Dec 2022 Day #3 Slave Trade

Transatlantic Slave Trade Ouidah, Benin

Friday, December 23

Pictured is our group with smiles too big for such a solemn place. So much heart ache happened here, the “Door of No Return.” This is the last stretch of the 2-mile sandy road leading to the open ocean behind us. The arch marks the last point of the route enslaved Africans walked prior to being shipped to various destinations. The road starts at the historical slave auction square, then runs past the final tree on African soil, ending here where the slaves were loaded on waiting ships. In the 1990s, the Beninese government, with help from UNESCO, began a project to commemorate the victims of the slave trade. 

The 2022 movie, “The Woman King” takes place at this exact location. Unfortunately, it inaccurately tells the story to world audiences. The facts, according to the Beninese government, are these: 

OVER THE COURSE OF TWO centuries, more than one million enslaved Africans were deported from the town of Ouidah on the coast of Benin. They were marched in chains from the town’s slave market to the nearby port, where they would board ships to unknown destinations, the majority of them never to return.  They were often blindfolded, and marched in circles around the few trees or few obstacles along the way, to make them forget where they came from, surely physically so they wouldn’t try to escape, as well as symbolically.  Today, a memorial arch, known as La Porte du Non-Retour (The Door of No Return), stands on the beach, a monument to the horrors of slavery.The massive slave trade in Benin was a cooperative effort between African rulers and private merchants. From the 1580s to the 1720s, the coastal Kingdom of Whydah exported around 1,000 slaves a month, many of them taken captive during tribal wars in the interior. These enslaved men were then taken to Ouidah, where they were sold to European and Arab merchants. This practice continued with the Kingdom of Dahomey, which conquered Ouidah in 1727, up until the end of the slave trade in the 1860s. From the slave market in Ouidah, the enslaved Africans had to walk a few miles to the coastline, where ships waited to take them away, to Jamaica or Brazil or some other unknown destination.  Small rowboats would take them out to the larger ships, and some would jump overboard in the rough water rather than face the uncertainty of the voyage or the life ahead.  For most, the beach at Ouidah was the last 

sight of Africa they would ever see. 

A large memorial stands at the end of the Slave Route. It is the Door of No Return, a memorial arch, built in 1995. Both sides of the arch are covered in images of enslaved men and women. 

The main mural on the inland-facing side depicts enchained men walking toward the sea, a ship waiting for them in the distance. 

On the sea-facing side, the mural shows them walking away from their homeland, a single tree in the distance representing the land that most of them would never see again.

This ancient tree marks the location of the slave market square. 

Often blindfolded, the slaves were marched in circles around the few trees or obstacles along the way, to make them forget where they came from, surely physically so they wouldn’t try to escape, as well as symbolically. Pictured above is said to be one of those trees.