Although the shell in my hand could have been one I picked up on Surfside Beach, I was a long way from home. I was standing on the beach in Ouidah in the country of Benin, Africa. The sand was the same color. The dunes were covered with similar grasses. The trees looked like the ones at home. The ocean waves broke and rolled ashore just as they did on my beloved South Carolina coast.

I was struck by the thought of how eerie this must have seemed to the captured Africans some 200 to 300 years ago. After months of darkness in the holds of slave ships, their first glimpse of land on the Carolina coast must have seemed strangely familiar. I wondered if they experienced a wild and desperate hope that they had returned to Africa instead of landing in South Carolina, headed for a life in slavery.

On Goree Island in Senegal, I visited the Maison des Esclaves, the House of Slaves. Once a prison where captured Africans were held before being shipped into slavery, it is now a museum. Slave traders lived in luxury upstairs while humans were held in deplorable conditions below. Men, women, and children were separated and crowded into small cells until they had enough people for a profitable shipload. Many of the ships from Goree probably landed at Sullivan’s Island, off the coast of Charleston.

Goree Island today is quite beautiful with colorful houses and lush vegetation. The island’s people seem to have made their peace with the horrific past. They sell handmade jewelry, wooden carvings, drums and colorful fabric to the tourists the House of Slaves draws to the island. Children dive for coins in the clear water as the ferry brings visitors on the 20-minute ride from Dakar, Senegal.

Thousands attended the national ceremony and parades in Ouidah, Benin, as Africa asked forgiveness of Africans and African-Americans for her role in the slave trade.

I attended days of ceremonies and national memorials as Africa asked forgiveness of Africans and African-Americans for her role in the slave trade. The Dahomey kingdom acknowledged its responsibility for capturing and selling other Africans into slavery. At the beginning, they sold prisoners of war – but because slavery was such a source of revenue, the king later sent troops into various areas for the sole purpose of capturing people. Healthy, strong, smart people brought more money, so they particularly wanted to capture the leaders – the strong and healthy young men and women of the community, the kings and queens and their offspring. The toll of losing so many of her greatest resources over a period of 300 years is evident in Africa today.

The Dahomey king invited our group to his palace. The whole experience seemed surreal as the full moon rose over the courtyard and we witnessed a full eclipse. There was much ceremony as dancers and musicians and then the king’s many children and wives preceded him into the courtyard where the American guests awaited him. The king’s beautiful daughter walked behind him, holding an umbrella over him, even in the dark. His number one wife (of more than a dozen) walked beside him in traditional dress, carrying a cell phone on a pillow. The king commanded us to join his dancers, and we did so in our bare feet, honoring the king’s sacred ground. As the evening ended, the king presented each of us with the gift of a hat, embroidered with the symbols of his kingdom.

The curator of the Maison des Esclaves (House of Slaves), now a museum on Goree Island off the coast of Senegal, holds a set of shackles that were used on captured African prisoners.

We visited Ganvie, a fishing village built in the water because the god of an ancient enemy forbade killing on water. Children stared at us from the windows and small docks of their huts as we made our way through the village in boats. Colorful houses, built in the marshes and creeks, were covered by roofs of palm. We passed the Floating Market where people shopped and traded from their boats. Years of living and fishing in the waters had depleted the food and grasses on which the fish depended, and villagers now went into neighboring towns and cut trees to feed the fish. I watched the villagers, even young children, fishing from their small boats, and I was struck by the fact that the boats looked exactly like the one found in an old plantation rice field in Georgetown, S.C. The cast nets, too, looked exactly like the cast nets at home.

Senegal is 95 percent Islamic, and Benin is 95 percent vodun (or voodoo), the traditional religion of much of Africa. The president of the National Community of Vodun, the equivalent of the Pope in the Catholic church, played a major role in national ceremonies I attended. He, too, asked forgiveness of Africans and Americans for the role the Vodun church had played in the slave trade. And he asked the Americans to take home the message that the Vodun religion was about God and love – not about evil or black magic, as many of us had heard. I visited a Vodun church – and heard and felt the connections with the call-and-response services in African-American churches and with the joyous spirituals.

The village of Ganvie, in Benin, is built on water because the god of an ancient enemy forbade killing on water.

Images of Senegal, of Benin, of my first visit to the continent of Africa, are engraved on my heart. I understand in a new way, from the inside out, what Charles Joyner, Burroughs Distinguished Professor of Southern History and Culture at Coastal, calls “shared traditions.” Southern culture was indeed born out of the convergence of African and European peoples. I felt that I had discovered my roots.