Island of Gorée

It’s just a 20-minute walk from the center of Dakar to the ‘Gare Maritime’ from where the ferries to Gorée leave. This is a well-organized service, with online timetables, clear ticket prices (unchanged for years so it seems, 5200 XOF for the return plus 500 tax), and a boarding area with plenty of seats and a French bakery. It's nothing like the Elephanta ferry I took a month ago from Mumbai – with its lack of signage, old wooden boats and the dirt all around. Just don’t forget to bring your passport here, as it will be checked when you enter the harbour area. If you want to sit at the ferry's top deck, enter via the back entrance and choose a seat on the right for the best Gorée arrival views (I sat on the left, staring at a Maersk containership). The crossing takes just 20 minutes.

The core zone comprises the whole island, which measures about 900x350m. Right off the boat, you walk underneath a Welcome to Gorée-sign that doubles as a Plaque. Check! There’s no shortage of UNESCO WH emblems on display around the island anyway, they are also present on every information panel and at the town hall (hand-painted). 

Gorée is a pleasant place to roam around on your own. There are no cars and no persistent sellers or wannabe guides. It has many picturesque small alleys worth checking out. Most buildings date from the late 18th and 19th centuries and were built …

I spent several days in Dakar in June 2018. On my first morning, I caught an early ferry to Île de Gorée, which, at least according to UNESCO, was the largest slave-trading center on the African coast from the 15th century to abolition in the 19th century. Although many historians disagree with that assessment, Île de Gorée has become an essential stop for the African diaspora, including President and Mrs. Obama, who visited the Maison des Esclaves and its windowless cells and “door of no return” in 2013. I also visited the slave house, even though academics have generally agreed since the 1990s that the house was more likely to have been a private home than to have been involved in the slave trade. Whether or not Île de Gorée played an important role in the transatlantic slave trade, the small island has become a moving place to contemplate the human toll of African slavery.

Goree is a small pleasant island situated a 30minute ferry ride offshore from crowded ugly Dakar. Free of vehicles, its sandy streets are lined with pleasing old houses and flowering shrubs. There is a fort, a castle (with some impressive early 20th century gun emplacements) and several restaurants – in its own right it deserves a visit if you are in Senegal. BUT – beyond these anodyne aspects, lies its claimed “history” as a centre of the Atlantic slave trade and its subsequent emergence as “a memorial to the African diaspora (which) continues to serve as a reminder of human exploitation and as a sanctuary for reconciliation.” (UNESCO long description).

The central point for this “memorial” is the “Maison des esclaves” (photo). Within you will be shown what are said to be slave prison rooms and the “gate of no return” through which slaves were sent to the Americas. You will be regaled with details of the undoubted horrors of the slave trade. You will be shown plaques commemorating the visits of numerous world leaders – a visit is de rigeur for any such person visiting Senegal – Mandela, the Clintons, George W Bush and Pope John Paul II among them.

However, whether this building was ever a slave trading prison and, indeed, whether Goree itself was ever a significant entrepot of the trade is a matter of considerable doubt. But beware - to question any of this is regarded by some as the equivalent of …