The rest of the day was filled with visiting important sights mixed with a lot of fun. The first sight we visited was Goree Island. The entire world, if able, should visit the island. It is where 20,000,000 slaves were taken out of Africa for the slave trade, and is featured in Alex Haley's Roots. While waiting for the ferry to bring us over to the island many of us enjoyed watching and lisrtening to local artists and street vendors. One young musician caught the interest of Destiny, Alanna, and Courtney and Destiny purchased an African rhythm instrument consisting of tree nuts attached together with a string. When you twist the string, the tree nuts bang together and sound like a small drum.
During the tour of the island we were shown where the slaves lived. While inside the large, plantation-style slave house you could feel the pain that the walls hold. The tour guide said that "Africa forgives, but never forgets," and no one should forget that part of the world's past. Of the 20 million slaves shipped from Goree Island, only 15 million survived the Atlantic crossing to their new slave homes in the Americas. It made our sleepless night on the plane of two days before seem very trivial. We also learned the sobering details of the slave trade. For example, any adult male who weighed less than 60 kilograms (132 pounds) was not shipped right away. Instead the thinner and weaker slaves were kept in bondage at Goree and force fed large amounts of a local bean mash that fattened them up quickly. The big, strong male slaves were used for breeding with females with 10 men and 20 women caged together until the women conceived children. The children were raised up to about age two and then they were taken from their mothers and shipped off to America. The guide said that the children were especially prized because they were born in captivity and therefore could be trained to accept their slave lives as "normal" right from the beginning. He compared it to training a dog to be obedient. Slaves who rebelled or resisted orders were kept under the stairwells in pens where they had to remain on hands and knees for days and weeks at a time. They were given little or no food. These all are examples of the pain we felt embedded right in the walls of a typical slave house in Goree. There were over 200 such houses on the island, each one containing hundreds of slaves at any one time. There were houses owned by the French, the British, the Dutch, the Portuguese, and others.
The "door of no return" was one that brought up many emotions for us thinking about what it would have been like leaving through a door never to return to our own home again. The tour guide told us many slaves would jump to the cement walls below to commit suicide rather than living out their lives under slavery.
While at the island we were able to watch a local artist create a beautiful piece of work using glue and sand. The sand is held to a board using baobob sap as glue. It is very strong glue. After the artisan finished his painting, he purposely dropped it on the floor to show that the sand grains would not come off.
After we left the sandpaint shop, Courtney made two new friends who were kind enough to take a picture with us. As soon as Courtney kneeled down, our two young friends jumped right into her lap. They made us feel very welcome in their village.
The next sight that we visited was a national monument representing the Renaissance of African Culture and Liberty since colonialism ended in the 1960s. The monument is HUGE and shows a man and woman holding a baby. It represents the rebirth of freedom, dignity, and hope for the African family after centuries of exploitation and devastation by outsiders. We climbed over 200 steps to reach the top! We also visited the local women's basketball practice of one of our hostesses, Jaure, and let her team know that we will be cheering them on during Friday's semi-final game for the women's national championship in basketball!
As we were meeting members of the basketball team, we heard some wonderful drum music coming from behind a stone wall near an apartment complex. With a little searching, we found local drummers who performed and danced with us. Beatriz could not resist showing us a few of her best Mexican dance moves. Very cool!
All in all, we really had a great day! Filled with a great deal of learning, and insight as well as much needed fun!
--Blogged by Jessica Radcliff and Dr. J.
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