Photo credit: Gaëtan Noussouglo, 2025

DESCRIPTION

This station captures the spiritual and symbolic dimensions of enslavement. The rock serves as a silent witness to collective trauma, embodying the Gulf of Benin’s belief in the "lightning stone"—an imaginary, crushing weight that paralyses body and spirit, representing the impossibility of escape. Its equivalent might be the “lightning or thunder stone,” an object with a singularly massive shape, which is the object of a particular belief in the Gulf of Benin. It is said to be a fictitious stone whose mass would paralyse any runaway. It is sent invisibly to an adversary endowed with the power to flee by other than material means. Carrying the rock would be like carrying the mass of the Earth itself.

LITERARY EXCERPT: La Saison de l'ombre, 2013, by Léonora Miano

Asleep in a corner of the bush, they hadn't seen it coming. They weren't brought here to Bekomo, but instead taken along other paths, making them walk along the Bwele country to the coast. They had to walk for long nights to reach their destination. During the day, the captives were held in bush shelters that the Bwele had erected along the paths leading from one region to another within their territory to the coastal land. There, the mulongo men were handed over to the coastal princes, who, in turn, delivered them to the foreigners who came from Pongo by the waters. We have no choice, Bwemba explained. To avoid conflict with the Coastal people, we must supply them with men. An agreement was reached to that effect because they sowed terror in certain regions to capture people on behalf of the men with the rooster feet. (p. 106)