Goree Island, Senegal - US President George Bush made an eloquent speech but did not win many friends during his brief visit to Goree Island off Senegal on Tuesday.
"We are very angry. We didn't even see him," said Fatou N'diaye, a necklace seller watching dignitaries file past to return to the mainland at the end of Bush's tour.
N'diaye and other residents of Goree, site of a famous slave trading station, said they had been taken to a football ground on the other side of the quaint island at 6am and told to wait there until Bush had departed, around midday.
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"It's slavery all over again," fumed one father-of-four, who did not want to give his name. "It's humiliating. The island was deserted."
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"We understand that you have to have security measures, since September 11, but to dump us in another place...? We had to leave at 6am I didn't have time to bathe, and the bread did not arrive," the father-of-four said.
"We were shut up like sheep," said 15-year-old Mamadou.
Many residents compared Bush's hour-long visit unfavourably to the island tour by former President Bill Clinton in 1998.
"When Clinton came, he shook hands, people danced," said former Mayor Urbain Alexandre Diagne. [more]
via NWD
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