Goree: of Slavery, Signares and Foreigners with Cash

Dofokow in the Mande languages of West Africa translates to English as "history matters", or historical topics. This is an occasional blog about travels through Senegal, Guinea and Mali conducting research for my dissertation on the history of cloth during the period of Atlantic slave trade.

Goree Island, Senegal West Africa

 

 

 

Two of the hottest Hollywood films out right now deal with American slavery, "Lincoln" and "Django Unchained." The history of slavery in the United State is once again in mainstream cultural vogue, this time with A-list directors Stephen Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino putting this difficult subject before popular audiences in new ways.

So it was an interesting time to visit Goree Island, off the coast of Dakar, Senegal. The small volcanic formation off the western tip of Senegal (Dakar's skyline is clearly visible from the island) was unoccupied when Portuguese traders first came there in the 15th century, using it as a base from which to trade in gold with Africans, but then becoming the first among many Europeans after them to focus on trading slaves.

The settled part of Goree Island is so small you can walk leisurely around it in two hours or so. The biggest chunk of the tourist crowd that travels over daily by ferry from Dakar do just that before returning the same day. Every day. Like clock work. Beginning with the first ferry crosses over about 10:30, ferries arrive every two hours dumping groups of FWC ("Foreigners With Cash") onto the island famously associated with the Atlantic slave trade--although historians say the island played only a small role, contrary to popular belief.

 

Not only foreign tourists take the ferry, of course. Most travelers are Africans, including a few Senegalese and other African tourists and visitors. Many of the Africans are coming to visit family and friends while others come to work for the day in some tourism related way. Like the guy in the Orlando Magic cap who entertained the crowd on the ferry I rode over a few days ago.

Got Maracas?

He was all smiles and joy on board as he sang improvised songs about, among others, Cheikh Amadou Bamba, accompanied by a pair of local maracas. Not clear at all that the group of young Italian tourists who happily joined in the music making realized they were partying in praise of the founder of the Mourides, an Islamic Brotherhood. But hey, does it really matter? It was a fun way to pass the time. And the singer was selling those maracas (prices starting at 5,000 CFA/ $10, for the gullible and loaded).

Dear reader, before going further, it must be said that here in Africa, your blogger is a FWC too. No matter my actual purpose in coming, for now, I am but one tourist among many. The woman at the port in Dakar from whom I bought my ticket was surprised to discover that I am an American, a foreigner. She said, "Mais, you seem like an African!"

"It's a long story," I joked, moving past her into the large, crowded waiting room where people in straw hats were posing for pictures in front of a large, fake Santa Claus. After four years of intermittent trips to Africa, I have gotten used to a range of African responses to myself as an African American traveler, from "you must be one of us!" to, more frequently, "you cannot possibly be one of us! Where are you from?" I have learned to take none of it too seriously. It is what happens when you leave home to another part of the world: people are genuinely surprised to see you and they are not quite sure what to make of what they see.

Like everyone else on the ferry, I paid my 10 dollars and took the short ride here just a quick sense of the place. Once ashore, I made the rounds. In a couple of hours, I had walked from end of the island to the other: through the informative IFAN museum housed in a circular fort, through a quiet maze of dusty streets and old French colonial homes

Is this Africa? Or a village in France?

 

Is this Africa? Or a village in France?

and up a slope where vendors were selling hastily-made paintings, beaded jewelry, and trinkets. Here on Goree it is not easy to slip out of the structured role of an FWC--at least not right away. I felt like fresh fish swimming through a pond of hooks. "Bonjour! Ca va bien? Venez voir ma boutique! Come see my boutique! Nice price for you! C'est pas trop cher! Ok, Maybe later!"

Or, my favorite line from some local children, guileless, direct: "tsssst! Hey, Mister! Gimme some money!"

Things were no different by the time I reached La Maison des Esclaves (House of Slaves) home to the iconic "Door of No Return". There were some men (no women) standing around outside trying to make some money as "guides." Some had ID cards saying they were officially sanctioned and trained. As I approached I saw a tall guide leaving with an older European couple, having just been inside. I heard the woman say to the guide in heavily accented English, "but, I am glad tings ahv changed now! Daht slay-vah-ry is no more." The guide did not understand her. She tried again, "I mean you, for example, you are not a slave!" I did not hear the guide's response as they walked away. But even I winced.

Inside, the house and grounds were smaller than I expected (although upon reflection, I should have remembered the many 18th and even 17th century homes I have entered in my native Philadelphia). Once through a small vestibule, I was standing right in front of the curved staircases leading to the upstairs quarters and could look straight ahead through the lower portion of the building which housed slaves in a number of rooms beneath the staircase. At the very end of a darkened passageway was the rectangular opening to the blue sea.

FWCs hang out at the Pepin family home, now known as la Maison des Esclaves

Upstairs full of light and refreshing sea breezes; downstairs dark and stuffy. Get it?

 

A local guide helps to explain the site to a tourist

There is still much about this house in particular, and the island in general, that I am still learning. But the "Maison des Esclaves" appears to have been owned by Anne Pepin, a Senegalese signare, one of a wealthy class of mulatto women who were critical to business transactions between Africans and Europeans throughout this part of the African coast. (In other words, according to some American black nationalist interpretations, and the old fashioned American racial logic of the "one-drop" rule, I was basically standing in the foyer of a black woman's house!) It is still unclear who built the house (help me out if you know) whether it was Anne and her husband, or her brother Nicholas. Anne was reportedly the lover to the island's French governor in the late 18th century, Chevalier de Boufflers, to the apparent humiliation of his wife, Ann Sabran. It was Anne Pepin's niece, Anna Cola, who is depicted (in the lower left, wearing the white shawl) in an image of the home in 1839 about a generation after Anne Pepin lived.

 

Usually, the offspring of European men and African women, signares typically became the "local wives" of European traders who were valued for their family connections to local Africans as well as their facility with European language, culture and entree into the transient European society. Signares were frequently slave traders, slave owners and active in any number of other lucrative trades such as the trades in gum Arabic, in cloth and other commodities. Because of their wealth and location within a web of gendered, racialized social and economic relations, signares (from the Portuguese 'senhora' or 'lady') were often the figurative and literal "belles of the Ball," on Goree. In coastal settlements from the Senegal river to Freetown, Sierra Leone, they were key figures in trade between Africans and Europeans. Tastemakers, they are often represented in drawings and paintings from the period draped in varied and expensive fabrics and jewelry.

Where exactly did Ann Pepin and her house fit into this generalized picture, I don't yet know. It was apparently the activism of Boubacar Joseph Ndiaye, a Senegalese decorated veteran of World War II, that over time drew more international attention to Goree and to this house as a major site in the history of slave trade. A number of historians have since poked major holes in the assertion that the house was a major trans-shipment point for "millions" of slaves from Africa to the New World. This is not to deny the importance of the trade in slaves from Senegambia over four centuries or its many related horrors, but rather to insist on accuracy, clear-eyed analysis and credibility over sentimentalizing, moralistic posturing and opportunism.

Beyond that controversy, what role does the memory of African slavery play among the publics in Africa, Europe and the Americas? It is a question that US American audiences who see either of those two popular films now are freshly confronting. Both films focus tightly on the 19th century American national story, foreclosing consideration of the much longer historical period of Atlantic slaving, much less of the view from Africa. They seem only interested in constructing and reconstructing a kind of national US story. But as more African governments turn to tourism as a vital source of foreign cash, to what extent and in what ways will they continue to make use of the numerous sites along thousands of miles of coastline that testify to the trade? What national and international stories are being constructed in these sites? Which stories are being occluded and silenced? And how does the potential flow of FWCs to these sites affect the choices made?

Where do the stories of inter-racial slave trading couples, of "black" and mixed race women slave traders, of African kings, porters, canoemen, farmers and cooks as "agents" of the slave trade, along with those of European male traders, sailors and adventure seekers, and yes, the millions of enslaved people, fit into popular, touristic narratives of that period of world history?

What do you see?

 

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