Goree Island

Anya:

Here's another journal entry, that I wrote mere minutes ago! How tantalizingly exciting!

"Happy 4th of July!

I spent the day of American independence on Goree Island, which was the busiest, most bustling slave-exportation island from 1776 to 1848 (some irony there, no?). We took a ferry from Dakar to Goree Island, and upon first glance, it looked very pretty -- somewhat quaint, and cleaner than many of the places we've seen.

After eating lunch and avoiding the swarms of optimistic vendors trying to sell us trinkets and T-shirts, we walked over to the "Maison de Esclaves" (House of Slaves). What a sneakily, unexpectedly intense experience. I walked through the dim, muggy, cement hallways, knowing that my footprints retraced those of millions of African slaves before me. My eyes scanned the rooms as I imagined men, women and children sitting or squatting or squishing while chains squeezed their necks and ankles.

As I walked upstairs to living space for the masters, I imagined the stench of body odor and opportunistic diseases that those white men inhaled everyday. What noises did they hear? Did they hear the muted pounding of fists against cement, as the "recalcitrants" (misbehavors) protested in vain, or had they learned to shut out such tell-tale signs of humanity? Could they even see the faces of the young girls they would later rape, or did the blackness of those slaves' skin simply make them blend into one blurry, dark mass? Did they feel any of the bitterness or poignancy or rage the slaves felt as they walked out the door -- into the oddly picturesque sunlight, towards the Americas, away from Africa? No, probably not. Somehow I doubt that any of the five senses were directed towards thoughts like these.

It's one thing to see pictures of a slave house, and entirely different thing to walk through the halls yourself. The combination of the humidity and the history left me feeling a bit physically ill, and somewhat lacking in my faith for humanity. However, I'm still glad we went there; there's no other way the grotesqueness of the Atlantic Slave Trade could have really hit home like it did there.

After the slave house, we toured the rest of Goree Island. Turns out the school for the smartest kids in Senegal is on Goree Island. Isn't it kind of cool that what was once the slave capital of West Africa is now the ultimate education hub? That thought made me feel better about how omnipresent the tourist industry is on Goree Island. We just took the ferry back and are now at the hotel. Farewell for now!"