Cape Coast

We visited Cape Coast this weekend, about 150 kilometres west of Accra.

Here are some pictures of Cape Coast castle, a fort built in the late 1600s which was used as a trading post by the Swedes (though not in this stone form), then by the Danes and the British for trade in lumber, gold and eventually in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Inside the fort:



Looking west:



Looking east:



The castle is beautiful and the scenery around it, as you can see, is even more stunning. Inside, we went through a museum about the history of Ghanaian culture in the area, the history of slavery there and its effects both in Africa and in the 'new world.' We also took a tour of the castle's slave dungeons. Chilling.

Seriously -- I'd thought previously about slavery as being atrocious on a sort of societal level, but to consider the experience of an individual slave crammed with hundreds of others in these tiny, dark, dank stone dungeons before being shipped overseas for sale ... well, I was appalled into silence.

We were the only white people on the tour. During a short question-and-answer session, one of the other people on the tour asked the guide if we should blame Europeans for the slave trade, or blame the other Africans who sold their brothers and sisters into slavery. At first this made me (Wendy) rather uncomfortable, but a really thoughtful conversation ensued about the history of slavery in Africa before European contact and about the idea of whether it served a purpose to apportion blame. I left feeling rather elevated and hopeful instead of guilty, if you know what I mean.

Besides seeing the castle, Jason and I also wanted to see a festival going on in Cape Coast during the weekend we were there. I won't even try to describe that -- I'll leave that to Jason. But I have some video of an astonishing parade I'm going to try to get on the 'net somehow later on, when I have the patience for the upload speeds encountered here.

Oh, and did I mention our hotel room had hot water? A hot water tank mounted over the bathtub provided a trickle of scalding-hot water -- that is, once we were informed that the tank switched on to heat the water. But heck, I'm not complaining -- I had a hot bath. And it may have been the best bath ever.