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Goree Island: The Gateway to Hell
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Approaching Goree Island: A picture of serenity
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What
an awful, beautiful island. The approach to
Goree
Island
, just off the coast of
Senegal
, a 15-minute ferry ride southeast of the country’s capital city of
Dakar
, gives the impression of exotic serenity. Even walking through the small
island, a mere 900 meters (0.6 mi.) long and 300 meters (0.2 mi.) wide, reveals
an inner beauty with its colonial style houses, all shades of reds and yellows,
its picturesque coastline, and its brick-paved alleyways. The island that boasts
a 250-year-old baobab tree, however, has a dark and miserable history; a history
which, once known, transforms the island’s apparent serene beauty in the eyes
of the observer into a “gateway to hell.”
Goree
Island
was known to the inhabitants of West and
Central Africa
, for hundreds of years, as the point of no return. Ruled first by the
Portuguese, then in succession by the Dutch, English and French, this small
island was from the 15th to the 19th centuries the largest slave-trading center
on the African coast.
Still
standing on the island is its last slave house, built by the Dutch in 1776. The
tour of this small house is sickening. To hear or read the stories of how the
inhabitants of black
Africa
were exploited, demoralized, and oppressed is one thing; to see with one’s
own eyes where it all started is another.
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The brick-road alleyways give no indication of the horrendous activities that went on in the Island |
The
entrance to the House of Slaves, or La Maison des Esclaves as it is known in
this French-speaking country, is guarded by a large, foreboding wooden door. One
can only wonder at the strange mindsets of its previous owners that went to the
trouble of painting this hell-hole with vibrant colors of green, red, and
yellow.
The
door opens out into a small courtyard, where men, women, and children were put
on display for sale. The prospective buyers and traders, from
Europe
, North and
South America
, did not lower themselves to standing on ground-level with the merchandise;
they watched and chose their goods standing on upper-floor balconies.
The
merchandise was chosen based on a variety of factors. The larger, stronger men
were palpated for muscular bulk, and chosen accordingly. Men were not put on the
slave market until they were heavier than 60 kg (132 lb.). African men that
reached La Maison des Esclaves that did not meet this requirement were herded
into a feeding room where they were fattened until they reached the required
weight. To make sure they had met the requirement, they were sent to the
weighing room, and once “successful,” were sent to the courtyard for sale.
Young
girls, on the other hand, were rated according to virginity and breast size; the
larger the breasts, the more expensive the girl. It was common for these girls
to be used by the traders living on the island for sexual pleasures. If the
girls got pregnant, they were freed by the slave traders and their children
provided with French citizenship, which provided an opportunity of freedom for
these girls in an evil, twisted way.
Africans
reaching La Maison des Esclaves were categorized into men, women, young girls,
and children, and separated accordingly into rooms. They were “hosted” by
their slave drivers for up to three months until they were deported to
Portugal
,
Brazil
,
America
, or
Europe
.
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The wooden doors that open into La Maison des Esclaves |
Shackled
at their necks to the walls of their confinements, 15 to 20 people were stowed
in rooms only 2.6 m (8.5 ft.) by 2.6 m in size. They were allowed to leave their
storage compartments only once a day to go to the toilets, moving in chains with
heavy iron balls between their arms and legs.
Once
sold, these men, women and children, abducted from their homes, their villages,
their families, would walk down a narrow stone corridor that opens directly onto
the
Atlantic Ocean
. Families were separated, the father sent to
America
, the mother to France, the daughter to
Brazil
, the son to
Portugal
. The slave traders packed the boats with their inhabitants literally like
sardines, lying side-by-side to allow for as much “produce” as possible per
square centimeter. The mortality rate on these long journeys to the “lands of
opportunity” was as high as 25 to 30 percent.
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The young girls’ room |
The
only opportunity for escape before deportation was to attempt to swim for
freedom, which some people did by jumping into the ocean. They invariably met
their demise, either shot by the slave traders or eaten by the sharks, attracted
to this particular island off the coast of Africa because the ill and the dead
were so commonly thrown out to sea here.
It
was from this point of no return that witnessed so much despair and agony, that
Pope John Paul II stood in 1992 and said, “From this African shrine of black
sorrow, we implore heaven's forgiveness. ... We pray that the scourge of slavery
and all its effects may disappear forever.”
Amen.
*
Nadia El-Awady is IslamOnline.net's Health & Science Page editor. She has a bachelor's degree in medicine from Cairo University and is currently studying for a master’s degree in journalism and mass communications at the American University in Cairo. You can reach her at
ScienceTech@islam-online.net.
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