During my previous trips to Africa, I have been blessed to
explore some of the interior of East Africa- Nairobi, Kenya; Arusha, Moshi,
Mwanza, and Bukoba, Tanzania; Kampala, Jinja, and Nakaseeta in Uganda. I have eagerly learned about the history of
some of the tribes therein, the colonization, the evangelization, the conflicts
of East Africa. Now, as I start to
explore coastal East Africa, I am learning about a different chapter of
Africa’s history, and very dark chapter, but perhaps the most relevant chapter
for an American visitor in the 21st century.
The Slave Trade.
There are three different sites that I visited in Tanzania
that still stand as memorials to the abhorrent practice, so I will address them
in three different posts: Bagamoyo, Zanzibar, Pre-Abolition, and Zanzibar,
Post-Abolition. I will be writing what I
saw in person at the museums and monuments I visited, which means that there
may be some historical inconsistencies based on the information available to
me. I think these are interesting
because they highlight the different perspectives that have been passed down
through history, a jarringly recent history.
Also, in the harried moments before leaving my house way
back on June 30th, the DVD box set I just happened to grab was the
30th anniversary edition of Roots. It seems now to have been serendipitous, adding
a pointed relevance to my personal experiences in Africa. If you
haven’t seen the miniseries yourself (as I hadn’t prior to this trip), I cannot
recommend it enough.
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