Chapter 15

I always like how the author of our book introduces the reading. He always starts off with some sort of story or fact that really gets me thinking about the topic and it always relates to my personal life, like all history! this chapter starts off with a very moving story of what a woman with african american descent wrote in a journal at a port. It is impossible to imagine what life would have been like if I was a slave, things would be COMPLETELY different, I can think of so many ways of how it would be different, but I have no idea what it would be like. Just reading about all of it is just jaw dropping.
I find it very interesting that the one thing people traded during this time was spices. I have never really paid much attention to spices unless I was cooking, I find it odd that they were so valuable. But then I had to think what the food must have been like. Probably not very good and very bland! Considering that almost everything we eat today has some sort of spice in it, I don't think I would enjoy eating as much without spices. I am sure that once people discovered spices everyone wanted some. It makes everything so much more tasty!
I like the picture on page 448 about the Russian fur trade. It makes sense that they found fur to be so valuable because they lived in freezing temperatures. What I was surprised about was the fact that they migrated so much according to where this commodity was available.
The graphs are especially interesting to me. The first bar graph about the amount of slaves traded is just ridiculous. I still can't imagine people treated each other like that, but we just live in a different world today and I have been brought up with very different morals than people back then. The second graph showed where majority o the slaves were traded to. I always pictured the slaves to be working on some rich southern land in America, which was true, but I had no idea that they were also traded to Spanish America, Brazil, and Caribbean. I was VERY surprised to see that that Caribbean had the highest amount of slaves traded there. Thinking more about it, there have been times where slaves were talked about in places other than America, but I have just seen more movies, read more books, or heard more stories about slavery in America. I am sure it also has something to do with the fact that I do live in America and majority of the history we learn through our lives is about American history. This would definitely explain why I have heard more stories about slavery in America.

sex trade reflection

I have heard of the problems with human trafficking. Our school has a lot of events to try to help this issue. It is a huge issue. This reading was very emotional. It was very different to hear the experiences from some of the victims themselves. Of course we have our own imagination and ideas of how their lives might go, but until you hear it from the person themselves does it really set in and hit you and say “this is reality”
First of all I must say that this reading also helped me realize how good we have it here in America. I couldn’t even imagine what life would be like if I had to live off a couple dollars or less a day. That would be so hard to manage! And that’s not even thinking about having more people to feed and clothe. To only spend a few dollars on an entire family a day sounds so miserable and stressful. It makes me very thankful to be in the situation I am today.
I was always curious as to how the girls were chosen to be in the sex trade. I knew that some of them volunteered without knowing all the details of the sex trade, but to think that a person actually came to them and deliberately lied to their face is just unbelievable. To get their hopes up and say they would be making great money in a café when really they are going to do terrible and dirty and dangerous jobs for a bunch of horny ungrateful men? That in itself is absolutely horrifying.