Badagry, Nigeria, 2:59 PM [Photo]

(The sign reads: Badagry Slave Route.  This is the route of the journey to unknown destination.  Original Slave Route.)

You can take a 20 minute walk from the beginning of the slave route in town to its endpoint: the Atlantic ocean.  The extraordinary thing about the path is that it’s absolutely ordinary.  It’s become just another footpath running through a small village.  On the way to the ocean, to the spot on the beach they called “the point of no return,” you walk past groups of quiet women carrying baskets of coconuts or fish on their heads; they’re on the way to the market.  No memorial, no pageantry.  At a major trade post for one of history’s greatest atrocities, life has very quietly, very eerily moved on.