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Île de Gorée

As we boarded the ferry that crossed the channel, my first thought was, how convenient: an islet off the coast just far enough to prevent captured Africans from swimming to freedom. But they'd make it, perhaps. Gorée is the shape of the African continent itself, with a thickened section and a tail that curves around a shallow harbor, and therefore somehow emblematic of the continent in all its forms. No sooner had our boat approached the dock then the colors leapt out at us: the turquoise of the mid-morning sea, and the muted shades of the little homes at waterside. The island once housed little more than the slave castle where slaves waited in misery for the next westbound trans-Atlantic brig, and a couple of administrative buildings. But these days it's home to an evocative little village of colorful adobe buildings set alongside sandy island streets.

If Ghana's slave castles illustrated the ruthlessness of the slave trade, Zanzibar illustrated the greed – even African – that accompanied it, and Benin illustrated the long-term social impact, then Senegal's Gorée Island showed that somehow, life can go on afterwards. We visited the island – an islet, really, off of Dakar's inner shore – early one Sunday morning to experience this old slaver's entrepot for ourselves.

My pocket was picked while buying boat tickets, by the way, affording me an easy glimpse at the irony of feeling violated while visiting an island where unwilling men and women were shipped by force across an ocean to a life of servitude. As we boarded the ferry that crossed the channel, my first thought was, how convenient: an islet off the coast just far enough to prevent captured Africans from swimming to freedom. But they'd make it, perhaps: modern Dakar sponsors a "Gorée Swim" marathon in which talented swimmers cross the channel to the island (I haven't participated). Gorée is the shape of the African continent itself, with a thickened section and a tail that curves around a shallow harbor, and therefore somehow emblematic of the continent in all its forms. No sooner had our boat approached the dock then the colors leapt out at us: the turquoise of the mid-morning sea, and the muted shades of the little homes at waterside.

The island once housed little more than the slave castle where slaves waited in misery for the next westbound trans-Atlantic brig, and a couple of administrative buildings. But these days it's home to an evocative little village of colorful adobe buildings set alongside sandy island streets. A little Christian church graces the front of the park, and there's a mosque at the island's south end at the foot of its only hill. But if you could just mentally block that one castle structure at the other end, you'd think Gorée was an artist's colony, not a slave entrepôt. In fact, as entrepôts go, it was a minor slaving hold, secondary to larger holds in Saint Louis and Banjul. Even Ouidah and Cotonou contributed to a greater transport of slaves.

What makes Gorée important is its accessibility to foreign tourists interested in better understanding the slave trade. Several American presidents have visited; I've seen a wonderful picture of former US President Bill Clinton looking sorrowfully out the "Door of No Return", and George W. Bush visited as well, as have millions of foreign travelers who have hopefully come away with a more personal understanding of what the slave trade really was about. UNESCO has made it a World Heritage site, helping preserve Gorée and its architecture.

But outside of the fort, slavery seems to be ancient history, unlike elsewhere we've visited. Life on Gorée is languid, even by West African standards. We watched teenagers swimming from the dock or splashing in the harbor waves. Around the park, painters and sculptors displayed their wares and chatted. We watched two cats humping in the tall grass, and children jumped in the puddles from the afternoon rainstorm. And the colors were phenomenal in the light of the African sun, a panoply of reds and oranges. We were fortunate to have friends there, or rather a friend of a friend. She entertained us in her home, and served us roast lamb and pilaf under the shade of the enormous baobab tree in her yard; we ate on straw mats on the sand. But I couldn't help remembering Adam Hochschild in King Leopold's Ghost who wrote

Like any system that gives some human beings total power over others, slavery in Africa could be vicious. ... In other ways, African slavery was more flexible and benign that the system Europe would soon establish in the New World. Nonetheless, the fact that trading in human beings existed in any form turned out to be catastrophic for Africa, for when Europeans showed up, ready to buy endless shiploads of slaves, they found African chiefs willing to sell.

On Gorée it was easy to believe the evils of slavery are behind us and we can go back to being happy. It's more complicated than that of course, but we had a good time, as did the Africans we saw there with us. I'd like to think this is a good sign for humanity. If nothing else, it's a testament to something else I've noticed every day of the many years I've now lived in Africa: the resilience of the African spirit.

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