T he year was 1731 and the sun shone over the little village Züetzy in North Africa.
Everybody was preparing for the big harvesting dance.
You could hear the sound of the woman crushing Jams for breakfast.
The harvesting drums are soon going to start play and make all the people go out of their houses and dance on the streets.
In one of the houses lives Xielle. She’s sixteen years old and has long and beautiful black hair. To honour this important day she braided it and put clay pearls in the bottom.
She also wore her prettiest dress with the intense colour of a red rose.
Her mother, Lava were making the jams pudding for breakfast and her father Toro were taking care of Xielles younger siblings, Lolo, Tamest and Rile.
Suddenly Lava yelled.
- It’s breakfast!
Xielle rushed to the kitchen and grabbed her jams pudding. She really hated jams but she had to get energy.
Toro looked at her and asked:
- Are you longing for the dance?
- Of course, Xielle answered happily.
She wouldn’t feel that way if she knew what was going to happen.
Xielle ate her jams pudding as quickly as she could then she rushed out though the door. She could already hear the drums playing.
All the townspeople where already dancing. Xielle got caught up in the rhythm.
After a while did her family also join the dancing.
Suddenly they heard a shot and the drums silenced.
It was like time stopped and out of the bushes came the people from Züetzys enemy tribe and they had guns…
Xielle started to run but they caught up with her. It was all a big chaos!
If you resisted to come they shot you, they didn’t care at all.
Hundreds of people lay dead on the streets. The prisoners like Xielle, they led to a big ship.
On the boat were they chained on the floor. They couldn’t move and they got stitches of the cold wooden floor.
The other people on the boat looked like something Xielle never had seen. They were white as the clouds in the sky.
The white people spat on her and her friends and they almost sounded like Xielle were some kind of disgusting animal when they talked to her.
The white people called them “negroes”, it was a horrible word!
A lot of people died on the boat and it was a very nasty way of living.
Xielle´s family wasn’t at the boat and she couldn’t stop thinking that they were dead. Then the tears burned inside her eyelids and sometimes she wished she wouldn’t live anymore, why should she?
Anyway, after a long, long time they arrived at a country called England.
All the people in this strange country looked like the people on the boat.
They looked that weird at them so a little girl started to cry.
Xielle took the girl in her arms and hugged her. She was happy, anything would be better than the boat!
She was wrong...
The people from the village were merchandised as “prime negro slaves, only 10 dollars each for the small and 20 dollars for the adults.”
All the people were separated and sold to families as slaves.
Xielle got sold to a man who got drunk every evening and when he came home he hit her, hard. The man called her “damn crying negrogirl” because eventually she couldn’t do anything but sit and stare out in the air with the tears falling down on her cheeks. Her life had become a misery.
The man took her back to the slave dealer after a month, he’d gotten bored of her.
The slave dealer told her she was a useless idiot.
He hit her so hard that the fell down on the hard concrete floor.
Xielle fell asleep in the same position as when she landed on the floor.
Next morning she woke up and he said:
- I got you a new master, behave or else!
He pointed at a gun laying on the table. Then he walked out of the room.
Xielle couldn’t anything but follow. In the next room stood an old man. He took Xielle to a big mansion and there she saw the him, the boy.
He looked at her, with his big brown eyes.
- Hi! I’m Charlie and I’m 18. Who are you?
- I’m a slave, sir. My name is Xielle.
She was in love, he was in love. It was love at first sight.
Later that night Charlie went into his fathers’ workroom.

- Father, I found true love.
- That is splendid! You must introduce me to the girl someday, the father answered.
The son blushed.
- Actually, you’ve already met her.
- Oh, the father answered. Who is she?
- Xielle…
The fathers face turned red.
- You can’t marry a slave girl!!! That will embarrass us all!
- I know, I know, can’t you at least let her free? I love her, and even though we can’t be together I don’t want to see her get hurt.
And so it became, Xielle was free.
Ten years later she and Charlie met again.
Charlie wasn’t under his fathers demand any more and they got married.
One year later they got a daughter. They named her Liberty, another name for freedom.
One day when Liberty was nine years old it was raining outside and Xielle told her the story of her life. Then the rain turned into a beautiful rainbow and Xielle said:
- Now the people that died paint colours in the wind after the rain to gave all survives hope that they will be free, eventually.