As I Stood In Africa, at Senegal, on Goree Island, before The Door Of No Return…

I could not help but to reflect upon all the pain, evil, and malicious acts of inhumanity that transpired in this very spot…

Background

  I have been in Africa for a little over 3 years. It has been such an educational experience to live, laugh, learn, and love here. I have travelled to each corner of this place and have attained knowledge that I could not get from years in university classrooms. But I feel that my time here, for this portion of my life, is soon coming to an end. Because of this, I want to write down some of my most impressionable memories to share with you.

The Island

This one begins with my time at an island found near Dakar, Senegal. I visited this place back in the summer of 2008. As a Black American, coming to an island where Black African captives were taken to process and put on sea vessels bound for the “New World” was kind of eerie. Yes, I have always wanted to see such a place and touch it. But, in the back of my mind, I wondered how I would react mentally and emotionally when standing within a place which quite possibly one or more of my African ancestors could have come through. On my approach there on a ferry along with so many other Africans from all around, I felt a sense of solemnity that one would probably bring to a cemetery or memorial of some sort. So, as we neared the island and I heard festive music and saw multitudes of people playing at the shore, sunbathing, eating, drinking, and whatnot, I was a bit surprised (and the stuffy historian in me was prematurely offended).  Anyway, once I paid the fee and entered the island I was amazed at how so much of it was kept intact. Apparently over the years, this place served as a slave trading post as well as a military fort between European occupiers like France, Portugal, and England. Ironically, it was built as a place to take and ship slaves by people who were of both Black African and French descent. In French annals, this place is referred to as “Maison des esclaves” which means the “House of Slaves.”

The Experience

As I wandered around and summarily forced myself to ignore all the vending spots in order to take in the historical value of it all, I tried to transport myself there mentally and try to get at least a glimpse of what it would be like to be ripped from the ground of your birth and forcibly planted into an environment so far away and different. It all starts when you go into the actual warehouse of sorts where the captives are separated by age and sex. This place looked more fit for separating and herding animals than people. One can actually walk through the different rooms set aside for boys, girls, infants, young men, young women, and even the elderly. I stood in awe imagining the sheer terror experienced by the women and girls at the hands of these European brutes, at the humiliation that these once proud and strong African men had to endure in front of their wives, children, parents, and other loved ones, and finally at the unimaginable horror of the many babies and infants who were torn from the arms of their parents—never to know a mother’s love or a father’s protection. I was stuck there in this area barely alight by the sun; I just wanted to take it all in. I also saw displays of the weapons and the crude shackles placed on the captives. But nothing really gripped my imagination like walking through these same dark and painful rooms and halls that these slaves of yesteryear were once herded through. As I write this, I am taken back there. Could you imagine being one of those captives, barely clothed, famished, exhausted, probably beaten badly if you were a man, or perhaps raped numerous times if you were a young girl or woman? How about if you were a boy and you saw your mother abused, or a little girl and you watched your father beaten to death as he tried to protect you?  It is also said that as the slaves would go through this last door into a boat that the ones deemed too weak or sick were simply thrown overboard, like expired cargo, to drown and become food for some sea creature. These images I am sure were reality for the untold numbers of Black Africans siphoned from this great continent and parceled all over the western hemisphere like livestock.  But these are common things that people know occurred. What did standing in Goree Island at the door where so many left and never returned mean to me?

My Personal Reflection

Being a Black American and hence a descendent of the very Black Africans who were the substance of the human hemorrhage suffered by Mother Africa, my visit here held a particular amount of significance. While the Africans who come from all over to see this place must have been saddened and a bit intrigued by what transpired, I, in a major sense, am what I am because of such places. I could not help but wonder when I walked through that door if I followed in the footsteps of some long dead and forgotten relative. Did my people come from Senegal or a neighboring area? As I stared out into the sea, trying to conjure up an image of a slave ship, I contemplated the farfetched idea that maybe one of my progenitors stumbled through this small port onto a filthy, overstuffed cargo ship destined for a land they knew nothing of in a world that never even pierced their imagination. In a way, I stood as a sort of link to my past; a past that will most likely forever be shrouded in darkness and filled with unanswered questions. For the most part, we as Black Americans can at the best trace our roots to some plantation in the south. There, we will most likely find out that a great-grandmother of ours was impregnated by a White man or that part of our history lies within a Native American tribe. Yes, this is true. It has been scientifically proven that the overwhelming majority of Black Americans have at the most extreme, 80-85% pure black African “blood” in them. Over the years, the purity of our African-ness has been diluted by European and Native American “contributions.” Most Black Americans have 70% or less on average pure Black African blood that flows through their veins. But even at that, our African-ness is still prevalent and alive and well. But we don’t really have the ability to trace our ancestry very far and thus learn about our tribal, ethnic, and/or clannish past in regards to that African-ness.

 I must admit, that as an historian, this wall that we run into has always frustrated me. And this has been something that I will always envy about my fellow African brothers and sisters; the ability to point to and explain my cultural upbringing and clarify the past in regards to who came before me. No matter how materially well-off we as Black Americans become, no matter how famous we make ourselves, or what educational goals we accomplish, this ability is sadly something that we cannot pass on to our progeny.  For all our attempts, both the successes and failures, at creating our own culture here in America, in my heart, I will always wonder where I truly came from. That, I guess is what Goree Island did for and to me. It reinforced that desire but at the same time made the frustration thereof a bit harder to deal with.