Goree Island

I have been running since I lost a day and haven’t caught up yet. My cell phone is still on California Pacific Time, yet, my body and the solar clock are doing something else: 3:18 PM and 12:18 AM –I think. Today I went to Goree Island. The gore is gone…all that is left is a tourist attraction: namely, how much can we profit from the sorrows of the past? How much money can we make from African pilgrims from the Diaspora?

I was up way too late reading Children of the Waters a novel by Carleen Brice. It’s a book of coincidences and spells, among other things, like finding one’s way home after being lost or given away, one’s identity stolen or hidden on purpose.... But as they say, the body remembers what the mind forgets and often it’s those memories which are the links between broken hearts --keys to mending and unlocking.

Family is something else. We don’t choose it, it chooses us, often with the best intentions. I certainly think this is true of Walter Turner’s Senegalese family, Coumba and her lovely mother, Suzanne and siblings, aunts, grandmother and cousins. They certainly choose me, in this my ancestors were looking out for homegirl. Walter called me two days before the day I was leaving--and then the day of.

On the way to the Island
On the ferry we saw ships with a new shipment of taxis and trucks. If anyone ever wondered why Africans seemed to gravitate to this field when they come to America, check out Dakar. I saw a few minivan buses, but nothing big away from the airport…but lots of taxis—beat up and nice and comfortable and the beat up cars also had passengers.

Back on the beach at Goree…while sitting with Aziz who was trying to eat and swat flies… across from us at an adjoining restaurant, a kora player wandered over to the table where we were not seated and began serenading the Europeans…some with French accents. Was this payback or a man who clearly had lost his mind singing and posing with the descendents of the people who are the reason Africa lost its rich heritage in more ways than one. When I turned back he was at the table with them drinking a pop.

Still locked up at Goree or The high price of freedom
Black folks are messed up all around the world. America certainly doesn't have the monopoly.

Everything costs money, lots of money in Dakar, even retracing the slave route—the ferry to Goree, entrance fees for the dungeon: Senegalese, children and other. The price should be: African descendents from the Diaspora: FREE. Senegalese and Africans from elsewhere on the continent, resident price and Europeans descents: double the highest price.

From haggling with the taxi drivers who want to charge crazy expensive prices, to the shop keepers at Goree who want too much money for a postcard; to the woman with the toilet tissue to the bathroom at the ferry building where to use the toilet costs 100 CVAs for a toilet without a seat and no tissue, to the actual ferry which doesn’t pull all the way up to land, rather one has to leap from the boat-- It doesn’t matter that a sailor is there to help…what if you miss and fall into the ocean--this is my return to the Motherland.

I am kind of happy I can't speak the language. I can be silent and smile and let the words wash over me like so much water --oceans separating me from my heritage and ancestral knowledge.

Okay, so we are on the island and I think, now on to the dungeon or slave houses…think again. It is couple of 1000s more CVAs to go in and the guide is speaking French, the slave catcher’s language, the colonizer’s language. It would have been better to speak Wolof, not that I understand that either, but its the principle of the thing...it's all principle...principles Africans don't seem to share with those of us who were stolen away.

I didn’t understand a word of French, so we walked around while he was talking.

Goree Home?
I didn’t know people made the island their home. On the way to the pier Aziz showed me where homeless Senegalese slept in shanty houses, while on the highway there was a lane for padestrians to walk. I think I saw a man with a cart—interesting. I don’t know what kind of petrol they use, but the exhaust chokes you as all the taxi drivers keep their windows down. No one gets out on the left side of the car, this is the passing side and to do so is to invite injury or death. But the drivers drive on the side of the road we do so for an American, the driving would be easy until you tried to figure out the roads and who has the right-a-way.

I haven’t seen the cinema or been anyway outside of the metropolis and if I lived here, I don’t think I would want to live in town. I think I’d like something a little more rustic. Dakar is under construction, even on Goree there were buildings going up. There was a church and a few museums, the Women’s Museum was closed and the history one, with guns—canons on top was also.

Under a tree in front of the mosque was a gathering of Muslims with an imam leading a talk. I don’t know what language they were speaking, but Aziz didn’t recognize it. Everywhere there were cats. I like cats…babies and adults eating the garbage, hanging out under the tables in the outdoor restaurant. So were the flies. One was cooked in Aziz’s dinner, a definite turnoff. It was moments like this which made me wish for linguistic skills. I would have asked for another plate, had he told me.

The museum is his family home…another home this family owns. One would guess this family is upper middle class. Aziz goes to private school. He said the public schools are not safe for students or teachers. Sounds like OPD (Oakland Public Schools).

It’s dusty everywhere. I haven’t figured out how the men keep their whites so white. I think it was cool seeing the men with thikr beads everywhere. The police don’t smile and they look like they don’t play either. I am not sure what child could be encouraged to approach such a person; compassion don’t cross one’s mind—not that they aren’t but, the lesson, that police are our friend, is perhaps not a lesson taught here to kindergarteners. Perhaps we should take a cue from this truism—if in fact the police here are friends of the state government, not the people, which is the case in America too.
The lesson to kindergartners is “know your Miranda rights.”

On the way back to Dakar from Goree, as we waited we saw a man swimming in the Atlantic. I still haven’t touched it. I think for New Years I want to participate in a ritual in the countryside. I’d like to feel the ancestors in a way I haven’t felt them yet; funny, I feel them more at the Maafa Ritual in the Pacific coast than in Africa where we started the journey.

I thought is amusing that my young friend didn’t realize that I knew the story of our people, even better than he, because I a descendent of those whom he spoke of. He hadn’t wanted to come inside because it made him sad, but I’m glad he did. I could guess the meaning of most of the signs in French and what I couldn’t he read to me. A guide offered to give me a tour in English, but I hadn’t been given anything since I arrived two days ago and I had just enough money to get us back to town.

Aziz is quite the haggler and from taxi to taxi we walked until one driver settled for 2000 CVAs. He complained for half the trip and he was a great driver, just missing the toes of pedestrians, finding hidden alleys when the traffic was slow, shining his high beams in the face of oncoming cars which didn’t seem to know he was on the road too. He was good, and if I’d had a little bit more money I would have tipped him, but I didn’t so Aziz translated my complement to him. He said, he’d been driving 27 years.

I hadn’t realized that the Goree was a port that Africans from other countries such as Guinea, Ivory Coast, Benin, Sierra Leone, and perhaps a few other countries were brought as well and then sorted like cloth.

I was so intent on not carrying too much, I forgot my photo card with space and when I picked up my camera the card was full. So what do I erase? I asked myself. I thought it interesting that of all the cards I brought, I chose the one with Kamau Seitu’s funeral and
Baba Ken's An Evening in Africa, Mama Naomi and Brother Zak’s Winter Concert, and my Reality Tour of my Eastside neighborhood for those who think money grows on trees… in Africa, I wanted proof.

Goree was one place though where no one bothered me about taking photos. The Door of No Return, looked just as I imagined it looking at the rock formations in Big Sur, the Pacific Ocean carved window where water ebbed and flowed, gushing and languidly receding just like life. We climbed to it over the slippery rocks first before going in. I was surprised to see litter, a soda can.

There is no where to throw away trash in Dakar, at least I haven't seen trash receptacles. I picked the can up and then set it back down because I didn't know where to put it.