Goree Island - House of Slavery and the Door of No Return

Goree Island off the coastal capital of Dakar, Senegal is one of those places that should resonate to everyone’s ears like Auschwitz and Hiroshima, but sadly the institution of slavery during the colonization of the Americas was so normalized, widespread, and distant that places like Goree remain forgot.  Even when I type the word Goree, it shows up on my word document as a misspelling.  I first learned of this tiny island, just 900 X 300 meter, when I took a university course on the African Diaspora in the late nineties.  It is commonly referred to as the “Point of No Return”, because in fact, it was the last destination kidnapped Africans were taken before the horrifying journey known as the Middle Passage.  By the numbers, we can never really know the exact figure of enslaved people that came through here, but historians guess roughly twenty million made the journey with about a fourth perishing during the months long journey.

artist depiction of a slave house on Goree Island

Knowing these dreadful history of the island, I tried my best to prepare for my arrival.  It’s a place you want to give your full attention to.  Learn what you can prior, so you know what to look for and questions to ask.  I cherished the opportunity to share the experience with good friends Fatou and Megan, but having some solitary time to myself walking the island and the infamous slave house was an important part of the experience as well.

Fatou and Megan after breakfast at our bed and breakfast

ferry to Goree

We arrived to the port of Dakar to take the short boat ride to the island just a few kilometers away.  The passengers are a mix of locals, merchants, expats, and tourist.  Besides the locals, most just go for the island for the day.  It is a world of difference from any other place I had been in Senegal.  The energy and scenery feels like you are on a Caribbean island.  Colorful wooden colonial style building dot the rocky island. In fact, the island was never settled by Africans prior to European arrival because the lack of fresh water. 

SENEGALESE WRESTLING 

As we exited the boat onto the dock, we could see hundreds of locals preparing for something big on the beach.  It was close to sunset and wanted to quickly check in to our bed and breakfast and return to the event about to take place on the sands. When we returned we discovered we arrived to the beginning of wrestling tournament. Now, this was not just any kind of wrestling. This is Senegal’s national sport!

crowds get ready for some wrestling 

I had never heard of Senegalese wrestling until I came to Senegal 🇸🇳. Many foreigners are surprised to learn the wrestling tradition goes back many centuries, where some ethnic groups used it as preparation for war. The event began with a griot chanting song and several drummers moving the crowds toward the sands with a strong tempo. Eventually, about 20 or so wrestlers came onto the beach with a few hundred people watching in anticipation. Let it be known that many Senegalese men are health nuts! They train like Rocky outside, using their environment to build muscle and endurance. They took to the beach swoll and ripped like gladiators. Once they enter the sand pit, they began moving about in long exaggerated steps in a circular motion. It's as if they were putting themselves in a trance to prepare for battle. All this is happening with the constant chanting, singing, and drumming. Eventually, each wrestler stripped to their speedos and many did a flashy dance that got the crowd hyped. Finally, the matches began with two wrestlers, wrestling similar to Greco Roman style. The winner happens when they can pin their opponent with both shoulder down. For Senegalese wrestling is the national sport and most popular along with Futbol. 

GOREE’S COLONIAL HISTORY

The Portuguese were the first to settle the island in the mid 15^th Century and the first slave house was built in 1536.  The island has traded hands between Portuguese, Dutch, English, and finally the French during the three centuries this island legalized slavery.  Slavery officially ended here in 1848.  Interestingly, today many of the colonial buildings are color coded to reflect the colonial period it was built.  For example, red is Portuguese and yellow for both Dutch and English. French is white.

Today, Goree has a population of close to two thousand people, in which the majority are Muslim with about a quarter Christian.  The residents mostly run bed and breakfasts, restaurants, and artisan shops.  The colorful, vibrant, clean, and orderly island is a complete contradiction to its dreadful reputation as an island prison of enslaved Africans who were about to embark on the Middle Passage for death sentence of slavery.

The truth is, records show very few enslaved Africans departed from Goree for the colonies of America.  Goree was more of a European bubble off the coast of West Africa where the European administrators, higher elites, and wealthy merchants had the luxuries of European society while being in close proximity to their business interests in Africa.  In fact, the island was segregated into quarters for slaves, Africans Christians, Europeans and their families, including a district for a population of mulatta women known as signares who often had relations with European men. Signares held a high status on the island because of their social standing among Africans and the fact they had part European ancestry.  Many of them enjoyed the full privilege of being European, including owning slaves, but also had influential connections within African society.

Signares women dancing with European men

Regardless of how many enslaved Africans actually came through Goree, the island is the most important memorial to the African Slave Trade in Africa.  And the slave house, (or Maison Des Enclaves in French) is the most popular place to visit on the island.  In the heyday of slavery, a total of twenty-eight slave houses operated on the island.  Each house held 100 – 200 enslaved Africans.  It was usually two level square compound with a center courtyard, with Europeans living above and the slaves housed downstairs.  Men, women, and children were all segregated into separate prisons within the house. 

Most of the targeted Africans of the slave trade were of the animist tradition.  Because Christianity forbade enslaving fellow Christians and most of the Africans who collaborated with Europeans were Muslim, which also forbids Muslims to be enslaved.

Senegalese school children on a field-trip to the slave house

ENSLAVED MEN

what 2 x 2 square meters look like.  up to 20 slaves to a cell

Captured Africans were imprisoned in the slave house for about three months in order to break their will to resist and to “fatten” them up for the journey across the Atlantic.  Men had to weigh a minimum of 60 kilograms to make the trip.  15 to 20 men were kept in a 2.5 square meter cell.  They were let out of their cells once a day for food and to relieve themselves.  The enslaved that were too sick to survive were drowned and thrown to the sharks of Goree’s coast.  Punishment for unruly enslaved Africans was twenty-one days in solitary confinement.  The solitary cell was under the staircase leading to the second floor of the complex, which meant the height was just high enough to sit upright.  It was impossible to lay flat or stand while in solitaire.

cell for men

ENSLAVED CHILDREN AND WOMEN

Once a enslaved child could walk and speak, then they qualified as suitable for the journey.  Girls as young as twelve were singled out and kept in a segregated quarter to be raped.  If they became pregnant and had a mulatto baby, then they would gain their freedom.  Enslaved women ran the kitchen and cooked for both enslaved and their European masters.  They slept and cook in the same cells.

holding cell when they captured Africans would first arrive to the slave house

Finally, after each enslaved person was broken and fattened, they were marched unto the deck of 30 meter by 60-meter slave ship.  The hull of these ships could hold up to six-hundred persons. Laying side by side, alternating and chained to the floor head to toe, they could spend up to three months like this until their final destination in the Americas.

cells for children, women, and the kitchen

FINAL THOUGHTS ON GOREE

a woman and man stare out the door of no return

We wanted to avoid the crowds at the slave house, so we decided to come a day earlier.  The experience was sure to be a solemn one, so to honor that, we were one of the first to arrive.  Our guide was a local man in his twenties.  He guided us through each part of the house, answering questions and explaining in great detail the conditions and treatment of the slaves.  It was a solemn experience to say the least.  Afterward, he let us be and we had more time to go through the compound alone, at our own pace.  Staring at the empty cells, imagining the horrid treatment that took place day after day, year after year, century after century, by so many people, generation after generation, you begin to lose faith in humanity.  Like so many genocides before and since, you are overwhelmed with sadness and hopelessness.  And it is at this low point, that one begins to feel a duty and responsibility to make sure that what happened on the island of Goree are known like 911 or the Holocaust.  The details of indiscriminate torture and rape are chilling and cannot fade away like dust.

with the guide at the infamous slave house