The journey from the Lagoon or river side, where the enslaved and chained persons disembark from canoes to continue the burdensome walk on the sandy slave route is tiring.
One of the characteristics of the enslaved person is that he can't complain. Who would he or she complain to? The lamentation of their misery was usually to an unseen force that they believe in. The lamentation is hope that their sorrows and condition will change.
Tour guiding guests on the slave route at Gberefu, Badagry or any other sites requires professionalism. The position or place of the tour guides should never be undermined in heritage interpretation for visitors to have a total experience.
An enslaved person is another persons property. This is the most dehumanizing condition on earth. To be owned by another human being is evil because an enslaved person don't have a will or purpose for living except the owners will.
The experience on "the slave route" is important and must be handled by a professional tour guide also known as heritage or nature Interpreter because this path that was threaded by the former enslaved ancestors is the most sacred part of the tour. It capsulate the reality of the terror the enslaved ancestors experienced.
The highlight for me is the stop at the slave spirit attenuation well, that Anago Osho calls "the well of memory loss". At this point, Anago usually emphasize the reality that ancestors were enslaved both physically, mentally and spiritually.
After drinking water from the well, why do enslaved persons become weak, and lose their memory? It is argued that the well was charmed and others believed the water in the well was drugged. According to Keith Cooper, "the Africans were drugged to prevent aggression at the last minute before boarding the ship". Mr Cooper is an African American heritage researcher and philanthropist. The reality is that either the water was charmed or drugged, the purpose remained the same.
Another fear could also be the thought of enslaved persons revolting on the slave ship. Despite these acts, there are records of slave revolts on the atlantic ocean.
Majority of the enslaved Africans were stolen from the hinterlands, and shipped out on the coast during the transatlantic trade.
From time immemorial, every villagers in the hinterland of Africa know about the oceans and these are described in different ethnic groups mythologies and folklores, but in ancient times many did not witness it as a result of the distance from where they live.
It was traumatic for the enslaved who walked on the different slave route from the hinterlands to the baracoons and again on another slave route to the sea which ended on the slave ship. across the coast of West Africa.
Imagine the thoughts on the mind of an enslaved person, who believes in the unknown and seeing the ocean for the first time. The thoughts of the sea tide could be of a body of water that is alive. The huge slave ship could be the thoughts of been fed to an animal because they were usually transported to the ship in batches. These thoughts are traumatic.
The highlights on the slave route is inexhaustible.
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