Goree Island, Senegal: The former slave outpost of Goree Island is a troubling place. From here, over one million slaves were shipped to the Americas over a period of nearly 200 years.

The slave trade itself lasted longer, nearly 350 years, during which time it’s estimated that nearly 25 million slaves were shipped from Africa. A shocking 6 million of them died on the journey. Scholars of the African slave trade estimate that roughly 6.3 million slaves were shipped from West Africa. The rest came mostly from Central and Southern Africa.

When Daily Nation (Kenya) journalist Joy Wanja visited Goree in 2009, Mr Eloi Coly, a curator at the museum, told that her that if were not for the slave trade, Africa’s population today would be equal to China’s!

For me it was mostly what I heard, rather than what I saw, that messed with my head. The famous “Door…