Gorée, the Island that Remembers

Off the coast of Senegal, a short boat ride from the city of Dakar, there is a very small island called Gorée.

There are no cars on Gorée. The houses are painted apricot and rose and dusty pink, and purple flowers spill down the walls. Children play football in the little squares. The sea is everywhere you look.

But Gorée has something sad in its past, and it is important to say it gently and truly.

Long ago, people were taken from their homes on this coast and carried far away across the ocean, and they were not allowed to come back. That was a very wrong thing to do to anybody. On Gorée there is an old house with a doorway that opens straight onto the sea, and that is the door they were taken through.

Today the door is quiet. People come from every country in the world to stand in front of it for a little while. Some of them are the great-great-great-grandchildren of the people who went through it. They come back. They stand in the doorway their family was taken from, and they say: we are still here.

That is why Gorée is called a place of remembering. Remembering is a way of loving people you never met.

In the evening the boats go home to Dakar, and the island goes quiet, and the sea keeps moving the way it always has.

Goodnight, Gorée. Goodnight.