Day 8 Gorée Island

Wow. What to say about Gorée Island that does the place justice. It's just a bizarre juxtaposition between incredible physical beauty and one of the greatest evils ever committed.

The island itself is beautiful, with the same French colonial architecture I saw in St-Louis but better preserved. It has flower lined lanes, palm trees swaying in the tropical breeze and beautiful blue waters off the cost. There is a resident population but they are used to tourists and seem better able to take rejection when they attempt to sell you souvenirs. There is also a public school on the island but it's unclear if the school kids are residents. Many schoolgirls took the ferry back with me.

It's just one of those idyllic places you fantasize about retiring to.

The circular fort is now a museum which traces the history of human activity in Sénégal from pre-hominids to the present. (Yes, evolution doesn't seem to be that controversial here.) It isn't anything fancy, but gives an interesting account of Sénégal's rôle in the Ghanan and Malian empires, the jockeying of the Portuguese, Dutch (Gorée is a French pronunciation of the Dutch words "Goe Ree" which means "good port"), British and finally French for control of the area. There is a room about the Islamic conquest and one about post-Independent development.

There is definitely more to Gorée Island than slavery...

But then you turn a corner and there is the slavehouse or "Maison des esclaves". It too is a handsome building, though once you enter you immediately see the dark, damp, dirt floored holding cells where men, women and children were held separately pending the trans-Atlantic crossing. You can just feel the fear these people must have felt not knowing what their fate would be. Finally there is the famous "Door of No Return" which opens out to the Atlantic. It is a very moving place. I have read stories about African Americans falling on their knees crying and can understand why. It's one of the places where humanity's inhumanity impacts you in the deepest way. Gorée Island was not the largest transit point for slaves. These rooms are quite small, maybe 7-8 metres across at the greatest and could never have held more than a few dozen people at a time. But still, it was a very chilling experience.

The second floor of the building used to hold administrative offices but is now a museum which documents slavery in Sénégal.

Lots of Gorée Photos can be found here