See you in Barbados

Sankofa Pilgrimage To Barbados

May 6-13, 2024

Barbados

ALERT: Registration closed at midnight, EST on 31 March 2024. No additional registration and payment is being accepted after 31 March. A Pilgrimage badge will be issued to each registrant at the Host Hotel in Barbados, on May 6 and 7. Each Pilgrim will be required to wear the issued badge to access ALL Pilgrimage events. No unregistered person will be given a badge in Barbados, in other words, accredited, if they have not completed pre-registered and prepaid fee by 31 March, prior to arrival in Barbados. Thanks.

Registered and Counting!

You're INvited!

Bajan-Africans Going Back To Barbados!

In collaboration with the Government of Barbados, we're excited to experience the Sankofa Pilgrimage To Barbados with you. This will be a heritage event of historical significance. This trip will offer education, entertainment, networking, excursions, fun and more! Don't miss out. Registration for the Pilgrimage to Barbados is closed as of March 31, 2024!

IMPORTANT NOTICE on Immigration Protocol Passengers are to be placed on the Advanced Passenger Information System (APIS) list. The list should be sent before the plane departs from its point of origin. Before arrival into Barbados, all passengers are asked to complete the travel form located here. Liberians do not require a visa for entry into Barbados. Adequate staff will be assigned to the airport to process the visitors.

Hotels & Travel

Listen to the Barbadian Prime Minister speak of the SANKOFA Pilgrimage to Barbados on March 18, 2024:

To our Family, Friend and Participant — Here's a Message from the Sankofa Pilgrimage to Barbados Planning Committee:

We applaud your interest and/or decision to join the direct- descendants of Barbadian-Liberians in making history, by participating in a pilgrimage which memorializes the 346 Barbadians who emigrated to Liberia in 1865. The Government of Barbados is a sponsor of the event.

Since the beginning of Registration in September 2023, we have received calls from across the global diaspora enquiring about the criteria or eligibility for attendance.

While it celebrates the lives and contributions of our Barbadian ancestors, the Sankofa Pilgrimage to Barbados is opened to Liberians, Africans and persons everywhere interested in the story of Africa’s past and the historical connection of the African people with Barbados, to learn, reflect and to build a stronger future together.

On behalf of the Planning Committee, I urge you to register soon to avoid disappointment, and look forward to welcoming you to our island in the sun, Barbados, in May 2024. Come. Let’s make history!

Ambassador L Llewellyn Witherspoon

Learn About Your Heritage

Africa and the Caribbean are intimately connected through threads of blood, shared heritage and history. Within the larger context, the story of Africa and Barbados is one of opposites – pain, suffering and eventual joy - that began with slavery during the Sugar Revolution in the 1600s and led to freedom in the 1800s. In 1636, a political directive provided that all Africans brought to the island were to be received as lifelong chattels. Shipment of slaves from Africa to the broader Caribbean had begun at least a century earlier. Altogether, for three and a half centuries, African captives from the Bight of Biafra, Gold Coast, Bight of Benin, West Central Africa and South-eastern Africa were carried across the Atlantic in slave ships originating in European ports. Following the passage in 1834 of the Slavery Abolition Act by the British Empire a year earlier, slavery was abolished in Barbados.

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