Dakar, Senegal

Dakar ia a city of about a million people and the capital of Senegal. We’ve never been to Senegal and decided taking an Oceania excursion here would be wise. West African countries can be challenging for tourists. We chose to visit Goree Island, a UNESCO World Heritage Site off the coast of Dakar.

When travelling in non-Western countries, it’s important to go with the flow. Our excursion was scheduled to leave at 8:30 am but Senegalese officials didn’t arrived to clear the ship until about 9 am and then the ferry was no longer picking us up at our port but at another port. That meant waiting for shuttle buses to get the ferry terminal. We finally got to the island just after 11 am. It was well worth the effort.

“From the 15th to the 19th century, Goree Island was the largest slave-trading centre on the African coast. Ruled in succession by the Portuguese, Dutch, English and French, its architecture is characterized by the contrast between the grim slave-quarters and the elegant houses of the slave traders. Today it continues to serve as a reminder of human exploitation and as a sanctuary for reconciliation.” - UNESCO. It’s estimated 20 million slaves passed through the island between 1536 and 1848.

While the island is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, about 2,000 people live there. We were able to visit the historic sites as well as observe every day life. The key sites are the Fort which is now a museum, the church and The Slave House.

It’s The Slave House that captures the island’s barbaric past. Built in 1772 and established as a museum in the 1960s, there were once more than 30 of these houses on the island. Unfathomable.

The cells were small and were separate for men, women and children. They were often imprisoned 30 to a cell for months awaiting ships from Europe to take them to South America, the West Indies and the US. Many died in the cells before walking through the Door of no Return, separated from their families and never to see Africa again.Read more