July 4, 2003 - Reuters: Peace Corps Volunteer Florence Patterson, descended from slaves and living on Goree, says Bush's visit will raise the island's profile
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July 4, 2003 - Reuters: Peace Corps Volunteer Florence Patterson, descended from slaves and living on Goree, says Bush's visit will raise the island's profile
Peace Corps Volunteer Florence Patterson, descended from slaves and living on Goree, says Bush's visit will raise the island's profile
Caption: The entrance to the the Slave House in Goree Island and its "door of no return" to the churning Atlantic and onto ships to ferry them over the "Middle Passage," and the crossing to the New World and a lifetime of servitude.
Read and comment on this story from Reuters on President Bush's visit to Goree Island in Senegal which for centuries was the end of the line for thousands of slaves driven from West Africa's jungles. Florence Patterson, a Peace Corps volunteer descended from slaves and now living on Goree, says Bush's visit at the start of a five-day African tour will raise the island's profile. "People who adore him will look and listen, and people who oppose him will look and listen," the 57-year-old said. Read the story at:
FEATURE-Bush to ponder past and present at slave site*
* This link was active on the date it was posted. PCOL is not responsible for broken links which may have changed.
FEATURE-Bush to ponder past and present at slave site
By Diadie Ba
GOREE ISLAND, Senegal, July 4 (Reuters) - For a moment next week, tiny Goree Island will be the centre of the world as President George W. Bush visits one of the best-known memorials to millions of Africans sold into slavery.
The island, just two miles (three km) off Senegal's breezy capital Dakar, was for centuries the end of the line for thousands of slaves driven from West Africa's jungles.
Shackled and scared, they hobbled through the Slave House, out its "door of no return" to the churning Atlantic and onto ships to ferry them over the "Middle Passage," as the crossing to the New World and a lifetime of servitude was known.
Florence Patterson, a Peace Corps volunteer descended from slaves and now living on Goree, says Bush's visit at the start of a five-day African tour will raise the island's profile.
"People who adore him will look and listen, and people who oppose him will look and listen," the 57-year-old said.
As Bush wanders through Goree on Tuesday, he will reflect on the past but also on a complicated present in West Africa, a region ravaged by wars and crippled by want.
Further east along the curved coast, "the land of the free," a homeland founded in 1847 by emancipated American slaves, is in crisis, and clamouring for U.S. intervention.
Liberia has suffered 14 years of almost non-stop war, its people are tired and they want U.S. soldiers to help end the fighting. So far Bush, who will not visit Liberia, has not declared what action he will take.
The president will arrive in Senegal on July 8, and then travel to South Africa, Botswana, Uganda and Nigeria to discuss the fight against AIDS, counter-terrorism and economic growth.
NO NAME, NO LANGUAGE, NO TIES
It is not clear how many slaves actually passed through "the door of no return" on Goree between the mid-16th and mid-19th century. The red Slave House is much smaller than the whitewashed slave fortresses that dot the coast of Ghana.
But estimates suggest between 11 and 12 million slaves were transported from Africa by European slavers. Up to a fifth may have died on stinking ships during the interminable voyage.
Thirty men used to be locked in a cell eight feet (2.5 metres) square on Goree. They were fed once a day, branded like animals and then packed onto the ships.
Slavery had existed in Africa since ancient times, with slaves captured in battle sometimes sold across the Sahara desert to Arab traders. But Europeans turned it into an industry.
For Patterson, the tragedy is still vivid.
"I visualise my brothers, my ancestors in that struggle to go out that door to never return. No one knows the pain that you feel when you take away a name, when you take away a language, when you can't have ties to where you come from."
DEMOCRACY AND SLAVERY
Like his predecessor Bill Clinton, who visited Goree during an African tour in 1998, Bush is unlikely to apologise for slavery, and will instead focus on how to help Africans move forward into a brighter future fashioned by true democracy.
It might seem a slightly out-of-character visit for a conservative Republican whose election was condemned by many African Americans, who felt disenfranchised by the chaotic 2000 vote. Some have criticised the visit as empty symbolism.
But Bush has given African Americans key roles in his administration -- Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice are to the forefront of his foreign policy -- and is trying to break the traditional Democratic stranglehold on African American support.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said it was "important" for Bush "from a moral point of view to go to Goree Island to talk about slavery, to talk about freedom and to talk about democracy."
Senegal is a fitting place for Bush to accentuate the positive. The country is seen as a rare example of democracy working in Africa. The mainly Muslim state is headed by pro-American President Abdoulaye Wade, who was elected in 2000.
Wade was among foreign leaders who received a personal phone call from Bush on the Iraq crisis, and he has strong political ties with the United States, despite historical links with Senegal's former colonial master France.
Some Senegalese welcomed Bush's visit as a chance for America to counter French influence in West Africa, but others were sceptical about the brief trip. Bush will barely spend half a day in Senegal before flying on to South Africa.
"Hello and Goodbye," headlined one local paper this week.
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7/9/03
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IN 2006 in Akwesasne Mohawk Territories, a Mohawk Indian Reservation that lies on the border of Canada and the border of Upstate New York, will be hosting a United Nations Peace Youth Summit. All youth from all over the world are invited.
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By Anonymous (82.198.250.3) on Saturday, April 28, 2007 - 8:52 am: Edit Post |
when did slavery started in nigeria and is there still slavery and corruption in nigeria
