The journey to Gorée island from Dakar starts with waiting at a pungently fishy smelling parking lot while dodging the many young men attempting to sell little trinkets. One teenage boy was peddling his mobile shoe repair skills- all contained within his small backpack. Moussa, one of our guides, had his sandal fixed while we were waiting. If you hadn’t been paying attention, you might’ve missed the entire transaction. It happened in just a minute or two.
Once we got our tickets, we pushed past some door guards and into a giant waiting room full of people. You can imagine my surprise when a little tugboat-sized ferry pulled up and a few hundred people poured through the doors to get on board. Somehow, we all fit onto the little boat and settled in. In big black letters across the top of the boat was the word “Beer.” Perhaps the name of the boat? Maybe it means something in another language? Who knows. As far as my own memory is concerned, I voyaged on the Beer from Dakar to Gorée that morning.
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| Docks at the island |
I made a friend on the boat ride over to the island. If you know me well, you’ll find this surprising. But, despite the fact that we didn’t share a language in common, we shared a moment, talked about how cute her son was, and she kindly invited me to visit her necklace shop on the island. “Remember me!” she said as we disembarked. “Promise to come see me!” As the group gathered on the shores, we discovered that we all had similar experiences. Unlike the ways that men had aggressively approached us to sell things at the docks, the women targeted us individually, made friends, and then ensured we would “promise” to visit their shop. Only later would we regret having given our names out as we walked the streets of Gorée with shopkeepers calling for us. Each of our “friends” even gathered outside the restaurant to wait for us as we ate lunch. One of my new friends, Cindy Crawford, pretty much stalked me over the entire island for the entire day—until we boarded the ferry to go home. While annoyed, I appreciate her persistence…
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| Slave museum on Gorée |
Gorée was one of the main departure points for slaves leaving the African continent for Europe and the Americas. Much of our nation was built on the backs of men, women and children held captive in the beautiful houses that adorn the shores of the island. It was prime real estate for this trade because its location quashed any hope of escape. The brightly colored houses with contrasting shutters engulfed in tropical vegetation make it easy to forget for a moment that this was once the point of no return for untold numbers of people sold into slavery.
The slave museum stands in memorial to the inhumane ways people were held before being shipped off to foreign lands. Cells for the men; cells for the women; cells for the children. Children mostly died of communicable diseases, unattended by any caretaker. Women’s worth was judged by their breast size, men by their weight. If a woman were “lucky” she would become impregnated by one of the foreign traders (Frenchmen here- Portuguese in other locations) before the day of departure. She might then get the opportunity to become his wife and raise her mixed-race children in a relatively privileged trader class. Oddly, she goes from victim of the slavery trade to part of the system that benefits from that economic market. With the exception of the few women that escaped the fate of slavery, on the day of departure, they were walked down a dark corridor, shackled with a heavy weight around their ankles, straight onto the ship that would carry them away. If someone was sick, they would simply be pushed off the plank into the sea below and the shackles and weight would pull them straight to the bottom. There’s no room for sick “cargo” in tight quarters like that.
It’s hard to articulate exactly what feelings arise in a place like that. The former woman magistrate living in the house next to the slave museum has made it her life’s work to collect historical documents and artifacts related to the slave trade from Gorée. While in Paris, she collected many original documents about the slave trade to Europe, and her son has continued her legacy by concentrating his efforts on transatlantic documentation. In her basement, a museum (mostly in French) stands in tribute to the long journey of slaves across the ocean, including documents from Portsmouth and Norfolk, Virginia.
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| Women’s Museum on Gorée |
Gorée isn’t just a monument to past injustices, this artsy little community is also home to one of the premier all girl schools in all of Senegal. Top achieving girls are brought from all over the country to study at the residential school on the island and their career aspirations bode well for the future of the country. Enthusiastic future doctors, lawyers and teachers fill the rooms of the airy island school that overlooks the ocean. Right across the way, the first woman’s museum in sub-Saharan Africa stands in tribute to the achievements of women all across Africa- the life’s work of Madame Annette M’baye d’Erneville or “Mere-bi” (mother of all) as she is known throughout the country.