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Matthew Parris

A secret from my African childhood has become a deeper mystery

The ‘Arab slave pit’ my brother and I found. And what happened when I found it again

22 February 2014

9:00 AM

22 February 2014

9:00 AM

About 55 years ago, when I was about ten, my younger brother Roger and I discovered a slave pit in Africa.

Actually it probably wasn’t a slave pit and we probably didn’t discover it, but ‘Arab’ ‘slave pits’ were what Southern Rhodesian schools offered as an explanation for the circular, room-sized, stone-lined pits sunk about five feet below ground but open to the sky.

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