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Pictures from Dailymail......President Barrack Obama and family,today visited the Goree Island's "Door of no return" in the outskirts of Senegal after expressing his disappointment to his host over the country's law that criminalizes homosexuality. But president Macky Sall is quick to reiterate that the country is an Islamic state and is not ripe for that yet.
Goree Island is only one of the ports used to transport slaves in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Maison des Esclaves was built between 1780 and 1784 but now it is used as a tourist destination and a museum that tells the horrors that the African slaves faced.
SEE PICTURES & BRIEF HISTORY OF GOREE ISLAND
It is believed that a few hundred slaves were shipped
through the port on an annual basis until the late 1780s.
The 'House of Slaves' contains small square cells- only
about 8.5 feet in length- that were used to hold up to 20 men waiting to be
shipped off to the Americas.
The men were forced to sit with their backs against the wall
as their arms, legs, and necks were chained. They were only released from the
cell for an hour each day while they waited for up to three months for their
ship.
Women and young children were kept in different- though
similarly horrific- cells on the island.
The slave traders would look over the slaves while they were
free during the day and negotiate over their varying prices based on their
muscle tone and ethnic background.
Once the traders found the slaves that they wanted, the men
would make the harrowing walk down the corridor to the 'Door of No Return' to
board the ship.
Some slaves tried to jump off the wharf and into the sea and
others tried to run out of the corridor but neither route worked: the men were
either eaten by sharks who circled the island waiting for the remains of dead
prisoners, and the guards shot the men who tried to run.
It was reconstructed and built as a memorial museum in 1962
before being named as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1978.
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