Goree Island, Senegal, March 5, 2010

Recently during a trip to Dakar, I made a visit to Goree Island, a beautiful island in Senegal with a history as cruel as the island is beautiful. Where tour guides tell sad and horrific stories from the dark and disturbing past of African Slaves.

For tens to hundreds of millions of Africans, Goree Island is where the journey out of Africa began. It is the place where they were shackled, weighed, separated, whipped, raped, fatten to meet the 60 kilos requirement, and some times thrown alive to sharks if they were sick or under weight, as they awaited slave ships that would take them on difficult journeys across the Atlantic, to distant shores where they would be auctioned into slavery.

Goree Island has an ugly history, but once outside the slave castle, the island is stunningly beautiful. Please join me on this tour of Goree Island, Senegal, March 5, 2010.

A Garden on Goree Island	The rooms in the slave castle are small and sometimes 40 people were kept in one tiny room.