This post is dedicated to all my friends with low self-esteem, who think they will never amount to anything much. I sincerely hope and pray that the following story will touch their hearts and set them free from the invisible chains that bind them, so that they can find their rightful place in our money world.
Financial intelligence is only 20% technical skills. The difference between success and failure, between the rich and the poor, is in the 80% which is emotional control and discipline. The fact that more than 90% of the world’s population belongs to the poor and middle class suggests that this group of people may be subjected to some form of unconscious fear or mental bondage. As you read on you will agree that this is such a tragedy. The victims at that time usually had no hope of freedom whatsoever. But today, we have healthy and educated individuals who use the power of their brain to tell themselves everyday that they will not succeed in whatever they do.
The following account is not fiction. It is to the best of my knowledge as close to the truth as the events were recorded.
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Europeans began colonising the Americas. They had one big problem. They found that many of their great projects were being hampered due to a shortage of labour. The indigenous people (or bumiputras as they are called in Malaysia) were not prepared to work for wages. Neither did they make good slaves, as it was easy for them to escape and live among their own people.
In Africa, however, the slave trade was already well established. In most places in the world, an informal system of slavery had been established from the earliest times. Those that lost a war became slaves to those who won. Slaving then became a commercial enterprise. As early as 650 AD, Arab slave traders began taking African slaves to Arabia. In 1444, the Portuguese started taking slaves from West Africa. When the Americas opened up, West Africa became the natural place to find cheap labour.
At first, European ships would sail to the West African coast with manufactured goods that they would exchange for slaves who had been brought to the beaches by the local chieftains or traders. The slaves would be transported to West Indies where the slave markets were.
American ships sailed out of Boston, Massachusetts and Newport, Rhode Island, and were called ‘rum boats’ as they carried rum to Africa. The cargo was then exchanged for slaves.
The journey across the Atlantic was called the “Middle Passage”. (If you Google “middle passage” you will get lots of references on today’s story.) Over 11 million Africans made the trip. Some put the figure much higher. This compares with over 18 million Africans taken eastwards by Arab traders. Nearly half of those who went to the New World were carried by the Portuguese and were taken directly to Brazil.
By the eighteenth century, transatlantic slave trade was at its peak. Slave ships were practically floating coffins. As there were rarely enough sailors to control the slaves, they tried to purchase Africans from different nations, so they could not easily organise a mutiny. Some captains picked out a few slaves to guard over the others, armed with a whip.
Slaves were shackled in pairs with leg irons. Before they were purchased, they were given a medical examination to make sure they were healthy. Special attention was paid to their teeth, and any signs that they were aging. Then their heads were shaved, their clothes taken away, and they were branded with a red-hot iron.
Once on board, the men were kept chained until the ship sailed, and sometimes for the entire voyage. Women and children were allowed to go free. On some ships sexual relations with the captives were forbidden. On most, the young women and girls were repeatedly raped by the sex-starved sailors.
The slaves were housed in a cargo hold. This was about five feet high, so it was impossible for most to stand upright. A worse method of cramming in even more of the human cargo was devised: a shelf six feet wide around the hold to hold a second tier of slaves. In larger ships, there were two shelves. These allowed slaves 20 inches of headroom. Slaves were packed in so tightly that they had to lie on their side rather than on their backs.
Some slaves were flogged by the sailors. When one man jumped overboard to escape a flogging and was rescued from the sea, he was asked if he was not afraid of being eaten by sharks. “I would prefer that to life on this ship,” he said.
Once out at sea, the slaves were brought up on deck every morning. Their shackles were attached to a chain running down the centre of the deck to stop them jumping overboard. A sailor with a whip may then ask them to exercise. This was a mixed blessing. The heavy leg irons caused bruising and bleeding around the ankles, but the captains dared not let the slaves take them off for obvious reasons.
The slaves were fed two meals a day of coarse porridge. In bad weather, they would have to stay in the stuffy, dark, stinking hold day and night.
Ship’s surgeon Alexander Falconbridge, who wrote several books about his experiences, said that each man had less space than he would have in his coffin. It was impossible to move through the hold without walking on someone. He would take off his shoes to avoid injuring anyone. Slaves would bite his feet if they came near their faces.
The slaves had to move about to try and reach the lavatories – which amounted to no more than two or three large buckets for 100 men. Many suffered from acute dysentery and died. The smell of slave ships was so foul that other ships would sail to windward of them.
Africans were particularly vulnerable to smallpox. Epidemics raged through the holds. Others died of no apparent cause. Some went mad and other managed to kill themselves.
Some slaves believed that if they died on the voyage, their spirit would return to their homeland, making suicide an attractive prospect.
More commonly, death came from what the slavers called ‘fixed melancholy’. This had no apparent cause except for the extreme misery of the conditions. Slaves simply lost all hope of living.
Although slavery is history now, the invisible chains of slavery are as real today as it was a few centuries ago. Many poor people have accepted their fate just as the slaves accepted theirs in those days. They have lost all hope of escaping from their poverty in their lifetime. Their ‘captain’ has condemned them to eternal poverty by telling them that ‘money makes money’, and that if they had no money in the first place, they should be contented to remain poor forever.
Break free today. The chains are not real. They are but a figment of your imagination. Financial freedom is real, and it is well within your grasp. Take control of your destiny. You can join the ranks of the rich just by understanding and accumulating assets.
Physical slavery has long been destroyed. Mental slavery has also been destroyed. Believe it.
