Day 14: Reminiscing in Accra

The past two days have been busy, yet not. We've been hitting Slave Camps, Baths, and other sites throughout the trip but we finally saw Cape Coast Castle and Elmina Castle before returning to Accra. It was on these two trips that the gravity of what we've been studying and preparing for finally hit me.

Let me start with the Slave Camp we saw up North, near the border. Pikwara Slave Camp was a site where the Slavetraders kept slaves to be brought upon capture and sold when the time came. It was a rocky area at the foot of a mountain range, and what we saw was unbelievable. A lot of what we saw did not hit me, honestly, until we viewed the Slave Castles while in Cape Coast, but I'll explain.
There were different areas we saw in the camp. The "food" area was on a large boulder, and there were smooth, oval, shallow holes carved into the side of the rock. Our guide said that slaves were made to carve those holes and then eat from them. We saw a "buying" area where the slaves were actually sold and bought, and changed hands on their way from their native lands to the coast. There was a "punishment" area where rebellious slaves were chained to rocks under the scorching sun and sometimes whipped as an example to other slaves. And then there was a crass cemetery area where they were crudely buried.

We visited another Slave Market in the notorious city of Salaga, where wells still existed in which the slaves were bathed. Today it is a lush, green, forested area away from the city, but the heart of the city is still around the previously huge, rich slave market.

The next site that sticks out in my memory coming down from the North was a Slave Bath site. The slaves were bathed and groomed in and on the shores of a small river that ran through the area. This was their last bath before reaching the coast. The place was quite beautiful to my eyes today, but while we were there I couldn't comprehend the magnitude of suffering that happened centuries ago.

Perhaps one reason I couldn't "comprehend the magnitude of the suffering" of all these sites was the presentation. Ghana's Ministry of Tourism (THE MINISTRY OF TOURISM!!!) made these sites visitable, physically and commercially, and a lot of our tour guides spouted off memorized scripts at all the places. It was difficult, already, to wrap my mind around the concept of what all happened, and on top of that the set up made it even more difficult. But the castles cleared that up for me.

 Finally, the Castles on the Coast. They were beautiful, in all their cement strength and with their seaside views. But the dungeons, rooms, and quarters we witnessed were sub-human. In fact, Elmina castle was used as a warehouse for not slaves, but goods and products for centuries before it became to be known as a Slave Fort. It was in Elmina Castle, staring at the Door of No Return, where the African people walked one last time on African soil, that it began to hit me. 

The bus ride after, coming to Accra, was quiet. I did a lot of thinking on that bus ride.

Medasi,

Padma