Gorée: A lesson on redefining and reclaiming

"I couldn't go in. I feel like an idiot. I feel stupid and frustrated with myself. Like you really just can't buckle down and learn from this place? I just can't help but be reminded of the barracks, of the gas chambers; the empty rooms with claw marks on the walls. The physical signs of people and feeling their presence even though they are no longer there. And I'm not trying to compare our histories. I'm not. Because they are each their own, and each deserve their own telling."

I wrote the above passage as I was sitting outside of a slave house on Gorée Island. Gorée is an island off the coast of Senegal which has a very complicated history. It was originally discovered by the Portugese and then taken over by the French when they colonized Senegal. In addition to being a French fort, Gorée was also an essential part of the Atlantic slave trade. The island acted as a transition center to preparing slaves from all over Africa, to be sold abroad.

Upon entering this island, I did not know this history. It honestly just looked like a tourist attraction with many beaches and cool, crisp water I was excited to dive into. Only when we started our tour and our professor uttered these words, did I get an inkling of the type of space we were entering into: "Recognize that we all are going to experience what we're about to see differently. Do not overstep your bounds and remember your positionality. This is crucial in experiencing Gorée's history."

So here I am sitting outside of this slave house, finally understanding my professor's words. I just couldn't believe that an island with so much beauty could also contain such an ugly history. It reminded me of Auschwitz in the springtime. I wanted to weed out all the flowers and take away all the beauty so no one would be confused about the ugliness of that place. At first, I wanted to do the same with Gorée, to avoid anyone being blind, like I was, to the space they were entering. But then I thought, "How could I?"

Gorée is now home to so many people who deserve to take in its beauty and benefit from the tourism economy. Why should they not be able to reclaim the place that once brought so much horror to their ancestors?

These ideas of redefining and reclaiming stuck with me throughout my time on Gorée. Especially when my professor, Dr. Thiam discussed redefining freedom from a decolonial perspective. He was explaining to us the importance of the drum that was used to communicate between people on the continent. He explained that they used the same drum in every slave space in order to communicate with one another. This highlighted the African identity of kin and community. Once slaves were taken into their master's possession, they were stripped of all their familial names, in order to disassociate them from their communities and thus, take away their freedom. However, they still managed to create a shared experience by having similar cultures across plantations and other slave locations. Thus, my professor argued, Africans were never slaves. They were never not free because they remained a community despite being separated from one another. Their community kept them strong and able to resist their oppressors.

This idea of redefining freedom honestly blew my mind. I am someone who thinks of things in very cut-and-dry ways, that I would never have thought to change the perspective of freedom in regards to slavery. I am also stuck with a Western, colonialism perspective, that I cannot help but see things through this lens. But redefining freedom with the decolonial perspective opened my eyes that Gorée as it is today, represents the African definition of freedom. A new community is flourishing on the island, while still remembering the ugly truths of its past. We can't forget our past, but we must also not let it completely define our future.

This is something I've also learned from studying the Holocaust; that if we choose to let our suffering define our future, than we are still, in a way, oppressed.

Today was a learning process as I navigated Gorée. I redefined, I saw people reclaiming, and I was reminded of my own people's history and how much two different peoples can learn from one another.