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In Bagamoyo we learnt a lot about slavery. It existed in Africa since 800 A.D. and it was the Arabs who were the major slave dealers. But it was in the times of the colonial rule that it grew beyond all proportions - in the late 19th century, for example, around a million and a half of people in East Africa were sold into slavery.

Bagamoyo was the end station of slave caravans coming from the interior of the country. From the port the people were shipped to the central slave market in Zanzibar, which was closed due to international pressure at the end of the 19th century. Yet slavery was abolished in Tanganyika only in 1920!

The freedom certificate of a slave from German East Africa, year 1905

African people do not like to discuss slavery. They don't learn about it in schools, there are no articles about it in the newspapers, it's simply not a topic... because 50% of all slaves in East Africa were owned by Africans themselves! This is a fact Africans can't handle, but it is a fact - wealthy african plantation owners depended on slave labour.

There was a research done in 2000 in Bagamoyo which clearly shows what deep wounds slavery caused in the lives of the people. Most of all it shows that these wounds have not yet healed and are influencing their lives even today.

Children of slaves and slave owners were interviewed and many slave owners reported, that the families of their ex-slaves still come to them to consult them when making important decisions, for example when they want to get married (it was the privilege of a slave owner to arrange a marriage for his slave)! After 90 years of freedom they still come to ask permission! It seems the behavioural dependency and relying on others to do your decisions continues into the present. Also, many people in Bagamoyo live torn between two worlds, being children of slaves and slave owners at the same time, since many slave masters had their female slave concubines. How do you deal emotionally with this trauma when you belong to the victim and the perpetrator at the same time?