Goree island is a like Alcatraz island in the sf bay area...a tourist attraction with a gory and gruesome history...a 20 minute ferry ride from near downtown Dakar...Goree was used a staging area for the trans-Atlantic slave trade. There is a surprisingly small building in which enslaved African people were (whare) housed, another area that was used for executions, and lots of old colonial buildings where the European slave traders lived and worked.
There are no cars allowed on the island so the narrow sand streets are quiet and relaxing. I went there with Boubacar and another friend named Kaba. Goree has turned into an artists colony. The artists have staked out claims in the old ruins of the island and there many live, work and then display their wares. Lots of paintings, batiks, jewelery, carvings...Bouba and Kaba gave me the personal touch tour by introducing me to some of their hippie artist friends...they have created rent free homes out of the old underground military installations...
In the afternoon we gathered with a group of visitors inside the old slave house for a presentation given in French by the curator. For years i'd seen pictures of the pink colored dual curved staircase and the "door of no return" leading into the sea: i expected a big huge building like an airplane hangar. Truly it's small, no bigger in square footage than a small apartment building, with myriad dungeon rooms where the people were kept packed in "like sardines" before being shipped off to the America's....Even tho it's small it housed hundreds of people at a single time, and over decades and centuries that means the numbers of people shipped out likely went into the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, from this small port alone. There is a gigantic disparity of estimates about the number of enslaved people that passed through these gates...no matter what, the place hits you in the gut. Bouba showed me where the children were kept in a separate room next to the mothers, with only narrow slit windows for the families to communicate. We were told that the slave traders forced big strong healthy men to have sexual intercourse with big strong healthy women so that they would have big strong healthy baby slaves. Recalcitrant human beings were executed. Just to be in those little rooms, imagining the smell, the fear, the rage, the sorrow, the disgrace, the humiliation...you just shake your head...
After an hour another tour group came in...this time it was all Senegalese students, middle school aged. Bouba, Kaba and I sat on the upper balcony and watched the tour guide give his speech. I watched the students to comprehend their reaction to the story...the group was at least 100 students and they were quiet, sober and absorbed for the entire 30 minute talk, even while having to stand in the hot afternoon sun. As a teacher that was nice to see. Later we ate a lunch of fresh grilled fish with french bread, a meal for three that cost about 2 US bucks. The woman was grilling on an open fire under a big tree out by the beach. Just so. As the sun set we witnessed a group of young people rehearsing djembe drumming and dancing on a open plaza right by the water. Then it was back onto the boat for the ferry ride back to Dakar...
Some thoughts on slavery:
As an American who grew up with African-Americans, and who has experienced the traumatic legacy of slavery where i live and work, being on Goree was unnerving. I can understand why people consider it a pilgrimage, a link in the chain to Africa that creates a sense of wholeness having come full circle.
I also was struck by the incredibly ironic thought of how some "black" people had ancestors who were white slave traders and slave masters, and how some "white" people had ancestors who were black slaves! We just don't know our own true histories...
And then we add onto all that the newly emerging story lines and increasing recognition of the role of Africans themselves in the slave trade, which then opens up a whole new can of worms after you think you've sealed the deal on all the pain! For a non-African or African-American (in other words, me) to raise this issue always seems to sound like passing the buck, or sloughing off responsibility, or excusing the European colonial powers with a sort of "Well EVERYONE was doing it" excuse...but none the less, an all that not withstanding, it is still a fascinating and intriguing aspect to the slave trade that is worth exploring. I met an African-American woman in Dakar who was passionate about it: how Africans were enormously complicit in the trade, how it could never have "succeeded" without Africans contributing, and how pissed off she is about it! She relishes the remembrance of times when she has had the opportunity to remind Africans of how their ancestors sold their brothers and sisters to the white man...
When we begin to look closely at the social structure of the African kingdom states at the time the slave trade began we see that there was CLEARLY a slave class in existence, almost like the caste system in India. And where ever you go on earth, when kingdoms want to expand they tend to enslave smaller ethnic/political/social groups. The elite classes of African societies were dealing in slavery within their own kingdoms, and when the Europeans came and offered money and political support to those elite classes the Africans took advantage of it by participating in the capture and sale of human beings to be used as slaves.
However, the slave classes of Africa were very very different than those in the America's, and the word slave is too broad a term. The chattel slavery that was practiced by Europeans and European-Americans from Canada to Brasil to Haiti was arguably as barbaric and ruthless as you will ever find in history. The slavery of the Mali empire was probably closer to indentured servitude, or again, similar to the caste system of India where you are born into a class of people that serves as slaves (for all intents and purposes) to the richer classes. So it's not fair to compare, and its erroneous to lump all these practices into one bag called "slavery" as if it was "all the same". But unlike in America where there has been a big change, parts of Africa STILL have this kind of slavery inextricably woven into the fabric of societies. For example, Mauritania (the Sahara desert country north of the Senegal border), is largely controlled by lighter skinned people of Arabic descent who hold darker skinned people of more traditional African descent as slaves in their families for generations: slavery is literally engraved like a brain tattoo into the psychology of people there.
So, controversially, evidence comes to light that African societies were intimately intertwined with Europeans in propagating and profiting from the sad tale that is the trans-Atlantic slave trade. And THAT is interesting because, imho (in my humble opinion) it can actually contribute to reconciliation by breaking down the illusion of polarity. It complexes the shituation. It makes us have to think a bit more broadly and deeply. It peels back another layer of the onion that is human nature. It's food for thought and reflection. So chew away, digest and excrete at your leisure.
