Sankofa

The stars cloaked the night. The trees protected us from the darkness with a moon that shone smiling with full teeth. I wish I had the knowledge to recognize all the noises from the jungle but just listening to them made me feel that I was part of something bigger, that life is one. We spent the night at Kakoum National Park.

It was the ending I needed to a day that had kept my throat in a knot. Elmina is the most colorful place I went to during this trip. It is incredible that the energy there is as powerful and unlike any other place where human atrocities have been committed (where I have visited). The people there seem to have fully reclaimed it. 

There was sorrow in the halls of the castle though.

Feces, tears, urine, sweat and blood all belonged to the floor of the overcrowded cells. Desperation, resilience, hunger and resignation became human essence, where women would have to either choose to gracefully give their bodies to the governors or be beaten, tied to a cannon ball in the sun and then punished again.

The governor would pick the slave from this balcony.

Even before the colonizers went to the American continent, this fort stood for gold and ivory trade until profits moved to slavery. It moved hands from the Portuguese to the Dutch to the British. Sovereignty is such a tricky word… Who were the slaves and what made them different than the others living in the Gold Coast at the time? There was no peace among tribes in the olden times. Although today there is peace, they are very different from each other and speak different languages including Fante, Twi or Ewe and pride in those tribe affiliations. When there was a fight, the losing tribe would be obliged to serve the winning tribe. When the Europeans came to the Gold Coast, the trade of gold for guns and tobacco put some tribes at an advantage over others –sounds familiar?-  Then instead of trading gold or ivory, they would trade the people that would have otherwise served the winning tribes. However, in terms of servitude, the system among the tribes was quite different, there was one step from servitude to royalty through marriage. Only few of the slave women during the colonial times would become wives of foreign governors or prison guards. Many of the raped slaves did bear children, some got homes outside of the forts while others were forced to leave their children and would be sold into slavery regardless.

Sometimes our tour guide would close the door behind him and there was only darkness. I cannot fathom the despair of a long-term experience as such. The freedom fighters had it worst knowing they would never leave the cell alive.

Cape Coast was no different. The door of no return now has a sign on the other side: “Door of Return”. The bodies of two former slaves, one from New York and the other from Jamaica were brought and passed through the door to be buried close to the area where slaves used to be checked for fitness and bathed in a river.

Cape Coast had 5 different cells through which the slaves passed. On the 5^th they were asked to cross a tunnel. If they couldn’t (due to their weakness as a result of the conditions in which they had lived for the past 3 months) they were left to die in the 6^th cell. If they made it, they would be fit enough for the slave trade. I kept on thinking about humans’ instinct to survive; this does not always mean to live.

On Sunday we woke up early –after sleeping in a tree house in the middle of the rainforest- and were able to walk through the canopy, just the 6 of us- we were walking above the jungle- it was such a different perspective. I am so grateful to have experienced this.

Back in Cape Coast we laid on the beach and children came to talk with us. I was weary, I knew they were going to ask for money, they just sat around and stared. I allowed myself to fall for it; I ended up playing futbol in the beach. That was fun! But then there were too many kids around us and it became overwhelming. I kept on saying Babayo (bye bye, just a different pronunciation); some of the kids I had been playing with started calling on their friends who were staring at us, telling them to leave. In the end, we had to move. I was upset for some time. I wish there was not such a precedent for the children to see obronis as cash machines…

I could tell some of the kids were genuinely interested in just playing with us, I was also sorry I could not stay with them anymore.

But here is the thing, if they see you being friendly, now they have learned what tourists like. For example this girl let me carry the plantain chips she was carrying on her head and then took out a sheet with a message asking for money for school supplies. 

I am sure she needs school supplies but I cannot give her any money, there are other 20 kids around me who will want the same. How will this end? I bought some plantain chips...

Anyhow, I believe one of the most enjoyable parts of this trip was actually the tro tro ride in. I danced to high life pretty much the whole 5 hour ride, there was this lady seating in front of me also dancing and smiling at me, I smiled back. Suddenly half of the tro tro was engaged in giving me the names of the high life bands that were playing. On the way back we listened to reggae instead, I was reenergized to end my last week in Kumasi- although phoneless because I had left my cellphone in a taxi in Cape Coast, clumsy me.

Oh and on Friday night while we got dinner there was an amazing show at Oasis. Fire and acrobatics were involved. We were too tired to stay for the dancing; we were all a little bothered by the fact that there were too many obronis there too. We just went to bed early that night. 

I was lucky to travel with a fantastic group of people! Unfortunately not everyone was caught in camera.

This was my next to last weekend in Ghana! One -or may be 2- more posts to come!

Afia

Sankofa in Elmina.