1. Whenever I come across stories of slavery and slave trade, my skin crawls at the sheer evil humans perpetuated against other humans.

But then, when I study the culture and beliefs of the time & attempt to put myself in their shoes, a horrible picture emerges

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2. It's not a picture of how evil they were, but a picture of how evil we will be seen to be in 100years when our own history at this time is read.

In the days of slavery, before slave trade, it was culturally accepted & the evolution to slave trade was, in a sense, inevitable.

3. Historically, slaves were taken from their homes for different reasons like:

1. As a favour to better their lives in exchange for service
2. As captives of conflict
3. As settlement of debt
4. As low level employment

in all, they were seen as free lease pseudo-property

4. Many of the slaves were under the illusion that they were 'working" & they were paid either meagre salaries and/or given food & living quarters.

I am in no way justifying slavery nor slave trade but I am hoping that by this point, you will see the parallels I am drawing

5. I went to a new luxury development recently and the structure was amazing, but something struck me to my heart and it was the master bathroom. It was large, luxuriously decorated and tiled and, guess what?

It was more than thrice as large as the "boys quarters"

6. With all the money spent, the luxury, the opulence, the space, it didn't cross the architect's mind, didn't cross the developers mind and didn't cross the buyer's mind that it would've cost nothing extra to make the living quarters of the maids more habitable and humane

7. That's when it hit me that in what we consider acceptable culture today, when our history is read 100years from now, what will the generations then think of us?

We take young underage children as a favour to remove them from suffering from the village in exchange for service;

8. We take less privileged adults and, despite laws on minimum wage, often pay them less than that;

They eat food different from the rest of the family;

We work them from 6am till midnight sometimes before the retire into a room just large enough to fit a single bed;

9. We speak to them in a condescending manner and sometimes deprive them of education;

we exchange them with their "agents" (slaver traders really) when they step out of line...

I do not think future generations will understand and accept that this was 'acceptable culture"

10. I think that as we ask of the slave traders of old, they will ask of us:

"where was their humanity? how could they have been so evil? how did they accept such even if the law and culture allowed it? how did they say they were christians and going to church?"

11. It is a painful thing to reflect on especially as I see myself in some of the picture I paint.

I think a lot of us are satisfied being wilfully ignorant or worse, justifying our very own version of man's cruelty to man while condemning the same for those before us

12. This is me trying to make myself & hopefully you, think more on our actions & consequences they have on others

When achieved, it's very humbling removing the beam in my eye to see the speck in another's

I hope @DrJoeAbah can make this a subject on his #NaijaKnowledgeX
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