One peculiar characteristics of this museum is that it is housed in the same compound as a bar, eating joint, and a hairdressing salon. The signboard at the junction close to the museum itself had the name of the museum written in equally small letters as the other services offered in the premises.

It’s not altogether a bad thing. On the one hand, the presence of a bar might actually be a better attraction to the building than the content of the museum itself. From the patronage of the bar, it was clear that their is some complementarity at work there. The museum was closed because it was a Saturday and we couldn’t get to see the contents.

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Slavery in the world was an absolute evil, and its transatlantic brand has become one of the most visible and contemporary pointers to its gruesome reality. Many things have crossed my mind since I wrote the article for the Nigerian newspaper NEXT on my experience at Badagry examining the slave relics and the role of African (nay, Nigerian) families in the propagation of the trade. One of the pressing ones was whether it was right or moral or fair that descendants of the slave traders were the owners of the many private museums now at Badagry housing the original relics of the horrible time. Unfortunately it is not a slam-dunk open and shut case.

On the one hand is the right of any citizen to make money off of anything as long as it doesn’t pose any harm to the other person. On the other hand is the tug of annoyance in our heads when we realize that every time we pay money to gain access into the private museums, we continue to fund the machinery that once profited at the expense of millions of helpless lives. Then there is the added complexity we find in the need for information from whatever source. The slave trade is a historical fact, and there is so much that needs to be told about it. Generations after us will retain the same level of curiosity as us, if not more, and would ask questions. And who best to answer them than the true descendants of the slavers who know either from word of mouth or from family treasures of relics exactly what went on at the time and the role their families played.

In a normal working society though, one would expect that those artifacts would be in custody of a working government, with sufficient documents and audio-visual materials there detailing all that needs to be told about the period, and the proceeds going to take care of the citizens. Will this, if implemented, violate some principle of “free market” and private ownerships? Maybe. But when descendants of slavers still profit from the trade this indirectly, it rubs the nose of the society in the indignity, and it elevates evil one some level. The Mobee “royal family” of Badagry are an elite family already there. I don’t assume that they need any more of the dirty money that must come from tourists all over the world wanting to know about slavery. How do they even deal with the shame it must bring to ask people to bring their money to see what your ancestors used to enslave others? Have they thought about it, or don’t they care about what their lineage represent in history? I imagine a private concentration camp in Germany – if there was one – being run today by descendants of the racist anti-semitic people and profiting from it, whether or not their descendants still retain the same level of hate for the descendants of the victims. Or descendants of John Wilkes Booth being the ones in charge of the Lincoln Presidenial Museum earning money by showing off a few of the killer’s tools to the world. Something is definitely wrong there.

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We also saw the slave relics, and I got to try on some of the chains and manacles – a very moving experience. Then we saw the Brazilian baracoons where the slaves were kept before being shipped, and we saw the grave sites of the many influential figures in the slave trade. Then we went to the lagoon front and enjoyed the breeze while pondering history.

Enjoy these few pictures from the experience while I write a more detailed  report. I’ll put up more pictures when I have the time.

Photos by Liz Ughoro

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The way the Indians lost their land to the invading Europeans was a rather curious one – quite similar to the African experience. The white Americans approached them with a prepared text from the President, informing the awed natives that their land now belonged to an entity called the United States of America, and that more white people would soon come to displace them, and settle them in new places. To seal the “treaty”, the natives were given silver and gold coins that were said to represent coming in peace. The truth of the matter however was that the natives didn’t understand what the invaders were saying. All they wanted was to live in peace, so they agreed to everything without making sense of it. They probably thought that their guests were just going to settle among them in peace. Big mistake. By the time they realized it, it was too late. The land belonged to someone else, and they had to go elsewhere hungry, homeless and dispersed from their environment and means of livelihood. How messed up is that? The African experience was different only in the fact that we were not totally annihilated, and after a while, the land was given back – except of course in places like South Africa, Kenya, Zimbabwe and some parts of southern Africa. The Native American Indians were not so lucky. I think it must have been the presence of malaria that made Africa such an uninhabitable place for the “visitors”. After about a hundred years of exploitation, the invaders were as willing to go away as the Africans were willing to have them leave. But here is the similarity: artifacts, mineral resources, labour and artworks belonging to the great kingdoms were – mostly forcibly – taken over and given to the King, the State or the President as the case may be. It ceased to belong to the original owners from the time they however unwittingly agreed to accept the new folks into their midst. Real, real curious, that word: civilization and enlightenment. If you asked the people of the great old kingdom of Benin, they would gladly give back (European) “civilization” to have back the original casts of their famous artworks now residing in the British Museum in London or the people of Egypt the great bust of their famous kings now resting in German museums. It’s a time like this when this saying rings most true: “As long as the deer family are unable able tell their stories, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” – an old African saying.

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The site is basically an expanse of land with many mounds – or let’s say man-made hills. Excavations done there over the years have produced evidence that archeologists have used to learn all they now know about the place, their tools, their clothings, their burial practices and their system of government.

Walking through the on-site museum which features real-size wax/clay forms of Cahokia’s people and animals, the most memorable thing that struck me throughout was how similar the culture of this community of dark-skinned people that occupied the city was to those of old African villages that I know. The museum has exhibits of the excavations as well as pictures, signs and statistics on the wall, along with real-life wax reconstructions of people in their natural environment, their habitat and their habits (pictured). They ground food with stones on the floor, they wore minimal clothing (presumably only in the summer, because I know how cold it can get around here), they lived in huts made of soft grass, and they hunted with spears and stone tools. It was also memorable that the city had thrived during the same time of the great kingdoms of West Africa before the coming of the Europeans. How they were eventually decimated has not been explained, but one of the picture exhibits of bone samples excavated over the years tell of signs of “urban stress” which included infection, diseases and dietary deficiencies. Each of the mounds around the site are supposedly representative of spots in the plan of the city where particularly memorable events and festivals took place. The largest of the mounds, with its original wooden staircase was said to house the head chief and his court. It was from there that he administered the expanse that is Cahokia, and from there, he could see almost to the end of his kingdom.

Another most thrilling discovery I made was this: a spinning toy belonging to old Cahokia which was made of a little round wheel and a short thread that runs through it. It worked like this: with a little spin by one of the two hands that hold the thread on each side, the wheel rolled on for a while, and when the user pulled the thread apart, the wheel spins by itself clockwise, anti-clockwise, and then clockwise again in perpetuity as long as the user kept pulling the thread apart in either directions. Those who grew up in rural, or at least fun and playful neighbourhoods, in Western Nigeria would remember the same replica which was fashined with the cap of soda bottles made flat and punctured with two holes. Check out the picture to the right and tell me if you see a difference. Holding it in my hand today brought back a cold thrill of an almost forgotten past. And yet, here I was Cahokia, and not in Akobò.

The facility also included a theatre where we saw a video show about Cahokia itself. It has a gift shop also, and a picture art gallery. The event was paid for by the Fulbright Midwest Association, and I went along with Reham and a Geography Professor from SIUE who’s originally from Nigeria. I had a nice time, and I was informed. And from there, we went up the St. Louis Arch. Wait for it… it was magical. The Cahokia story is one that is quite famous around Illinois, and no visit to the state should be complete without a visit to the site that shows not only the ingenuity of a native people with dark skin that lived thousands of years before the coming of the Europeans, but also the gains of archeology in preserving, documenting and interpreting history.

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