The ferry ride from Dakar to Gorée Island is one of the highlights of a visit to the ASAO guesthouse. “On the boat I feel like I am in heaven,” says Ondine Saglio, who has owned the house with her mother since 1989 and has operated it as a guesthouse since 2010. “You leave the crazy traffic noise of Dakar, you put one foot on the boat and you feel like you’re going back to paradise.”

That paradise for Saglio is where she spent the first seven years of her life. Today, even though she lives in Paris, she says she still feels most at home on Gorée. Her passion for the place is one reason she and her mother, Valérie Schlumberger, bought the home, located on a side street just a block away from the island’s main beach.

“The spirit of the house is an old house,” Saglio says of the colonial-era property. “It’s very simple, but very beautiful. My mom kept it the exact same way. She wanted to keep the spirit, which she did, but she changed a lot of decorations.”

Most of those decorations come from working with local artisans and associations such as ASAO (Association for Senegal and West Africa), which Saglio founded. A sheet featuring a flying bird—locally sewn from bright orange and yellow wax fabric—covers one bed. Colorful sous verre–style paintings done on glass, an artistic tradition in Senegal, line the walls. Wooden panels from an old Dakar cinema demarcate different spaces. Schlumberger also built a terrace and improved the garden, where birds are heard singing most of the day.

Guests can stay in one of seven bedrooms, each with its own style. One room is painted white with green polka dots; in another, red earth–tinted walls complement pieces by Senegalese sculptor Moussa Sakho.

Gorée was once the largest slave-trading center on the west coast of Africa, and today there are museums that mark its violent past. There are also residents living vividly in the present: Children swim at the small beach where the ferry boat arrives, and restaurants serve up grilled fish and ginger juice. 

Saglio stresses that the guesthouse is meant to be an integral part of the community, so a large portion of the profits are donated to Keur Khadija, a nearby center offering support and education to children. “It’s connected to the community,” she says. “It was built by the community. It was restored by the community. And the money goes to the community.”