An Irishwoman's Diary

Not many people in Ireland realise that Dublin has a long and infamous connection with the West African slave trade. As next year sees the bicentenary of the l807 Slave Trade Act, which abolished the trade within the British empire, Dublin's history as a centre where chained and manacled men were branded with knives and held to await their rendition overseas is worth remembering.

The Dublin of which I write is the capital of the Banana Islands, standing 33 kilometres south of Freetown, Sierra Leone, the West African country in the news recently with the capture of former Liberian president Charles Taylor. I took a trip there recently in a pirogue with local skipper Paul Tucker. It was a half-hour journey from the mainland through a steady Atlantic wind, passing fishermen in emerald green dugout canoes hauling in their catches. If you didn't know the islands' history, they would seem like a paradise free of tourists, with empty white beaches, rugged mountains and shaded forest walks.

The beach where we landed carries a notice asking visitors to look after the environment. Two ancient Royal Navy cannons mounted on a stone wall nearby are testimony to the islands' colonial past. Locals told us the guns were fired to guide ships coming into Freetown to collect slaves. Scattered around the ground was the detritus of more modern afflictions - empty freezer packets of gin and vodka.

A short walk through thick vegetation past mango, banana and breadfruit trees brought us to the local school, where about a dozen children were having a history lesson from their teacher, Marion Cole. "Tourism would help us very much. We have so few facilities here," she said, pointing to broken chairs and tattered schoolbooks. A modest guest house is currently being built to house visitors, though there is no electricity on the islands.

Later we met Elizabeth Wray, the new village chief, one of the few women in Sierra Leone to hold such a position. Elizabeth won the recent election, standing for "Peace, Progress, Development and Equal Opportunities", according to her poster. She wants a new school and a community centre for the islands and showed me proudly around the medical clinic that NACSA (National Association Commission for Social Action) is currently completing.

The Banana Islands, consisting of Dublin, Ricketts (which is connected to Dublin by a causeway) and another small, uninhabited island are home to about 500 people, many of whom are obliged to find work in Freetown. Most inhabitants live in thatched shacks and subsist on farming and fishing. Those we met that morning were incredulous that their visitor came from a very different part of the world also called Dublin.

During the recent brutal civil war in Sierra Leone, the Banana Islands sheltered some 5,000 refugees despite one abandoned attempt by rebels to attack. "We could hear the bombs and the gunfire on the mainland", recalled Elizabeth Wray.

The islands were first invaded by l6th-century Portuguese navigators who built water wells and whose cast iron lamps still stand to this day. British slave traders came in their wake. Victorian missionaries left the impressive stone-built church, a serious ecclesiastical structure with a belfry. Elizabeth brought us to the cemetery dominated by two massive old cotton trees where the first West African female Methodist minister, Maud Campbell, was buried last year.

David Jones, a local historian and teacher, told us that the British slave trader John Newton built the fortress where slaves from all over West Africa were held before being loaded onto big gunships anchored off the islands. Newtown later underwent a religious conversion and settled in England, where he wrote hymns such as Amazing Grace and Jesus Loves My Soul. The stones of the fortress were later used to build a school.

The Banana Islands also have a place in history for being home to the experiment by British philanthropists to provide freed slaves with a safe place to live after the US war of independence - a venture which, despite an unprepossessing beginning, was to result in the landing of some 70,000 people over a 50-year period and the eventual foundation of Freetown.

Before the recent war engulfed Sierra Leone, the islands attracted intrepid tourists for scuba-diving, snorkelling and whale-watching, but apart from the occasional visit from NGOs at weekends, life is quiet on the Bananas these days even though the war ended five years ago. "We would love to welcome people from Dublin to Dublin", said Elizabeth Wray.