"One of the Dark Places of the Earth":
Virtual Visit to Gorée's 'House of Slaves'
2 December 2000 - In conjunction with the 'Black Roots' festival (29
November - 3 December) being held on Gorée Island in Senegal,
UNESCO is launching a web based "virtual visit" to the 'House
of Slaves'. "This infamous spot is now a universal shrine, where
all of us, from every continent, may come and commemorate, in sorrow,
the tragedy once inflicted by human beings like us on so many of our own
kind." declared UNESCO's Director General, Koïchiro Matsuura,
in a message for the event. Listed on UNESCO's World Heritage register
since 1978, Gorée Island was the point of departure for hundreds
of thousands of African men, women and children sold and shipped to the
A joint initiative of the UNESCO Dakar Office and
the Organization's Information Society Division, in collaboration with
other UNESCO's Services and Forut's Dakar Media Centre, this Virtual
Visit is a unique experience for internet users. The 'House of Slaves'
can be visited on-line, through photos, texts and videos. Currently in
English and French, this multimedia production will also be available
shortly in Wolof and Japanese.
Boubacar Joseph Ndiaye, chief
conservationist of the site, provides explanatory glosses for the
virtual visit, tracing three centuries of slaving activity on the
island. While not extensive, these do help to bring home the horrors of
the crimes committed at Gorée to those not familiar with the
history of the place.
The accompanying photographs, oddly,
reveal an architecture and landscape full of incongruously pleasant
colors and curvilinear forms. They still, however, leave little doubt
about the oppressive reality of the place - cells where Africans were
packed like sardines, chambers where men, women and children were
readied for sale (fattened like cattle if they failed to meet minimum
weight standards), the comfortable European quarters just above the
cells, and of course the legendary Gate of No Return.
Seen on the Net
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