For the fans of Roots or Missy Elliots' Work It, you'll be familiar with Kunta Kinte's legacy. But it has particular poignancy in his native Gambia, where a former slave trading post casts a shadow over his village, Juffure.
Once you've reached the port town opposite Banjul of Barra, it's a very bumpy ride (seriously, you'll need a sports bra for this one) to Albadar on the coast of the River Gambia.
The red clay (company name drop) road snakes through luscious green grass and marshland. Passing megalithic anthills and compound communities whose way of life has remained unchanged for centuries.
Out of season and at 8am, the village of Albadar had an eerily still feeling. A handful of fishermen lined the jetty, casting their nets into the River Gambia.
The first thing you notice is the monument to emancipation. A human form statue with a globe head and broken chains. A symbol to the atrocities that happened during the transatlantic and trans-Saharan slave trade, plus the slavery that blotted all empires, epochs and enterprise, to this very day.
Monument to the emancipation of slaves at Albadar, the 19th-century unfired British cannon pointing menacingly at the island, nothing but a dot on the horizon from the mainland.
A grey journey across the vast width of the river got us to the rickety jetty.
The impact of climate change was immediately visible. Erosion had pulled a lot of the fort into the sea. The only thing left is the administrative block in the centre. The government has made an attempt to keep the elements at bay, but I don't think a few blocks on the cistern side will help.
The cistern was built as there is no freshwater, so it needed to be shipped onto the island. It was stored in two enormous cisterns but without a cover, so slaves had to drink parasitic water that would give them diseases like cholera and dysentery.
Fort James cistern with erosion defence in the riverIts crumbling structure, rounded battlements, and rusty cannons could still be seen.
The island was a strategic trading point of the Portuguese, who called it St Andrew. When the British took over in 1664, they named it Fort James, after the Duke of York (who later became King James II of England).
It was a trading post administered by the Royal Africa Company who used it to export ivory (from Ivory Coast) and gold (from Ghana). They later started to trade in humans.
The entire fort was built by slaves using bricks from a local quarry, bricks imported from England and morter made from shells. The "holding pen" for hundreds of slaves as young as seven is visible.
At first, the Portuguese and later the British had to burn the wooden and thatch villages in order to flush people out to force into slavery. Later, African kings - who had long been part of tribal slavery - were now a critical part of the transatlantic slave trade. Kunte Kinteh himself was captured while out hunting.
After they were bought here, they were assessed for their saleability by the clerks that lived in here in large quarters above their offices, which can still be seen.
If any people attempted to escape or didn't comply with orders, they were put in a dungeon. Up to 20 people were crammed into a tiny space, sometimes changed to the wall. They were fed through a tiny barred window and beaten.
The British then installed cannons to stop Lithuanian pirates from storming the island and stealing their "cargo".
Cannons and flagpoles to mark British superiority in the Gambia and keep pirates at bay.We were also told when ships came to the island and the people assessed, those not fit for work would be drowned. So after being kidnapped from their homes, torn apart from their families, exported in inhumane conditions, they might be branded and put on the "Journey of No Return" to America or killed for not being good enough to sell.
Slavery is such a stain on history. European superpowers weren't the only nations to have slaves, however, whereas the Greeks, Romans and Egyptians used them to build incredible feats of human progress (and entertainment), the transatlantic slave trade was pure economics.
It wasn't a case of to the victor, the spoils. The objective was to take non-threatening people and sell them.
This history isn't taught in state schools (at least, not in my day). And it should be. It might help people understand why Africa is the way it is. It might not begrudge foreign aid or immigration
All I know is that Africans indirectly built Europe. And the directly built America - from culture to the White House. American belongs to them and that may be all the reparations Africa needs.
First published on 13/09/2019 23:54
