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Sharon Scagglethorpe (Iffianachukwana)
Byakatonda is an Ambossan slave trader with whom Bwana conducts business on his first voyage on Hope & Glory. By that time, Bayakatonda has been living in Europa for nearly 20 years and has started to adopt elements of the indigenous culture, including dress and diet. He’s also married a Europan wife. He’s thus an object of disgust to Bwana, who considers those things uncivilized. Despite his comfort with the population and their customs, Bayakatonda nevertheless sees Europan natives as subhuman and savage, just as Bwana does, and he’s happy to make himself rich off their suffering. He confesses that he’s stayed on the so-called Gray Continent for so long because, as an Ambossan among what he considers a savage people, he’s wealthy and important, as opposed to Great Ambossa, where he was a nobody. Bayakatonda sells Jack, Eliza, Madge, Sharon, and Alice Scagglethorpe, as well as their feudal lord, Percival Montague, to Bwana.
Byakatonda Quotes in Blonde Roots
The Blonde Roots quotes below are all either spoken by Byakatonda or refer to Byakatonda. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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2. The Gospel Train Quotes
I turned my attention to my guide. He wore a bleached-orange wrappa and nothing else. He was short for an Ambossan, and tubby, although his fat had the hard substance of a man who has known a lifetime’s manual labor rather than the slack softness of one who has not. I was used to reading people from behind, an emotional state emanating from someone’s posture, a state of mind indicated by the tilt of a head. […]
My guide’s body language was that of someone battling a storm. His shoulders were set in a permanent hunch. His forehead was ready to head-butt any opponents. Doubtless he came from one of the slums. No way he had been born with a silver spoon feeding his mouth, yet he had chosen compassion over resentment.
I liked him. Of course I did.
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12. Heart of Grayness Quotes
Byakatonda conducted me to the third corner of the square, and as we neared I saw that one of their females, of middle years with a skein of black hair, had been tied to a stake in the middle of a fire.
She was being burned alive.
Yes, alive.
Woosh! Her hair went up in flames and although she screamed, no sound came out.
[…] What can I say, Dear Reader, but the horror, the horror…
She was apparently a woman who is called a witch, that is, one accused of consorting with their chief demonic figure, called the Devil.
The fate of a witch is to be bound, weighted and thrown into the river. If she sinks she is innocent, although she is by now of course dead. If she floats, she is considered guilty of witchcraft and they will set her alight.
Did anything in this hellhole make sense?
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13. The Saving of Souls Quotes
Byakatonda’s domicile was, thank goodness, constructed in the Ambossan mode of architecture. It did not imprison like a square box but its walls curved into a circle. It was not built of flammable wood, but of solid, high-quality, low-maintenance mud.
Annoyingly, rather than sitting cross-legged on the ground and eating with our fingers like normal people, I was directed to sit at a table and forced to struggle with steel implements more suited to farming or warfare than eating.
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Byakatonda Character Timeline in Blonde Roots
The timeline below shows where the character Byakatonda appears in Blonde Roots. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
11. Some Are More Human Than Others
...Coast strikes Bwana as a uniquely sinister place. He and his sailors expect to meet Byakatonda, an Ambossan slave trader who has lived in Europa for many years and has, according...
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...of any lives; only his sailors opened fire. He stumbles back onto the beach as Byakatonda, dressed in native garb and surrounded by motley bodyguards, strides across the beach.
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12. Heart of Grayness
Byakatonda has lived in Europa for the better part of two decades, and his accordingly uncivilized...
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A high wall and a river surround the town where Byakatonda lives—fortifications, he explains to Bwana, against other groups of bloodthirsty and rapacious Indigenous people. Sanctimoniously,...
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...in which they punish their criminals, all of which he observes on his way to Byakatonda’s home. Some criminals are beheaded, and their heads are displayed on spikes as warnings to...
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As Byakatonda leads Bwana to his own home, which (fortunately) sits some distance from the town square,...
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13. The Saving of Souls
Much to Bwana’s relief, Byakatonda’s home is constructed in the Ambossan style (rounded, mud-walled construction) rather than the square, timber...
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After the meal, Byakatonda takes Bwana to the pen that holds the captives by whose sale he makes his...
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Bwana sets to work examining the captives with the help of Byakatonda’s “boy,” an elderly enslaved man named Tom who speaks heavily accented Ambossan. One captive, a...
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...later, Bwana comes across another captive who looks like he’s never done a day’s labor. Byakatonda translates as this man, who identifies himself as Lord Percival Montague, complains to Bwana about...
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...allow him to make around C£7,000 on this voyage, enough to buy his own ship. Byakatonda is delighted to do the extra business. And to reach his new quota of 550...
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