walls thick with memories 

 

Stone arched staircases

Coloured like a flamingos

With each step, a feeling of dread 

Because 

Towering above them

the Colonial office 

Where fateful decisions were made

Families were separated

Torn apart like cattle

And tens of thousands perished 

 

In the centre of this small island

Which perches on the edge of Dakar, Senegal 

(The cold Atlantic ocean, like a winters duvet, enclosing from all sides)

Traps the infamous house of Slaves

Africa's biggest slave trading port during the 15th-19th centuries

One contemplates the difficulty of history 

If only the waves could have destroyed this beast 

Before it was allowed to destroy a whole continent 

 

And sat above the arched staircase

smug colonial governors lit their cigars

Tobacco slowly evades into the crisp, salty sea water—

Tobacco, handpicked in Caribbean plantations

Teaspoons swirled fresh tea leaves around in Han blue bone china teacups

Sugar to sweeten the appetite of greed—

Sugar and tea, Handpicked in Caribbean plantations 

Soft, white cotton shirts soaked up the sweat from the glaring African sun as the acidity of freshly ground coffee tingled the taste buds—

Cotton, Handpicked in Caribbean plantations

 

 

The triangular slave trade which supplied the commodities for the European enslaver, who revealed in their panaromic views of West Africa from their Stony island windows, away from the prying eyes of civilization, governing like an omnipresent torturer.

Oblivious, but aware, that below them,

Death awaited.

If not from starvation

From disease

If not from disease

From the journey beyond the door of no return 

 

Thousands perished within the hard stone walls of Goree island

yet nameless they were not

They had a son

A brother

A sister

A mother—

A mother who gave rise to a voice which resisted their captor