15 April 2008
James Island, one of Gambia's key landmarks, provides today's visitors with a wonderful cultural heritage and insight into the role of the Gambia River in slave trade in the 17th century.
Traders from everywhere in Europe used to flock to James Island to purchase goods such as gold, ivory, skins, gum, bees-wax, and slaves, in exchange for European goods such as jewellery, guns and spirits.
The river was safe, navigable and close to both Europe and America, and that is why the area soon became one of the most important trade centres in past history. Today, it is a "testimony to the different facets of the African-European encounter."
Most visitors come to the World Heritage Site on a tour from Banjul. The ferry to Barra on the northern bank of the river takes around 30 minutes and the drive to James Island another 40 minutes. Accommodation in Barra is possible at the Black Cow Guesthouse.
It is near James Island, in Jufureh, that in 1767 Kunta Kinte, African American Alex Haley's main character in best seller novel Roots, was shipped to Annapolis, Maryland, US. The novel was adapted in 1977 for a TV series and Kunta Kinte's descendants still live in the village today.
