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Out of Africa “My family lived in the middle of Africa…” Black Mother knew precisely where she was born: a village called AlQoz in Darfur. Its name meant “Sandy Hill”, and it stood at the southern edge of the Sahara Desert in an area of rolling countryside known as Daju, almost exactly halfway between the continent’s eastern coastline on the Red Sea and its western coastline on the Atlantic. She couldn’t give the date of her birth, but it was guessed to be 1869. Her father was a landowner with a large staff of field labourers and herdsmen, and the village head man was her uncle. Clearly her family was economically well-off, but more importantly it was close and loving: “It was made up of father, mother, three brothers and three sisters, plus four others whom I never knew because they died before I was born. I had a twin sister; I’ve no idea what became of her, or of any of them, after I was stolen. I was as happy as could be, and didn’t know the meaning of sorrow.” Darfur was destined to become part of Sudan, one of the largest countries in Africa, covering 728,215 sq miles. But until the end of the nineteenth century this area was not, and never had been, a cultural or political unit. In 1869 Darfur was still a small, independent sultanate, dominated by a tribe called the Fur from their strongholds in the high
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