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December 1, 2023 | Melissa Stamp
Writer and filmmaker Ida Doyce hopes to draw attention to the humanity of slavery through the story of “Virginia.” “We tried to portray Virginia’s dreams and aspirations, what her family was like, and what kind of friendships she would have.”
“This book is the fulfillment of a long-held dream of mine,” said Ida Duce. The filmmaker was living in Aruba when Luke Allofs’s book “No Slaves on the Plantation,” about enslaved Virginia, was published more than two decades ago.
“This story has always stuck with me. This series allows us to explore Virginia’s story further, contextualize it and give it a magical touch. It’s inspired by historical fact, but it’s also fiction,” she explains.
Virginia
The story follows Virginia Demetrisia, a “catibo” (slave) on the Babiola plantation who longs for freedom. Afifi, the magical wind, helps Virginia on her quest for freedom.
The story also incorporates elements of the island’s indigenous inhabitants at the time: Virginia is friends with Miss Flora, a free woman who owns a house on the beach and makes hats.
The historical facts come from the Aruban National Archives and are presented as background at the back of the book. This background is also explained in the presentations in Aruba, for which the author and his team had extensive contact with researchers studying the history of slavery in Aruba.
An important starting point for this story is Virginia’s family tree, but the fact that she was a “field worker” on an aloe plantation, rather than working indoors.
Aruba’s harshest punishment for women
It is said that Virginia received the harshest punishment of any Aruban woman because of her repeated resistance to her slave owner, Jan van der Biest.
Records show she was punished for stealing clothes, talking back and running away. For this, she was imprisoned at Zotmanburg, forced to work and given the harshest punishment possible for running away – fourteen strokes of the rope. “Zotmanburg has a very brutal history as a place of oppression and violence against innocent people,” Doss said.
Afifi’s Story
Ida Does, along with illustrators Daniëlle Nijboer, Joan Windzak and Ellen Rose Kambel, form the Afefe team. Together they came up with the idea of creating a series of children’s stories about women during slavery. Virginia is the first in the Afefe series of Caribbean stories set in colonial times.
Afefe, which means “wind” in Yoruba, was chosen as a recurring symbol of wind and magic in the story. This way, African history and transatlantic slavery can also be linked. Wind was chosen because Aruba and other Caribbean islands are influenced by northeast trade winds, Does explains.
Several presentations were held at secondary schools across the island this week. “We wanted to tell a human story. Behind all the data in the colonial registers there is drama, people in difficult situations who had to make difficult decisions. We wanted to give the next generation a sense of connection and pride,” Doss said.
This story is also available as a free audiobook in Papiamento so that more people can hear it. You can listen to it here.
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