“The words turn to ash in our mouths”. Antjie Krog wrote these powerful words in Country of My Skull, her book about the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. As the ferry chugged away from Goree Island back to Dakar those words swam into my mind. How can mere words encapsulate the depths of despair, the freedom of tolerance, the colour, the richness, the desolation of one tiny island?

For more than three centuries Goree Island was the busiest of the “slave ports”. Between 25- and 40-million Africans were captured inland, chained together and crocodile-marched to the coast, then imprisoned and “fattened up” before being transported to North and South America, and Haiti, for sale. The “slave house” is physically pretty. A curving double staircase leads upstairs from a central courtyard. On either side of that courtyard the empty cells tell an impossibly painful story. Children separated from their mothers, husbands from their wives – helpless and terrified. I can only imagine the stench and sounds of despair.

If you were lucky you were a teenage girl who fell pregnant after being raped by a slave master, because you were then freed and allowed to stay on the island. If you were unlucky and became sick you were taken out and thrown into the sea where sharks circled, secure of a never-ending supply of food. As many as six million people who were captured never made it onto the ships. I sink to my heels, overwhelmed. Ashamed of my tears. So easy, so meaningless and so insignificant.

As you wait for the ferry to take you to the island, you will be met by one of the gorgeously dressed local women, who will politely charm you into promising to visit their “shop” on the island. As the packed ferry approaches the island, you would think you were landing in a Provencal village. Beguiling villas and winding terraces lead to old forts. But then the fishing boats (guls), bright as parrots, laughing ebony children in underwear, running along the beach, a crocodile of Muslim schoolgirls in a technicolour rainbow, and the inescapable dust, land you firmly in West Africa.

There are hundreds of craft shops, each vying for that elusive sale that determines the difference between a good and a bad day. Craft and culture collide in meticulous sand art. Deserted, broken ruins of once elegant mansions house dozens of families. Their sons play soccer in a dust bowl, with all the vehemence and exuberance of any African pitch. Goats are tethered to the few trees that can sustain themselves.

Go up the hill to the fort. A 60-tonne cannon installed in 1907 by the French rusts next to a revolting monument in concrete. A huge fortune was donated for a “slave memorial”. Most of the money was misappropriated and this soul-less, garish desecration erected. The worst of Africa Past memorialised in the worst way by Africa Present.

Our Senegalese tour guide proudly told us, repeatedly, that despite being 85% Muslim, Senegal is completely tolerant of other religions – indeed, for 20 years the President was a Christian. And that is something to be proud of. As is the free education. So too the visual splendour of a “fete” day, and the crowded port.

But it is the normality of an emerging economy on the edge of Africa that makes the island even harder to comprehend. Centuries of appalling institutionalised brutality in the name of racist greed and money should surely bury the town? But life moves forward – the Senegalese living on Goree cannot carry that burden. They have to build their lives the best way they can and so they offer carvings and Coke to us visitors who come for that whistle-stop tour of “a historical destination”.

Meanwhile, slavery is apparently growing stronger every day around the world. There are more men, women, children enslaved today than ever before. How? It is all too much. Overwhelming. Incomprehensible. Unforgettable. DM