Wonkan Bawa

Wonkan Bawa is a pond and stream site in Salaga, in the East Gonja Municipal District of Ghana's Savannah Region. It is one of the town's slavery-era landmarks, remembered as the place where enslaved people were bathed or cleansed before being sold at the Salaga slave market. The name is Hausa-derived and is glossed as "the bathing place of slaves" — woankan meaning to bathe or bathing, and bayi meaning slaves. Visitors will also see the site written as Wonkan bawa, wanka bayu, Woankanbayi or Wankan-bayu, so the spelling varies between sources.

The site belongs to a wider group of slavery-related places in Salaga. These are usually described together: the baobab tree at the former market site, the slave wells, the slave cemetery and the slave warehouse. Wonkan Bawa is generally visited as one stop within that group rather than as a standalone attraction, and local guides are described as providing interpretation at the slavery-heritage sites.

Salaga itself gives the site its context. It was the largest slave market of the 18th and 19th centuries and an important kola-trade town, nicknamed "the Timbuktu of the South." The archaeological record supports the bathing tradition: the Nyame Akuma report by J. Ako Okoro of the University of Ghana (2003) records the site as "Woankanbayi" and notes that traditions hold it was where enslaved people, transported on foot as trade goods, were bathed.

For planning, Salaga is reachable by road, roughly 120 km from Tamale. The town's coordinates are approximately 8°33'N 0°31'W, but this is a town-level figure; the precise coordinates of the pond itself are not established by the sources consulted, so visitors should expect to locate it locally rather than by exact navigation point. No opening hours, entrance fees, facilities or guided-tour prices are documented in the available material, and these should be confirmed on the ground before travelling.