30 Days in Slave Ship

   "30 Days" documentary series shows us people in interesting situations for 30 days. For example, we saw a straight man living among gays for 30 days, and there are other episodes such as a person living with the minimum wage and a Christian living among Muslims. Overall, this documentary series makes people think about other culture, other people, and other lives.

   My original scenario for this document is to hold 30 days in the slave ship. Slavery had been an important conflict in the history of the world, and especially in the history of the United States. Slavery is also on of the biggest shame in human history. Living as a slave was really agonizing, but becoming a slave from a free man should have been equally painful. Africans captured by whites, specifically the white merchants from American colonies, were transported via ships, the slave ships. The most common route of such ships in the 17th and 18th century were from western coast of Africa to south-east coast of America and Europe, and this passage was know as the "Middle Passage."



   To maximize profits, those whites shrank the room for each Africans as much as they could. The Africans were locked in a place with extremely low ceiling, that some of them were even unable to turn their body around. They were chained together, and were provided only a little amount of food and water. The hygiene condition was not good; most ships didn't have any system to remove excrement instantly. The high mortality rate was a corollary. Usually a slave ship carried a couple hundred kidnapped Africans, and about 15% of them didn't make it to the land where they would be slaves.

a short cut from a movie - captured Africans embarking on a slave ship

   I know this scenario can be very dangerous to the participant, but believe under well-controlled conditions, this would make an extremely real documentary of what slaves had to suffer in the history.