View from Gorée Island — A Pilgrimage to Senegal’s slave island
3 kms, off the coast of Senegal, opposite Dakar, Senegal’s capital, is Gorée Island. Once a slave depot, the island has now been transformed into a “memory island” bearing witness to the darkest history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
With a week’s visit in Dakar for work, and a free extra day to spare, I opted to pay homage to this much talked about historic island.
A ferry ride to the historic island, now a UNESCO world heritage site, took us just about 20 minutes from Dakar’s port.
The guide for the day, Pape Ndiaye, aka Tata (Senegalese for “father”), a multi-lingual licensed tour guide by the ministry, started off with a brief history of Gorée. The name ‘Beer’; a Wolof name, was the island’s original name prior to the advent of colonialists, but was later replaced with Goedereede by the Dutch, and corrupted to simply ‘Gorée’, he said.
The island would be ruled in succession by the Portuguese, the Dutch, the English and the French, from the 15th to the 19th century, Tata revealed.
During this era, Goreé was deemed the largest slave-trading center on the African coast, where millions of captured Africans in Senegambia’s hinterland (present day Senegal, The Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau) and to some extent the great Mali empire, were shipped to newfound lands in the Americas, in the infamous trans-Atlantic slave trade”.
On approaching docking, the picturesque of the island became vivid, and what a site it was to behold!
Pape, well known to the ferry captains, was able to get me permission to access the ferry’s cockpit area, where I got the opportunity to take photos at the steering wheel.
On setting foot on the island, I could not help but notice the narrow alleys, beautifully paved with cobblestones, colourful stone houses, and beautiful walls with hanging flowers.
“This island is about 900 meters length by 300 meters width, and harbours over 20 sites of interest, the mayor’s residence, and has a population of about 2,000 people, It has no car, has one donkey to pick the island’s refuse, a church, a mosque, a police station, a recreation park, and a couple of schools, and is home to Blaise Diagne — the first black African to be elected to the French Chamber of Deputies, and the first to hold a position in the French government,” Pape narrated.
A four hour tour began with a stop at Hotel Municipal La Porte du Retour (Municipal Hotel of the Door of Return) — simply the opposite of “Door of no Return” — symbolising a “return” of descendants of enslaved Africans to the island.
Maison des Esclaves (House of Slaves)
The next stop was the house of slaves. This museum, curated by Boubacar Joseph Ndiaye, is said to be the original one-storey house built in the late 1700s by Nicolas Pépin, and later run by his sister Anne Pépin, a famous French slave trader of the Signara community on the island. In this house, it is where Mademoiselle Pépin lived, with the upper storey of an airy veranda and a magnificent vista being reserved for her.
The ground floor on the other hand — containing several grim chambers and dark airless dungeons — was where Africans were held captive in the worst of conditions for weeks or months, while awaiting shipping to the Americas as slaves.
The sexes were separated; shackled males in different chambers, grown women in theirs, and young girls and infants having their own.
Defiant captives were usually tortured in the underneath dungeons, and in the event of them becoming fatally ill and or dying, they were thrown at sea to be devoured by marauding sharks!
I entered one dungeon in which Tata Mandela, during his trip to the island, is said to have entered. Herein, Tata sat for several minutes, in memory of the captives that had been stowed therein in the most humiliating, degrading, and dehumanizing conditions.
Pape, the tour guide, enumerated that the main diet for the captives was a bean-based diet. Adult males, he said, were required to weigh at least 60kgs in order to ‘qualify’ to be shipped to the Americas on a boat — a journey that usually lasted 3 months at sea. This requirement was mostly due to the torturous journey across the Atlantic ocean in chains — stacked together like sardines — and in the most unsanitary conditions.
As for the women, while in this house, the mature women were usually separated from young girls — deemed as virgins. These underage girls were said to have special sanitation amenities (in-house) reserved for them, to avoid ‘contamination’ from the older women, whose sanitation amenities were at sea.
The white traders and masters usually turned these young girls into their mistresses at will (sex slaves), and in the event that they fell pregnant before a slave ship docked, they were ‘permitted’ to stay on the island until they gave birth, before being shipped into slavery.
It is on record that adult males and females were allowed the call of nature and sanitation only once a day (every morning), and at sea at that. During the rest of the day, they would be locked in shackles, in the chambers and dark dungeons, awaiting to pass through the notorious “Door of no return”, where a ship would be docked to ferry them across the Atlantic.
Many are said to have died at sea enroute before reaching the destined distant lands.
Bambara Quartier
Our next move led us to Bambara quartier, a segregated settlement that is said to have been inhabited by the Bambara people from Mali. These people were mostly domestic slaves and were reportedly said to possess high level skills in the building of roads, fortresses and houses, and probably played a huge role in the island’s infrastructure.
Église Saint-Charles Borromée (Church of Saint-Charles Borromee)
On our way to visit this church, we passed by a 500-year old Baobab tree, and the mayor’s residence
The Church of Saint Charles Borromee became operational in 1830, and is named after a bishop from Milan, Italy.
Pape narrated that in the early years of its operation, Africans could not be allowed to worship here. He added that each white family on the island had a pew reserved for them during mass service and moreso, with their family name engraved on it (some pews still had these silver engravings attached to them).
At the back of the church, a spiral staircase tucked away into an ‘attic’. This sky parlor is claimed to have been a preserve of the governor whenever he attended mass.
Surprisingly, the church wall is dotted with African iconography. It is in this church that Pope John Paul II, during his visit in 1992, asked for “forgiveness” for the ‘shameful’ slavery meted on Africans.
Before we stepped out of the church, Pape requested that we spare a few minutes to reflect and pray about the soulful moment.
École de formation d’instituteurs William Ponty (William Ponty School)
Our trek led us past the renowned William Ponty school, once mentioned by my favourite Pan-Africanist writer and historian — W.E.B Dubois, in his 1925 book ‘Worlds of Color’.
Named after William Merlaud-Ponty, a French West Africa governor general, the school was relocated here in 1913 (NB: the school is now a residential place as it was moved again — from the island).
Ponty school boasts of notable alumni that led the struggle for independence from the colonial master; France, for their respective countries.
These include the likes of Modibo Keïta of neighbouring Mali, and Félix Houphouët-Boigny of Ivory Coast, just to mention but a few.
Palais du Gouvernement (Government Palace)
Up next was this site. Built in the 1860’s, the palace is said to have housed the governor residing on Gorée island. It would later be abandoned, with a new site on mainland Dakar being preferred mainly because of the new location’s ease of access to fresh water.
Pape disclosed that the island lacked fresh water in the colonial occupation era, and that its inhabitants tapped rainwater which was stored in dug underground storage.
However, this led to a rat epidemic outbreak in 1878. The epidemic hit Gorée, decimating a fraction of its island’s population including Gorée’s only white doctor, whose sculpture is erected on the mass grave of the victims of the rat plague. The location of the grave is several meters away from this palace.
It was time for a quick lunch break. We headed out to Restaurant Saint Germain, where I got to enjoy a sumptuous meal of barbecued lemon chicken with fries, which was washed down with a chilled drink of Bissap juice, Senegal’s ‘national drink’. Pape mentioned that that this dope drink is made from hibiscus flower, then blended with baobab juice.
La statue de la Libération de l΄Esclavage
This statue depicting a man and a woman breaking free from their chains, was donated by the people of Guadalupe to the people of Senegal, to symbolize liberation and ‘brotherhood’.
Originally erected near the house of slaves, it was moved to the garden square it’s currently standing on, as a move to thwart the colonial master’s desire to put up a monument of their own in the very garden.
During his visit to the island in 1998, President Bill Clinton is said to have delivered an ebullient tribute on this very square.
Five years later, George W. Bush would make his address on the island, where he mentioned the likes of Phyllis Wheatley, a seven-year-old girl who was captured in the Sene-Gambia, region in the 1760’s, shipped to Boston, where by the age of 20, she became the first African-American to publish a poetry book.
A decade later, President Obama would also emulate his predecessors when he opted to tour the island.
Musée historique (historical museum)
The museum is dedicated to showcasing and commemorating the different eras in Senegal’s history.
The 13 rooms display artifacts and history from ancient times to the country’s independence, key among them Senegal’s Kingdoms and Empire, slave trade, armed resistance, and European colonization.
Fort d’estrees (Fort of estrees)
Our pilgrimage drew to a close with a visit to this ancient rampart facing Dakar.
On the museum’s rooftop, several firing cannons are visible, evidence that this was undeniably the island’s defense fort.
As we waited for the ferry’s designated time for the trip back to mainland Dakar, Pape led us on a walk on the island’s various streets that led to various lush private residences which were once ‘slave houses’.
In our chit chat, Tata shared that during the 400th year anniversary of the first enslaved Africans’ arrival in the United States, Dakar and Gorée island held a four-day event dubbed ‘The Door of Return Trip’, in 2019. He subtly revealed that he had exclusively been chosen as the lead guide for visitors during the commemoration event.
Dr. Julius W. Garvey (Marcus Garvey’s son), he added, visited Gorée island and urged Africans on the continent and those in Diaspora to work collectively, to change the African narrative. The event was graced by the Mayor, of Gorée Augustine Senghor tighter with his Municipality members.
Though laden with the horrors the scenic island exposed, I left having satisfied my curiosity on the history it has harbored over the centuries.
Ps: There are a number of Île de Gorée attractions that I visited but are not mentioned in this blogpost. In total, there are about 26 points of interest on the island. I only cherry-picked the ones that were of utmost interest on my pilgrimage (for this blogpost).
Pape Tata Ndiaye (Tata), the local tour guide can be reached directly on Tripadvisor for trip advise and sightseeing bookings.
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