Off the coast of the African country Senegal, near the city of Dakar, lies Ile de Goree. For 312 years, until 1848, this island served as a center for a flourishing trade in human souls. Archives show that between 1763 and 1775 alone, more than 103,000 slaves were traded from Goree through the French port of Nantes.
Today though, by visiting the Slave House Museum, visitors could only get a taste of slavery's ugly past. A tour guide named Joseph Ndiaye recounted some of the horrors experienced by the helpless victims. According to him, "their ancestors were deported, their families separated, their hides branded, like so much cattle. The mother might go to America, the father to Brazil, the children to the Antilles." "After being weighed," Ndiaye explained, "the men were appraised by their age and origin, with certain ethnic groups prized for their hardiness or as supposedly prolific breeders.The Yoruba, for example, were prized as stallions."
Underweight captives were fattened like geese before they were auctioned. Slave traders chose young women to use for their sexual pleasure each night. Rebellious slaves were hanged by the thorax instead of by the throat, to prolong their agony.
If the hands of time turns back and bring us to a world where slavery exist, you'd see yourself on which side?
