Ghana Day 11, 8/13/14

Most of our day today was spent having fun and being a tourist in the city, and I’m sure that it was a much-needed rest day. Before we had that, however, we had a meeting at the Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana in Cape Coast, the city we were visiting.

I had no idea what to expect from the presentation, but I am pleasantly surprised at all the information that was presented to us from a full-time staff member named Michael Tagoe. He had a lot of details on the kinds of programs and outreach that the facility did along with specific measurements of the reach of the work. I really liked listening to the information and it reminded me how much I have grown to be an advocate for women’s rights and empowerment. I’ll type up the notes that I have for a different blog post, but it was amazing to see how passionate a young man (probably early 30s) was about a woman’s right to choose, as well as the innovation and grassroots-level work that he was in charge of to advocate so much for women in the communities.

A couple things worth mentioning about our visit to PPAG are that (1) they have amazing educational posters everywhere, spanning topics from HIV/AIDS transmission to proper hand-washing and (2) despite having a higher percentage of religious people in the surrounding communities than those in the US, they never have protests or riots about the comprehensive abortion services offered.

After we left the clinic, we headed to the Cape Coast Castle, which apparently was the fort at the very center of the slave trade during the 1600-1800s when that horrifying event was happening. I found it interesting that there was a Mormon church on the side of the road when we were driving because I thought that the Church of Latter Day Saints was purely an American religion, but I guess they’ve done a good job of reaching out to people of other countries as they do their required mission trips.

The view at the Castle was beautiful because it was right next to the ocean. It also overlooked a community that was bustling with activity and provided for some great color in pictures, but it wasn’t very large overall. The thought that so many Africans came out of this particular port and the controversy and taint on American history that came out of it was truly humbling and simultaneously disgusting. All the facts that I’d learned about the slave trade in school was made so much more real and tangible as our tour guide brought us through the corridors and dungeons and just made me feel really sick. It doesn’t matter to me that these gut-wrenching acts happened so many hundreds of years ago because the lack of sanitation just makes the conditions worse.

The first two are the Castle from the outside, the last picture is the drain inside the male slave dungeon

At the entrance of the male slave dungeon is a plaque that commemorates President Obama and the First Lady’s visit to the Castle back in July 2009, partially as a tribute to the Michelle’s ancestors. When we walked in, we could see the gently sloping floor (I assume this was preferred over stairs to make guiding the men that were shackled together easier and prevent them from falling and disturbing the whole process) go about 2 stories into the ground into three chambers. They are about the size of the dorm rooms connected to each other, but apparently could house up to 1000 men at once. It sounds like an absolute nightmare already, but the worst part is that the only light comes from tiny holes in the walls at the very top of the dungeon. There was a layer of decomposed human waste that we could see was at least 2 inches thick covering the whole ground. The only drainage system was a tiny little indent in the floor that ran to the ocean, but it was only of use when rain could come in from the pathetic windows at the top of the dungeon. Men would stay in these dungeons for 2 weeks to 3 months and eat twice a day as they waited for the ships to arrive to take them to the United States, Caribbean, and sometimes Brazilian coast.

I thought it was really ironic that the church that the soldiers worshipped in was right above the male slave dungeon.

When we saw the female (and children as young as 6) slave dungeon, I was surprised to see that it was ground-level with a huge window facing the inside of the castle. It used to have steel bars across the front of it like a prison, but the stark difference between the men’s and women’s dungeons, especially with respect to location (2 stories into the ground for men, ground level for women), is an interesting dichotomy. I think that, in a way, it reinforces the idea that the women were there mostly for reproductive purposes rather than to serve as viable slaves.

We also saw the punishment rooms for both the men and the women. For the men, it was a small room with no windows. The entrance has two separate narrow spaces that can be blocked off and a really low ceiling (I think this could be to help prevent revolts; the number of people that can access the entrance at once is limited, and the ones that can have to bend down to get through it). Men who are more trouble than they are worth are put there to die, and our tour guide said that it takes about 2 days to happen. The front chamber of the entrance is for soldiers who misbehave, but they are only there for a maximum of 24 hours and have access to food and water, which the slave men did not.

The women, by contrast, were put in their cell for 5 days. If they survive after being fed just once a day, they are reintroduced into the general dungeon and life continues as normal. Unlike the men’s punishment room, the women also had a hole in their cell for bodily functions and a little bit of ventilation.

There were also some graves for people who were important to the slave trade, including the first African man to be ordained as a pastor in the UK. He came back to the Castle to serve the 150-200 soldiers and was buried in the middle of the courtyard when he died, along with several other important officials over the years.

We also saw a water storage unit that went very deep that used to store the clean water for the slaves when they were kept here, along with the tunnel that led them from their respective dungeons to the beach shore. They were led out through a door that is labeled “Door of No Return,” symbolizing the official exit of their motherland and their transport to the Western hemisphere. When we went out it, we saw it labeled “Door of Return” from the other side, which was symbolic of the welcoming of the descendants of former slaves to the Castle.

There were several storage rooms for both the payment methods used in exchange for slaves (like textiles and gunpowder) and the exports they took (gold, ivory, and spices).

The governor of the Castle had a room that was about the size of one of the three dungeon chambers for the third of 1000 male slaves all to himself. It was separate from his bedroom, which was a size akin to a typical room in a suburban house in the US. He also had a liquor cabinet that looked to store more liquor than he could drink for a year, and all I could do was shake my head at the contrast between the room he had and the room the captured Africans lacked.

The most shocking part of the visit was our walk through the small museum that accompanied the Castle. There were some artifacts from the slave trade itself, but I was appalled that the current culture of the Akan people was buried behind the exhibit talking about the slave trade and the Europeans that came with it. Furthermore, I saw that the text acknowledged the deep scars that the European slave trade put on the continent of Africa (can we talk about colonization as well?), but it immediately transitioned to the benefits that the slave traders brought to the continent, citing the arrival of Christianity, new agricultural systems, the value and emphasis of formal education and literacy, carpentry skills, etc. It was 50-50 about the scars vs. benefits, but the benefits blurbs were much more detailed and descriptive. I was disgusted that there was so much praise for these concepts because the main reason that Africa has most of the underdeveloped countries is because of European exploitation since the beginning of time. I could not stand reading about the “upsides” of having Europeans pit ethnic groups against each other so that they would take prisoners of war to sell them out to them for gunpowder and textiles that are not worth human lives in terrible conditions. I get that many of the visitors to the tourist attraction are white – American or European – but I would rather the museum be for educating these visitors about just how bad this major part of history is and have them reevaluate the information they have received about slavery and the slave trade.

After we left the Castle, we had a couple hours to shop at the stores next to the ocean. We were able to buy some great souvenirs, and I’m really happy that I got them. We stopped at a paradise restaurant and bar that was overlooking the beach. I shared a grilled chicken dish with one of the other interns, and it was actually really delicious. The chicken was seasoned extremely well (it reminded me of the salt and sour chicken from Taiwan) and made me really miss eating chicken. Oh well. On the menu, they had several Chinese dishes (fried rice, eggrolls, etc.) that were listed under the appetizers along with a chicken sandwich. I thought it was hilarious that a chicken sandwich was listed under appetizers because we eat those as complete meals.

One of the interns also ordered a traditional Ghanaian dish, banku, which is something like cornmeal ground into a moist dough. It looked promising, but tasted a little like uncooked sourdough mix and made me spit it out right away. There was a stew that came with it that was apparently crucial to making it taste better, but I'm not sure anything could save it from the sour and bitter taste of flour.

Another note: in Ghana, they cut the top off of oranges and suck the pulp out rather than eating slices. I think it’s a little cleaner that way because you don’t get orange juices all over you, but I couldn’t get used to it.