Regarding Slavery, Oppression, feeling good on the beach, and a little bit of Otis Redding

Before training ended, our teachers took us to Ouidah, which was the slave port in Benin for centuries.  Most people were taken from the interior of the country by the King of Abomey. The King of Ouidah would then sell the slaves on behalf of the more powerful King of Abomey in exchange for firearms, alcohol and silk.  While most of those goods made their way back to Abomey, you can imagine that no King was going to just let these treasures slip by tax-free.  In this, the King of Ouidah went from being complicit in the slave trade to also profiting.  Ouidah is mostly Fon, and the Fon like many tribes in the South of Benin, have a long history of Voodoo practices and beliefs.  Benin is, for those of you who don't know, literally the birthplace of Voodoo. It resembles very little of the pentacost drawing, pin pushing, witchdoctoring voodoo that you see in movies, but it is the origin of that interpretation.  Anyway, selling people into chattel slavery for a bunch of savage white people is definitely some bad gris-gris. One King had an enormous tree enchanted to protect himself from the spirits of the people he was sending across the ocean.  Men would circle the "Tree of Forgetfulness" nine times and women would circle it seven times, to make sure that their spirits would not remember where they came from. (Just one of many steps taken to try to force the Africans into forgetting their past.) Then there was also, I believe planted by another king, the Tree of Remembrance which would trap the spirits if they did make it back to Ouidah.  They would remember to come to that tree and therefore vindictive spirits could not haunt the King.  The interesting thing about the Tree of Remembrance is that it was basically just in a neighborhood, a neighborhood where people had lived for a very long time.  There were barefoot, mostly naked, babies running around, women crouched over their cooking stoves. I wouldn't be surprised if the children in the village tried to climb the tree once in awhile. While the impact of the slave trade absolutely effected the lives of millions across the continent, it seems as though it is a less poignant atrocity when looking at it specifically from it's point of origin.  The timelessness of suffering in Benin is not just contained in this brutal shipping of 20 million human lives, but lives on in the empty bellies of children and behind the wary eyes of women who never stepped foot inside a classroom.  I realize I am being condescending, but I do not know how else to make this point. The same way that I have nothing to do with slavery, being born in this place and time, they have nothing to do with the slave trade.  Only in so far as I was born in and lived in a country with all of the worlds' opulence that thrives on the depletion of resources in poor countries such as this one, I have everything to do with slavery. 

The inescapable plague is greed at any expense and the only antidote for our consciences seems to be rationalization.  But hey, I should not be allowed to be self-righteous.  I live in a house at least one hundred times nice than anyone else's in my village.  I have a college education, a life-time of good health, and in village I am without a doubt the wealthiest person I know.  I have a refrigerator for godsakes.  

Ouidah was interesting for me because ever since I was a young teenager in Bourdeaux, I have wanted to visit a slave port. I really wanted to internalize the narrative I knew so well.  Packed like spoons in a drawer, iron chains cutting into festering wrists, the separation of linguistic groups to prevent mutiny, the desperation and countless deaths. I thought visiting a place that has held these poor souls before they were marched to the sea would make me feel closer, or moved, by the experience.  The truth was that the people here don't see the same blockbuster gore that I have had described.  Their history is one of magical kings, betrayal, oppression and corruption.  Their stories aren't about the Portuguese's slave ships or the Dutch trade or tight packing.  They're about communities, families and tribes.  

To be honest, I was a little disappointed with the entire trip.  The mass graves were in fact quite sad.  I left a rock at the memorial that I had found at the fort where the slaves were kept, and felt sacreligious standing there in my pale feet, thousands of long ago decomposed bodies beneath them.  But that was it.  At the beach where I watched my friends play in the surf and climb on top of each other and pose for pictures, I laid back in the sand and listened to Otis Redding. 

Three thousand miles I've roamed

Just to make this dock my home 

It was impossible to picture emaciated, brutalized people marching west toward an undeniably horrifying future.  The sun was shining beautifully, and I couldn't help it, as I was trying to conjure an image of a 17th century slave ship on the horizon, I just thought, "Now that's home. That is where home is." Picturing my friends and family living their lives on that side of the world, I just smiled and leaned back to enjoy the sun.

Sitting on the dock of the bay

Watching the tide roll away 

Sitting on the dock of the bay, wasting time.