Bunce Island sent rice farmers to South Carolina. Freetown was founded by people coming back the other way. Sierra Leone's heritage sites, what survives, what is neglected, and why this coast matters to the Gullah-Geechee.https://sierraleone.africanindependence.com/heritage/3906593472.xml?limit=10/images/0/28147885/Flag_of_Sierra_Leone-2y6lmzCIrRuSgcD80PqU4A.pngA ruined British slave castle on an island in the Sierra Leone River. Its captives were sought by rice planters in South Carolina and Georgia, and the Gullah-Geechee of the American Sea Islands trace their line back here. What happened, what remains, and how to visit.https://sierraleone.africanindependence.com/heritage-item/bunce-island-the-slave-castle-that-shipped-people-to-south-carolinahttps://sierraleone.africanindependence.com/heritage-item/bunce-island-the-slave-castle-that-shipped-people-to-south-carolinaFor more than two centuries the Cotton Tree marked the spot where Freetown began. On 24 May 2023 it came down in a storm. Guidebooks and travel sites still list it as a sight. Here is what happened, what is left, and what the tree actually meant.https://sierraleone.africanindependence.com/heritage-item/the-cotton-tree-and-the-founding-of-freetownhttps://sierraleone.africanindependence.com/heritage-item/the-cotton-tree-and-the-founding-of-freetownFreetown was founded by people who had been enslaved in America, freed themselves by joining the British, and were shipped to Nova Scotia before crossing back to Africa in 1792. Out of them, the Maroons and the Liberated Africans came the Krio language and people.https://sierraleone.africanindependence.com/heritage-item/krio-language-culture-and-the-nova-scotianshttps://sierraleone.africanindependence.com/heritage-item/krio-language-culture-and-the-nova-scotiansFounded in 1827, Fourah Bay College trained bishops, doctors, lawyers and editors for the whole of West Africa and gave Freetown the name Athens of West Africa. Its original building stands on Mount Aureol as a roofless ruin. What it was, what happened, and what is left.https://sierraleone.africanindependence.com/heritage-item/old-fourah-bay-college-and-the-athens-of-west-africahttps://sierraleone.africanindependence.com/heritage-item/old-fourah-bay-college-and-the-athens-of-west-africaFreetown's National Museum sits beside the Cotton Tree site in the middle of the city. It is small, underfunded and often overlooked, and it holds the material that makes the rest of the country make sense. What is inside, what it costs, and what condition it is in.https://sierraleone.africanindependence.com/heritage-item/the-national-museum-of-sierra-leonehttps://sierraleone.africanindependence.com/heritage-item/the-national-museum-of-sierra-leoneMost countries bury their civil wars. Sierra Leone built a museum for its own, on the site of the Special Court, holding the war crimes archive and the Truth Commission record. What is there, how to approach it, and why it matters more than any monument.https://sierraleone.africanindependence.com/heritage-item/the-sierra-leone-peace-museumhttps://sierraleone.africanindependence.com/heritage-item/the-sierra-leone-peace-museumA funeral song remembered for two centuries in Georgia turned out to be Mende. A ten-year-old girl shipped from Bunce Island in 1756 has a named descendant who came back in 2005. This is the most precisely documented connection between one African place and one American people.https://sierraleone.africanindependence.com/heritage-item/bunce-island-and-the-gullah-geechee-the-clearest-line-across-the-atlantichttps://sierraleone.africanindependence.com/heritage-item/bunce-island-and-the-gullah-geechee-the-clearest-line-across-the-atlantic