Shackles Across Time

Book excerpt: Shackles Across Time traces the history of a curse, of a spiritual fatwa, in a sense, on an African slave traders family in West Africa, and the subsequent effect of that curse on the family, over the course of three centuries. Modern technology helps the descendants to realize that something is not cool with their spiritual DNA, but they must use olfashioned means to cope with the problem. They engage the services of a well-known writer (a case of serendipity, he has written about their family in his book about the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade). The mediator is called an okyeame. The okyeame meets with the descendants of the man who pronounced the curse and unfortunately, must undergo the spiritual cleansing necessary for him to be taken seriously. His life is changed by his ordeal. It is also instrumental in having the curse lifted from the African slave traders descendants.