Goree Island, Door Way of No Return Senegal, West Africa Goree Island, Door Way of No Return

Map of Senegal, West Africa

Flag of Senegal

Presidential Palace of Dakar, Senegal

President Leopold Sedar Senghor First President of Senegal

Second President of Senegal President Abdou Diouf Second President of Senegal

President Maitre Abdoulaye Wade

View of Goree Island in the Atlantic Ocean

View Departing Goree Island’s House of Slaves

The Entrance of the “House of Slaves” This second “House of Slaves” was built in 1776 by the Dutch. The first was built in 1536 by the Portuguese, who were the first Europeans on the Island in 1444.

The Stairs of the “House of Slaves”

Room for fifteen to twenty men seated with their backs against the wall with chains around their neck and arms.

Chains the African carried when they went to the toilet.

This is the posture of the African captive with big iron ball between hands and feet.

Men were allowed to go to the bathroom only once a day.

This is how the men’s room looked from the inside This is how the men’s room looked from the inside. The conditions were so filthy that in 1779 there was a epidemic spread from the Island to the world.

A close-up view of the inside of the men’s cell.

View of the corridors

Entrance to cell for young children

Inside view of cell for young children The mortality rate for children was the highest in the house.

Entrance to young girls’ cell. Young girls were separated from women.

Young girls were sold for more money.

Inside view of young girls’ cell

Inside view of cell reserved for young girls.

The Weighing Room

The minimum required weight for men was sixty kilograms.

Inside view of cell for Africans who were underweight.

View of the corridors

Barred windows, forever present.

Corridor leading to the gate of the trip from which no one returned.

Door Way of No Return

Quotes from Boubacar Joseph Ndaye

Here you can have a better view of the upstairs and downstairs of the House of Slaves

On this balcony the buyers and the sellers were able to discuss each African ethnic group and assign a price to a human life.

The first floor where the traders’ lived was very different from downstairs.

President George Bush Visits Senegal, West Africa

President Bush Speaks at Goree Island, July 8, 2003

“For hundreds of years on this island peoples of different continents met in fear and cruelty. Today we gather in respect and friendship, mindful of past wrongs and dedicated to the advance of human liberty.”

“At this place, liberty and life were stolen and sold “At this place, liberty and life were stolen and sold. Human beings were delivered and sorted, and weighted, and branded with the marks of commercial enterprises, and loaded as cargo on a voyage without return. One of the largest migrations of history was also one of the greatest crimes of history”.

“Below the decks the middle passage was a hot, narrow, sunless nightmare; weeks and months of confinement and abuse and confusion on a strange and lonely sea. Some refused to eat, preferring death to any future their captors might prepare for them. Some who were sick were thrown over the side. Some rose up in violent rebellion delivering the closest thing to justice on a slave ship. Many acts of defiance and bravery are recorded. Countless others, we will never know”.

“Those who lived to see land again were displayed, examined, and sold at auctions across nations in the Western Hemisphere. They entered societies indifferent to their anguish and made prosperous by their unpaid labor. There was time in my country’s history when one in every seven human beings was the property of another. In law, they were regarded only as articles of commerce, having no right to travel, or to marry, or to own possessions because families were often separated, many denied even the comfort of suffering together”.

“For 250 years the captives endured an assault on their culture and their dignity. The spirit of Africans in America did not break. Yet the spirit of their captors was corrupted. Small men took on the powers and airs of tyrants and masters. Years of unpunished brutality and buying and rape produced a dullness and hardness of conscience….A republic founded on equality for all became a prison for millions. And yet in the words of the African proverb, “no fist is big enough to hide the sky”. All the generations of oppression under the laws of man could not crush the hope of freedom and defeat the purposes of God”.

“Down through the years, African Americans have upheld the ideals of America by exposing laws and habits contradicting those ideals. The rights of African Americans were not the gift of those in authority. Those rights were granted by the Author of Life, and regained by the persistence and courage of African Americans, themselves”.

“We can fairly judge the past by the standards of President John Adams, who called slavery “an evil of colossal magnitude”. We can discern eternal standards in the needs of Williams Wilberforce and John Quincy Adams, Harriet Beecher Stove, and Abraham Lincoln. These men and women, black and white, burned with a zeal for freedom, and they left behind a different and better nation. Their moral vision caused Americans to examine our hearts, to correct our Constitution, and to teach our children the dignity and equality of every person of every race. By a plan known only to Providence, the stolen sons and daughters of Africa helped to awaken the conscience of America. The very people traded into slavery helped to set America free”.

“My nation’s journey toward justice has not been easy and it is not over. The racial bigotry fed by slavery did not end with slavery or with segregation. And many of the issues that still trouble America have roots in the bitter experience of other times. But however long the journey, our destination is set: liberty and justice for all.”

“In the struggle of the centuries, America learned that freedom is not the possession of one race. We know with equality equal certainty that freedom is not the possession of one nation. This belief in the natural rights of man, this conviction that justice should reach wherever the sun passes leads America into the world.”

“We know that these challenges can be overcome, because history moves in the direction of justice…There is a voice of conscience and hope in every man and women that will not be silenced---what Martin Luther King called a certain kind of fire that no water could put out. That flame could not be extinguished at the Birmingham jail. It could not be stamped out at Robben Island Prison. It was seen in the darkness here at Goree Island, where no chain could bind the wound. This untamed fire of justice continues to burn in the affairs of man, and it lights the way before us.”

Note: Goree Island is a UNESCO World Heritage Site

Contemporary Life in Senegal, West Africa

View of the Meridian Presidential Hotel View of Hotel Meridian President View of the Meridian Presidential Hotel

Meridian Presidential Hotel and the Atlantic Ocean

Meridian Presidential

Meridian Presidential Swimming Pool

Lagon Hotel, Senegal West Africa

Savana Hotel Beach

Savana Hotel Swimming Pool

Savana Hotel, Beach and Swimming Pool

Senegal Handcraft Village Known as Artisanal Village of Soumbedioune

Craftsmen working inside the Artisanal Village

Craftsman working inside the artisanal village.

Inside the Artisanal Village

The Late Professor Cheikh Anta Diop

Map of the Rally from Paris to Dakar.

Doorway to the New Millennium

Senegal Pink Lake

Mouhamadou in the Door Way of No Return

Goree Today Goree is about a twenty minute ride from Dakar. It is a lively small town with sandy lanes shaded by palm trees and purple bougainvillae. The whole island is classified as a A World Heritage Site and is protected and regularly restored.