Although I had visited the Island of Goree before on my previous trip to Senegal, on last year’s trip I still wanted to visit it again. Ile de Goree is this somewhat beautiful island, a short ferry ride from Dakar, that between the 15^th and 19^th centuries CE was the world’s biggest slave-trading centre. It sees a lot of tourists and surely is the most visited place in Senegal by foreigners. So to skip it when I was vlogging all my experiences just didn’t make sense.

Not only that, this time I decided to take a guide instead of roaming the island freely without really understanding the history or what I was looking at as I had in 2007. Firstly, to get there you go down to the Dakar port which is a stone’s throw from the Dakar train station. Here regular ferries depart to Ile de Goree.

This time around it was more formal, there was a ticket office and you had to pay an extra tax, and they let people through to a waiting room before being led to the ferry. My memories of 2007 was walking up to the ferry, buying and ticket and hopping on board, and the port was much less developed too. Tickets as of 2023 were 5200 CFA (around 8 Euro) and 500CFA for tax.

The journey is actually quite nice and you get a view of Dakar to your right on your way out to the island where you get off on a singular pier. To the right of the pier as you arrive is a small beach where some choose to swim. It’s quite an open spot and the main sights that people take in are to the left where you will be approached as I was by guides or people with shops – who may connect you with a guide. Which is what happened with me a lady approached me, found me an English speaking guide and asked me to check out her shop before leaving the island.

My guide’s name was Muhammed, and I can’t recall what I paid for the short tour but I would guess it was 15,000 – 20,000 CFA which really is not that much, about 30 Euro. I have this tendency to stop recording spending if I’ve been away for months in the last week or so of the trip and I’m regretting it right now!

The colonial buildings are many and kept in excellent condition, frequently painted and looked after. Today there is a small but tight community living on the island, and their principle income I presume is tourism. There are also a number of artists and people generally support each other, coming through Covid and little tourism over the last few years has been super tough of these sort of communities. Even in 2023 I was taken by the stark difference in the number of visitors to Senegal in general and Goree as compared with 2007 where the island was packed.

The tour had a few stops of note. The Maison D’esclaves – the House of the Slaves – is perhaps the most important stop. This building is where prospective slaves were kept – to be fair it was no more than a prison, and in fact it probably makes prison look pretty comfy. Small rooms would be crammed full of people and many, many would die because of the conditions. There was a section for women too, they could be there for months. Basically it was a process of seeing who was the strongest. It’s a testament to absolute worst of humankind and they way it treats other of humankind.

There is a door they open and it pretty much leads straight to the ocean. Once people went through there they were put on boats to the New World and never saw Africa again. Ile de Goree is one of the most western points of Africa, making it one of the closest points to the Americas.

From there I was taken to a place where the make this amazing ‘sand art’. Different colours of sand layered on top of each other to make some quite beautiful art. Be sure to check this out in the video.

Continuing on to the south of the island (you arrive on the eastern side for reference) we climbed up this hill along which artists displayed their paintings. At the top of the hill it’s a little like a fortification and there you see these guns – Google Maps says they are the ‘Guns of Navarrone’. Used to defend the island when other colonial powers came by and in the Second World War I believe. When France handed back control to the Senegalese of Senegal, naturally they broke the guns so they could never be used again. Today they remain though as a poignant reminder of just how much the Colonial powers really cared about their colonies. IE. They didn’t.

Not far away is a memorial to the Abolition of Slavery. France abolished slavery in 1848, so it still hasn’t been two centuries. Indeed you can still find different kinds of slavery in the modern world sadly, albeit not on the massive and accepted scale it once existed.

I also made a stop at the 1830 Church of St Charles which has been nicely preserved. After the tour ended I did end up spending a bit of dough in the lady’s store as well, it was the end of the trip so the timing was good. There’s also the IFAN historical museum at the northern tip of the island which for some reason was closed although the internet said it was and should be open. This is housed in a fort and just outside is the Statue of Emancipation, a symbol of the island, the struggle and the hard won freedoms that should be taken for granted.

I spent around 3 hours maybe 4 on the island. Which I think is an okay amount of time to spend there, you could do more for sure or even stay on the island if you felt like it. It’s an eerily beautiful place to visit but I feel the people are in general, friendly and warm.

Thanks for visiting today. Take care wherever you are in the world, may the journey never end!