Greetings From Cameroon! Bimbia Slave Trade Site
"The Historic Slave Trade Market In Dikolo Chiefdom Bimbia Limbe III Sub Division"
Ladies and gentlemen welcome to an old site!
For 400 years, this site was used as a place for the exporting of human beings as slaves.
You see, it always begins with a lie. Villagers are told to come here, this very building where the white man has work for them. On getting here, they are seized! That begins their journey to slavery. Not all slaves were taken this way. Some were taken as booties of war, captured by victors of war. Others are traded by their relatives. I will come back to this.
There is the office of the Chief. At the inspection site, where the slaves are checked, mostly their teeth. If you have strong teeth, it means you have a strong body.
This place is where they have to eat. Their hands are tied to their back as seen in the photo below. After food is poured, the water is poured next. This chain is an original chain that was used more than 400 years ago.
This is the house for the white men. The whites could not stay in the same place with the blacks. It was a story building. There is also their door of no return, but much different with that of the blacks. When a black slave leaves here, he is gone forever. He has been forcefully cut off from his root and sent into depravity on a level that is unimaginable.
This room is where the slaves are kept. Stubborn slaves are tied to the walls like this one. The door I am standing at is the "Door of No Return". Once you are sent through that door, it is finished!
Nichols Island is the death sentence for the most stubborn slaves. It is a distant from the Bimbia beach, so whenever a slave has been judged to be stubborn beyond redemption, he or she is sent to Nichols Island where he cannot receive any help at all. It is death by deprivation.
10% of all slaves that were taken via the Trans Atlantic slave trade were taken via Bimbia, 200 Ships involved in the slave trade were anchored at Bimbia.
The Slavery Abolition Act sponsored by William Wilberforce was finally passed in 1833. It officially brought slavery to an end in the British empire, but that did not end the evil conclusively. Several other nations were still involved in Slavery. Britain, which was a naval power, had to use its naval power to try to bring the action to an end. It was during this attempt to effectively end the trade that Bimbia was bombed. Bimbia was bombed by Britain's anti-slavery ship Man O War, a ship that was sent specifically to stop whatever form of exporting slaves that were happening on the sea. There is a site called the Man O War Bay in Cameroon today.
Today, Bimbia stands as a monument, one of those places that you walk through with your head shaking in revulsion.
From the Island, you can have these views. Such beauty! It is a tragedy that this beautiful place was used to the most inhuman treatments imaginable.