SALAGA SLAVE MARKET

Salaga is a place deep in the heart of the Northern Region of Ghana where
few ever make it, but it is here where a slave’s journey truly began.If the source of slavery is ever to be totally understood, then we must admit the truth in the words of W. E. B. Du Bois, “Most men today cannot conceive of a freedom that does not involve somebody’s slavery.”One hundred and twenty kilometres to the southwest of Tamale is Salaga, the capital of the Gonja East District which used to be the biggest slave-trading center in Northern Ghana.The original slave market was moved south from Salaga to a settlement called Kafaba. Unfortunately, much of Kafaba is now under the Volta Lake. Salaga has a pond called “Wonkan bawa” (a Huasa word meaning “the bathing place of slave”) and a young Baobab tree in what used to be the Slave Market.This…