unhealthy Africans who could not be sold at profitable prices.

• The enslaved and their Ethnicities

Dr. Aubrey’s reports of “slave sex Farms”, in places like South Carolina for example, where slaves were forced to “reproduce and create” more slaves. Historians have also reported the existence of slave breeding activities where slave owners would aim to influence the reproduction of slaves to increase their wealth. This included coerced sexual relations between male and female enslaved, promoting pregnancies of enslaved, and favouring female slaves who “produced a relatively large number of children”. To live up to their task, young men (as young as 13 years old) were nurtured to sire or “reproduce” at least five children, and if you could not fulfill this obligation your testicles were cut off and it was not only punishment for men alone but for all. Having “slave sex farms” and “breeding” slaves was also a way of reducing the rate of resistance put by Africans since those born in captivity proved to be more easily tamed.

It is also important to note that though Cameroon was less populated, the slave trade has been more focused in the present Cameroon regions than in Nigeria and other more populated areas. Cameroon ethnicities could also be traced to the Bight of Biafra, which entails old and new Calabar. Approximately 40% were all Cameroonians from the grass field regions passing through old and new Calabar. From the analysis of Prof. Mveng in his work on the slave trade (Dr. Aubrey’s reports), Cameroonian ethnicities out of love for their freedom, strongly resisted the Europeans to the end. The kings of Bangante and Bafoussam even gave up themselves for slavery for their people to be free. Nevertheless, some villages were wiped out during the slave trade, in the present western region of Cameroon. The British and the Americans had a “Liberated African Register” registering the number of enslaved that were freed. They were sent to different parts of the world like Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cuba, and Brazil. That is why some Cameroonian ethnicities such as the Bamilekes and the Bassas are also found in Liberia and Sierra Leone today.

• The Diaspora and Development – Did Africans sell their brothers and sisters into chartered slavery?

Cameroon has been spearheading the reconnection process of Africans in the diaspora with their continental background. DNA technology developed in the 1990s allowed many diaspora Africans from Cameroon ethnicities to trace their roots and get to know their genealogical ancestry. It was through DNA technology that the African (enslaved) Burial Ground in New York was discovered. Located in and around the financial and economic sectors, an estimated 15.000 to 20.000 Africans were buried beneath the construction sites. It was due to these findings that the Wall Street protests took place during the Clinton administration. The protestors rose in anger arguing that all the economic and financial setups should not be built on the burial grounds of their ancestors and ancestresses. A group of researchers from the University of Harvard and Washington DC were allowed to collect samples of bone parts of 419 skeletons. The researchers traced the DNA ethnic groups also originating from Cameroon.

A high number of enslaved Africans from the Trans-Atlantic slavery period were from the present Cameroon regions, with the grass fields’ ethnicities having a significant number inland compared to the coast, though nobody was immune or favored by the Europeans. Africans who collaborated with European kidnappers to bring people from inland were later captured and taken aboard. In some cases, men were subjugated to pay ransom to the Europeans, of up to 200 slaves for the release and return of their captured wives or family members. This also somewhat explains the arguments frequently made that Africans sold their brothers and sisters. Cameroon ethnicities were the victims of both the Trans-Atlantic and Trans-Sahara Slave trade.

America played a very significant role in the trans – Atlantic slave trade and traces of Cameroonian ethnicities could be found in enslaved sites in Philadelphia, South Carolina, New York, and other smaller areas. As mentioned earlier, many enslaved with Cameroonian ethnicities were taken to South America, to countries like Brazil, Cuba, and Colombia. Furthermore, 26 ships to Grenada were identified to come from Cameroon and occupied by ethnic groups originating in Cameroon. The number has increased as other descendants of the enslaved were identified in some South American countries and islands coming from Cameroon ethnicities.

Descendants of the enslaved in the diaspora, that is, DNA-tested African Americans are seeking citizenship back in Cameroon as they wish to belong to the development of Cameroon by opening up businesses, investing in lands, and building houses (real estate). They seek to become part of the political, economic, and social development of Cameroon. In this case, they need security to protect their interest guaranteed by citizenship with the help of the Ministry of external Relations.

Conclusion

It is in this light that Africans are trying to revive their own history and debunk the history of Africa written by Europeans. Africans have to rewrite their own history because what happened in the past is strongly manifested in the present. Slave trade or the enslavement of Africans (at values commodities have) here was for the economic benefits of the Europeans against the backdrop of African dehumanization and exploitation. The fact here is that the rewriting of African history on slavery by Africans themselves will not suit the whites (Europeans) and the world at large. It is important to prepare for the future generations, born and unborn. It is vital to unveil the truth of slavery on Africans and to point out the fact that Europeans did not equate the enslaved Africans to be humans. Without this critical analysis of the history of the slave trade (be it trans-Atlantic or trans-Sahara), Africans will still be living under the slave/colonial umbrella. This is because the history of Africa is there and they have tempered with it and are still struggling to distort the African mind to replace it with their own history. It is our responsibility to retell the story and the truth in reality by retracing our roots and reconnecting our past with the present to prepare for the future.

Cameroon, and Bimbia, in particular, was the epicenter of the trade of the captured and enslaved or so-called “slave trade” as compared to Gorée in Senegal and other slave sites in Africa. The enslaved were taken from Bimbia to Calabar, and from Calabar to Benin, to Togo, to Senegal, and then to Europe and the Americas. Cameroon has many answers not only for Cameroon but the whole of Africa because there are treasures to be dug if we appreciate history. Present-day postcolonial Cameroon is not termed Africa in miniature for no reason.

Information in the article was assembled by the PEACE Team, in 2014 and was pushed in the 1st. version of the PEACE Magazine in 2016.