TRAVEL
By Cherno Baba Jallow
In 2021, I was in a group of tourists riding in boats in the Caribbean Sea. This wasn’t a typical holiday cruise or an island-hopping trip. This was a day-long excursion to Saona Island, a popular getaway for tourists in the Dominican Republic. My hotel had arranged the trip at a cost. At first, I was hesitant to go, because there was a certain scary feel to this escapade. It wasn’t the same thing as crossing the Basse River. This was a sea, the second most important member of the Atlantic Ocean family, a mighty spread of waters separating the continents of North and South America in the Western Hemisphere.
But a Google search overnight piqued my interest. I had to go. This trip was going to surpass the seeing of sights, I concluded.
From the fishing village of Bayahibe, we set sail for the island, a trip that lasted about two hours. Our travel guide, speaking in fluent English (Spanish is the official language of the Dominican Republic), gave us a rundown of Dominican history, culture and politics. He told us our destination was no ordinary place. It was renowned for its place in history. Christopher Columbus landed on the island in 1492 during his second trip to the Americas. He met with the native Taino Indians, the inhabitants of the island. Movies like the Pirates of Caribbean, The Curse of the Black Pearl and Blue Lagoon have featured this island, further adding to its allure .
As our guide plumbed the depths of history, I felt a surge of excitement about the rare opportunity presented to me on this trip. I was destined for new frontiers of knowledge in geography and history.
Just as we were about to reach ashore, the guide gave us his final delivery: ‘’Not far from here,’’ he said, pointing his hand in the direction, “the Caribbean Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean.’’ The two bodies of water have other meeting points in the Caribbean: Bahamas, Dominica, Puerto Rico, Barbados, St. Lucia, Antigua and others.
This nexus between the Atlantic and the Caribbean came as a big surprise to me; I never knew the Atlantic Ocean extended this far. From here on, my trip sequed into wild ruminations about the events and people that co-existed in these waters and on these coastlines hundreds of years ago. It now became clear to me that the slave ships from West Africa didn’t need to take circuitous routes to get here during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. They just had to stay on the Atlantic until they reached the Caribbean Sea off the tourist town of Sosua, 60 miles from here.
African slaves, from places including The Gambia, Senegal, Nigeria, Benin, Angola and Congo began arriving on the island of Hispaniola, now separately called Haiti and the Dominican Republic, in 1503, over 100 years before they went to the United States colonies, and thus marking this island as the site for the first black presence in the Americas. Some accounts point to the black presence even earlier. During his second voyage to the area between 1494-96, Columbus came with a few Africans from The Gambia and Senegal. They were either slaves or fellow crew members, the accounts aren’t conclusive. Columbus left the crew behind and returned to Spain. In 2009, University of Wisconsin anthropologists and researchers revealed that dental records of the exhumed bodies of Columbus’s crew revealed the presence of at least one African during the explorer’s second voyage.
In 1492, Columbus made an accidental discovery. He was looking for a route to Asia and mistakenly thought he had reached his destination when he arrived on Hispaniola. His discovery led to European colonialism in the Americas, first by Spain, Portugal, France and England. It also led to the enslavement of the native Taino Indians, who were forced to work in gold mines and sugar plantations under brutal conditions. A substantial number of Taimos died due to hard labor and diseases contracted through their contacts with the European settlers. So Spain had to find new workers elsewhere. They went to Africa.
We disembarked from our boats and landed on the island, inhabited by fishermen and adorned with Mangrove trees. To preserve the island’s quaintness, the Dominican government has largely shielded it from the furnishings of modernity. Hut houses spread around.
Throughout my stay on the island, my preoccupation ranged from sightseeing to Internet surfing to self-introspection. I was on my phone a lot, searching about this place and about anything pertaining to the arrivals and experiences of the African slaves. As a Gambian and a West African, I felt a certain kind of kinship with these slaves who were brought all the way here —- this is far, far away from home.
There are no records on how many Gambian and Senegalese slaves were sent to the Dominican Republic. But the SeneGambian area is deeply connected to this Caribbean country’s history. In 1522, the first ever slave rebellion in the Americas took place in Santo Domingo, the first European colony in this region of the world and the current capital of the Dominican Republic. ‘’The men who rebelled were of the Wolof ethnic group, from the Senegambia [the former confederation in West Africa between Senegal and The Gambia],’’ the BBC published in its weekly features newsletter called The Essential List in 2020.
The Wolof slaves picked up arms against Diego Colon, Columbus’s son and plantation owner. They had been working for him in Santo Domingo. The rebellion failed and many of the slaves were killed, some by hanging.
My trip, initially meant for a leisurely activity, turned into a day of historical exploration, meditatively. When you find yourself on hallowed historical premises, it is almost certain that your thoughts will take a leap into the past. You will feel and smell and touch history. Glimpses of the past will come dangling before your own eyes.
I have visited the Dominican Republic three times now, and each time I felt I needed to find something, anything tangible, about my fellow Africans —- Gambians and Senegalese, in particular —- who were shipped here as slaves. The records are thin or unavailable. And in a country whose population’s ancestry is about 45% African, it is hard to take kindly to their evident unfamiliarity with the continent and their lack of enthusiasm about their African identity. But that won’t stop me from visiting —- again.
TRAVEL By Cherno Baba Jallow In 2021, I was in a group of tourists riding in boats in the Caribbean Sea. This wasn’t a typical holiday cruise or an island-hopping trip. This was a day-long excursion to Saona Island, a popular getaway for tourists in the Dominican Republic. My hotel had arranged the trip at The Fatu Network
