Nairobi — A quiet island carrying tales of millions of men smuggled out of the continent and into slavery four centuries ago, sits silently like a giant boat in the Atlantic, keeping to itself the dark secrets of its past.

Boys swim in the shallow waters, chanting songs to visitors arriving by ferry, oblivious of the island's rich, albeit turbulent, history.

This is Goree Island in Dakar, Senegal; home of the House of Slaves, which is now a museum that shows the horrors of the Atlantic slave trade.

The House of Slaves was built by the Dutch in 1776; the first one dates back to 1536 and were built by Portuguese, the first Europeans to set foot on the island in 1444.

The one-storey building draws huge contrast in both the ground and lower floors.

The ground floor houses dilapidated cells with rough floors and poorly finished clay walls with names inscribed on them, probably of visitors to the museum.

The more spacious upper floor has a smooth finish of orange with antique tables where the traders dined as they negotiated and set prices for the slaves locked up downstairs.

Fed once a day

Ten cells with miniature openings that served as windows are situated at the ground floor, with labels on the doors of their previous occupants.

Measuring 2.60m by 2.60m each, the rooms were reserved for 15 to 20 people, seated with their backs against the walls, chained around the neck and arms.

According to the curator, the captives were fed once a day just to keep them alive until they were "delivered" abroad.

"Over 20 million slaves were transported across Africa," Mr Eloi Coly, a curator at the museum told Saturday Nation during a recent visit to the island last week.He pointed out that were it not for slave trade, Africa's population today would equal that of China.

This small house contained between 150 to 200 slaves, who had to wait close to three months before they were matched with their buyers in Europe and later transported via ship to work as labourers.

Women, girls and children were also held in separate rooms awaiting transportation to Europe, where they were also ripped of their African names and given Anglo-Saxon names of their plantation masters.

A man's value was tagged to his weight, whereas that of a girl or woman was based on the state of her breasts and her virginity. During the holding time, the men would be weighed to ensure they met the 60 kilogrammes minimum labour requirements.

If they weighed less, they were placed in cells to be fattened with locally grown starch-rich beans, referred to in Senegal as Niebe.

The slaves were held in the cells all day, except when they were released once a day to visit the toilets, but had to remain chained to a big iron ball that hang between their hands and feet to prevent them from escaping.

Slept on cartons

Children were held crammed next to each other away from their parents, with no birth certificates, and their age determined by their dentition. Those aged between six and 17 slept on cartons in separate rooms from their mothers.

A family comprising a father, a mother and children would be sold to different traders in Europe, reducing the chances of any family reunion. A tiny corridor at the rear of the building leads to the sea where the slaves boarded ships to unknown destinations beyond Africa.

As one departs from the House of Slaves, the statue of liberation stands 50 metres away from the museum, a symbol to mark the end of slavery. The statue depicts a man and woman holding each other, with the man separately holding chains that had earlier tied up his hands and feet.

Today, the dungeons remain clearly labelled, whereas the top rooms showcase chains, ropes and other weapons that were used by the traders to inflict pain and torture on the captives.

In Goree Island lie poignant lessons on our cultural heritage as a continent.