When I stepped onto the pebble-paved pathways of Senegal’s Gorée Island, I saw bright-pink flowers along vines that wrapped around the tops of purple doorways. Children laughed and played soccer on a sandy area in the distance, and the waves emitted a peaceful sound as they crashed against large rocks along the coast. Beyond those tranquil scenes, however, stood a building that detailed another story. Since Senegal gained its independence in 1960 after more than three centuries of French rule, Gorée Island, home to the House of Slaves, has become a distinct memorial to the slave trade.
“It’s steeped in history,” Cherif Mbodji told me. We’d come from the Houston restaurateur’s hometown, Dakar, on a roughly 30-minute ferry ride across the Atlantic Ocean. During that time, Mbodji detailed a history that’s common across West Africa: European colonists came to African countries along the coast, built settlements, captured people from those lands, and trapped them in castles, forcing the kidnapped Africans to live and work under barbaric conditions before being shipped away in chains to the Americas.
A descendant of slaves myself, I’ve retraced my ancestors’ history along the Western coast of Africa, which has become interwoven with my work as a food and travel writer. Understanding how the Black diaspora lived, ate, and moved along the coast has helped me to better understand a culture forged despite horror. My identity was carried over from the very shores I now found myself standing upon.
The Door of No Return at the House of Slaves.
Iviaggidimanuel/Shutterstock
Declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1978, Gorée Island is most visited for the House of Slaves, once a holding cell for kidnapped Africans and a site of business deals and the ruthless pursuit of power for the Portuguese, Dutch, British, and French colonists who, at one point or another, maintained some sort of operations on the island. It is a place where countless Africans forcibly exited the continent, never to return home. Today, while Senegalese people live on the island, the population varies by year, and most know and recognize the island for its historical significance. Mbodji had been generous enough to schedule a family trip around the time I was in town, ensuring not only that my first experience in the country would be rich with education, but also that I’d be accompanied by warmth and generosity.
Warmth and generosity are integral to Senegalese identity. The word teranga, which means “hospitality” in Wolof, is a common word and practice throughout the culture, so it’s painful irony that a place that values such warmth was so ruthlessly exploited.
Old houses and palm trees in the square on Gorée Island, which roughly 1,600 people call home today.
Photo by Curioso.Photography/Shutterstock
As we made our way to the House of Slaves, toward the back of the island, we passed elders chatting with one another on cobblestone stoops, likely an architectural relic of the island’s European presence and 20th-century renovations, according to the guide that joined us. Mbodji pointed out mammoth baobab trees, a source of heavily sought-after nutrients, and sand artists doing demonstrations.
By the time we reached the bright pink house—an undeniably striking, albeit peculiar structure—I was beginning to understand what this island was. Like so much of West Africa, it carried the weight of a complex history birthed out of an unfettered European chase for wealth and power rooted in the idea of racial supremacy, paired with a resounding endurance forged solely by the native people who’d reclaimed, rebuilt, and redefined sacred lands. The history of the House of Slaves, and the slave trade, is filled with horrors, similar to those in Ghana’s Cape Coast and Elmina Castle (though to what degree they occurred in the House of Slaves remains a point of contention among historians). While Senegalese guides detail the horrific history of the castle, some historians argue that the house largely served as a private residence. Signares, typically daughters of white French colonizers and African women, did hold power—one of the few groups of women in the world at that time to do so—and oversaw parts of the slave trade on the island.
As I walked through cells with hardened mud floors and insulting slits of light, our guide shared barbaric stories: for example, the European practice of punishing disobedient pregnant African women by digging a hole and beating them over it in front of other slaves as a warning. It was clear that white colonial powers did what they could to dehumanize, degrade, and destroy African identity and African humanity. And yet—as evidenced by a courtyard packed with both Senegalese residents determined to learn about and preserve history and white travelers grappling with a history not yet properly atoned for—a different spirit has prevailed, inspiring us to reconsider how we view and treat one another. Fueled by the coincidence of increased resistance against white supremacy and a Pan-African movement revived by Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah during the ’50s and ’60s, numerous West African countries gained their independence while Black Americans, descendants of many of these countries, sought freedoms in the United States. Just four years after Senegal declared independence in 1960, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law, launching an ongoing effort to eliminate discrimination and violence based on racism.
Before heading back to Dakar for a Senegalese feast, I walked with Mbodji’s family to the top of the House of Slaves. Unlike the bottom floor, the second floor, where European colonists and signares lived, wasn’t defined by dirty, dark holding cells and torture chambers; instead, white walls and high ceilings allowed the airy breeze from the ocean to fill the space. A bright-yellow hallway bestrewn with turquoise doors led to a balcony overlooking the beach, where blue waters rushed against beds of rocks, and plants grew nearby.
To reach Gorée Island takes about 30 minutes by ferry from Dakar.
Photo by Curioso.Photography/Shutterstock
I took it all in, processing a difficult past and considering a future in which the Black diaspora is truly free and exists with the same rights and privileges as white people always have—an existence that continues to elude Black people across the world. I walked out of the space, through the island, and onto the return ferry to Dakar. As we reentered the city, I looked around and listened: Vendors were selling street snacks, there was music sparking joy and dance within a group of friends hanging out on the street, and smells of hot, sizzling dibi (marinated, tender strips of meat roasted over a fire) wafted through the hot air. At once, I recognized a place in reverence of but not bound by its defining past, one eager to continue its journey into a bright future.
