The day Barack Obama was elected president of the USA was a significant day in American history.

However this moment is one I find to be much more touching.

Some of you in the USA might not be able to get this link as it is a BBC webpage, but I hope you do find a way to watch the embedded video.

It features Obama visiting the fortress at Cape Coast in Ghana where slaves were held before they were loaded onto boats to be transported to America.

I have been to this exact fortress and been down into the dungeons to see for myself what the conditions were like.

I don't think I need to tell you that it is an horrific experience.

The accumulated sweat of 200 years of nearly continuous imprisonment of men women and children packed so close they couldn't sit down is on the walls of the cells.

You can smell them as they wait in fear for the terrible journey ahead.


Seeing Obama and his kids visit it as tourists, and simultaneously saying to the locals that the USA is a different place today that Africans can be less fearful of is somehow very comfortng to me and has made me feel very calm and put a smile on my face.

Peace