Brazil's Lula pays homage to ex-slaves

ACCRA, Ghana (AFP) - Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva Sunday paid tribute to former West African slaves who bought their freedom in Brazil and returned home in the 19th Century.

"The families who left .. Bahia and came back to Ghana are a real model for us," said Lula, praising them as "people who were born slaves bought, but their freedom."

"They had everything to surrender, but never had the dream of living with dignity, peace and freedom," he said during a visit to Brazil House, a graceful two-storey building, back to the sea and it is now a monument to returning ex - slaves.

"That is his (Lula). This is one of his five projects for Ghana - the restoration of the birthplace of Tabon people," the Brazilian Ambassador to Ghana, Luis Fernando Serra, told AFP.

Tabon is the name given to the returnees in Ghana. Elsewhere on the West African coast, they were known as "agudas.

"The Tabon community is the oldest link between us in Brazil, the country that they left in the nineteenth century, and Ghana, the land that they have accepted," Lula said after the welcome by the elaborately dressed commander in chief of the Tabon , Azumah Nelson V.

The local community, from a dancer with waist-long dreadlocks, tattooed legs and white plastic sunglasses, staged a frenetic dance in Brazil in front of the house during the ceremony.

During the 19th Century, many Africans and their children free to leave Brazil, to return to West Africa. This increased after 1835 with the deportation of the large number of slaves who were involved in an attempted uprising in Bahia.

Those who came back were the elite among the slaves in Brazil - they were those who are healthy enough to survive in the harsh conditions that were necessary to attain freedom. She spoke fluent Portuguese and understand the day-to-day with a plantation.

And ironically, when they return to West Africa, according to research by the Rio de Janeiro-Universidad Federal Fluminense, allied themselves with the Brazilian traders were on the coast and in the slave trade.

It was during a visit to Ghana in 2005 approved that Lula turning Brazil into a memorial house.

Recently, the building was, in Jamestown, a low rent of Accra, has been renovated and with the financial support of two Brazilian companies and turned into a memorial-cum-museum.

Lula said he hoped that the restoration would help in the rehabilitation of Jamestown district, an area in which everything takes place in the street - from film screenings to the meals and haircuts.

Rocks on the back of the house leads straight down to the beach. The view across the sea serves as a reminder how the slaves to the left and came back home.