Doors of Gorée

Gorée Island is known as one of the darkest chapters in human history. A place where millions of Africans were held before being forced onto ships and carried across the Atlantic, never to return. I had read about it. I thought I knew what I was sailing toward.

On the 25 minute ferry from Dakar, locals went about their day the way people do on a commute they've taken a hundred times. A few tourists. The ordinary rhythm of people going somewhere. As we approached the island, I didn't recognize it.

From the water it looked like somewhere you would choose to go. Bright painted doors. Children playing soccer on the beach. The smell of the ocean. The sound of laughter.

My wife was attending a retreat on the island. While she was in sessions, my destination was the House of Slaves. But this is a 70 acre, car-free island. You don't walk anywhere without wandering first. And wandering the narrow cobblestone lanes, kids playing with their dolls or running carefree past me, transfixed by the color and brightness of those doors, I kept forgetting where I was going.

Then I found it.

Given the weight of what I was about to walk into, I had done more than my usual research. I knew that Gorée Island is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I knew that historians debate the precise numbers of people who passed through this specific building, some argue millions, others far fewer, and that the controversy around those numbers is real. What no historian disputes is what this island represents. From the 15th to 19th century, this was one of the largest slave trading centers on the African coast. An estimated 12 million people were taken from Africa and carried across the Atlantic during the transatlantic slave trade. Most never returned.

But knowing something and standing inside it are completely different things.

I stood in a cell roughly the size of a parking space. Twenty men were shackled here, iron weights of 22 pounds chained between their legs, backs against the wall, held for months waiting for ships that would take them somewhere they couldn't imagine. I didn't move for a long time. I just stood there, trying to make myself understand what it meant to be a body in that space, at that time, with no way out.

Then I walked into the next room. A small sign told me what it was. The children's cell.

I thought about my own kids.

Most nights around 1am, one of my 4 year old twins wakes up in the dark. Xavion or Tyson. Our bedroom is right across the hall. They know exactly where we are. And still I'll see their small shadow appear at the far end of the long hallway, wandering, crying out our names. Lost in a darkness that isn't even that far from safety.

I walk to them. I pick them up. I nestle their head against my shoulder and walk them back to bed whispering the same thing every time. "It's dadda. You're safe. I'm here."

My 8 year old daughter Winston handles it differently. She'll wake up in the night, come from the other end of the house, down two flights of stairs, and crawl into bed between my wife and me. No crying. No words. She just needs to be flanked by both of us before she can sleep.

The children held in that cell were 4 years old. Some younger. Some older. They knew their parents were somewhere. Across the courtyard. Still on the island. That close. And completely unreachable.

No one walked down the hallway. No one whispered that they were safe. No one was coming.