I Am Nanny of the Maroons – The Invisible Warrior
The Shadow in the Forest
1700, deep within Jamaica’s Blue Mountains.
I am a shadow. A whisper in the night. A name the colonizers fear but can never capture.
My people, they call us Maroons. Slaves who broke their chains and fled into the mountains, where the jungle is our ally, the rivers feed us, and the drums beat like a heartbeat.
The English hunt us. They send their soldiers. But how do you catch the wind? How do you stop a spirit?
I am Nanny of the Maroons. And I will never be a slave.
The Heiress of a Shattered Empire
I was born far from this cursed island. I was a child in Africa, an Ashanti girl, heir to warriors and queens.
Then they came. The ships with white sails. The chains. My mother’s tears as she failed to hold me back. I crossed the ocean. I watched my brothers and sisters sold like cattle. But I never forgot who we were.
When I set foot in Jamaica, I was not a slave. I was a survivor.
The Escape and the Revolt
The plantation was hell. The whip cracked like a serpent, the sweat burned under the merciless sun.
One night, I looked up at the sky. The stars told me it was time.
We fled, my brothers, my sisters, my companions in suffering. We walked for days and nights, hunted like animals. Some fell, others kept going. We found refuge where the English dared not venture—the mountains.
There, we became more than fugitives. We became a free nation.
The Art of Invisible Warfare
The British soldiers thought we were savages. They did not understand that we were born warriors.
We struck at night, like spirits. We vanished into the jungle before they could retaliate. They had their guns. We had the land, the trees, the silence.
Our drums spoke in the darkness. Our spies listened to their every move. And I, I guided our warriors with the wisdom of our ancestors.
They say I could stop bullets. That my prayers and incantations made our warriors invincible.
The enemy called us demons. We were merely souls in search of justice.
Freedom at a Cost
For years, we resisted. They sent their best troops. We stood firm.
But freedom has a price. My people suffered, starved by the colonizers’ siege.
So we negotiated. We were not slaves. We were an army. And an army fights, or it signs an honorable peace.
The Maroon Treaty was signed. We kept our land. We kept our freedom. But we had to promise never to free our brothers still in chains.
I wept that night. Freedom means nothing if it is not shared.
The Spirit of Nanny
Some say I died. That I fell in battle, betrayed by British bullets.
Others say I became a spirit. That my blood fed the earth, that my voice echoes in the wind that sweeps through the mountains.
It does not matter where I am. As long as my people remember, as long as the Maroons exist, I still live.
I am Nanny of the Maroons.
And I will never be a slave.