Ouidah

The slave route and the Door of No Return. Ouidah, Benin Republic, 2017.

Ouidah is where the Atlantic slave trade had one of its most heavily trafficked exits. The Route des Esclaves — the Slave Route — runs 4km from the town centre to the beach, ending at the Door of No Return: a symbolic arch at the ocean's edge through which millions of enslaved people passed, never to return. I went in September 2017. The monuments are there. The sea is still there. History is not abstract here.