A deep reflection on the slave prison of Bimbia—where innocent men, women, and children were chained before being forced into the unknown—raising profound questions about humanity, dignity, and the urgent call to say “never again.”
Bimbia on the Shores of the Atlantic Ocean: The Prison Before Departure into the Unknown
During our visit to this site of memory, our guide led us to a place filled with heavy, disturbing energy: the Bimbia prison.
It was a small stone building. Inside stood wooden posts—posts where human beings tied other human beings before tearing them away from the world they knew, thrusting them into an unknown world of suffering.
I stood for a moment beside one of these posts. Men and women had spent long hours or even days chained there—around the neck, the wrists, and the ankles. During that brief moment, countless questions surged through my mind:
- What did our brothers and sisters feel while tied to this post?
- What prayers, what hopes, what dreams passed through their hearts?
- From where did they draw their resilience in the face of powerlessness and destruction?
- What kind of gaze did they cast upon those who treated them this way?
- Did their eyes ever meet?
And what of the humans who chained other humans to those posts?
- What did they feel as they tied them up?
- What were they thinking as they did it?
- Did they hear the cries, the weeping, the pleas?
- Did they sleep peacefully at night?
- Did they love their own parents, spouses, and children?
- Were they capable of wishing good to those they cherished?
Bimbia forces us to ask profoundly human questions:
Where is the humanity of a human being who lowers himself to the point of treating others as merchandise?
Bimbia is one of those places where human baseness pushes us to cry out loudly: never again!
It is a place that calls us to unite as brothers and sisters in humanity, to defend the suffering human being in every human being. For when one human is mistreated by another, the entire human family is degraded.
And you—what will you do to say “never again”?
Share your thoughts in the comments.
It’s important to know our history to make sure that it doesn’t happen again!
