Ghana 1 - delayed post

Ghana

Spent four day in Ghana and honestly, it was just too short. The place and the people were were just amazing.

So, quickly:
Day 1: City orientation, walked around Takoradi with Megan in the markets, bought a cloth and gave it to stitch from a small tailor. Tried Ghanian food at a local restaurants, which was awful actually.
Day 2: Castles and slave dungeons. Went to the Elmina castle, had an awesome lunch, local shopping and then the cape coast castle before coming back. The seashell and met the random Ghanaian
Day 3: Went to pick up the dress and went the water village independently with Megan and met other SAS kids.
Day 4: Met up with Daniel and Frank, two local guys who brought us to their village with the kids swarmed us to take photos of them. We then went to a manganese and gold mine and then to a small village market before heading back to Takoradi.

Just a few thoughts to share about Ghana, from different days:

The market in Takoradi: At the market, men and women all looked and many again asked me where I was. Ghana gets alot of visitors from Europe and such, so they have seen white people. But not many Indians come here, so they were very interested in knowing about India and bollywood. I was just amazed at how much people were interested to know where I was from, and that they knew India and recognized me as an Indian. Instead of walking the peripheral of the market, we ventured inside. It was the best thing we ever did. The market was so different from anything I had ever seen in my life in Morocco or India. It was a market for the locals, not a foreigners one. The inside was little lanes, tiny, with shops on either side. You walked in a single file. There was no order of shops inside. There would be a couple of fish sellers and next to them a lady selling cloth or beads.

The castles and slave dungeons visit:

I did the castles and slave dungeons tour with semester at sea. We first drove to Elmina castle. The Elmina castle was constructed by the Portuguese in 1482. It was first established as a trae settlement for gold but soon became an important stop in the Atlantic Slave Trade. The dutch fought a war wit the Portuguese and seized the caste in 1637. The slave trade continued under the dutch till 1814 and the fort came to the British possession in 1871, becoming an fort and a training ground for millitary. Following Ghana’s independence, the castle was transferred in property and today is recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. That’s the brief history of the castle.

So we entered the castle and they showed us around, the parts where the male slaves were kept. About 600 slaves were kept in a small area and it would almost always be very dark there and everything the slaves do would be done within the area. They would eat, drink, bodily functions, bleed, vomit and die in the same area. The area the females are kept in a similar kind of slave castle, with 400 of them together. They would have their mensuration there as well. The female slave dungeon was below the Staff quarters where the staff like soldiers and visiting Governor’s used to live. So they would call the women to assemble in the area and the officials would pick out one girl, she would be cleaned and sent upstairs to be raped by the official. After the rape, she would have to just return back to the room with the other women. If the girl protested or anything, she would be chained to a cannon ball in the middle so that everyone could see what happened and she would be lashed. If a women got pregnant, she was allowed to go to the nearby town to give birth and would have to return to the ship immediately. The rebels as they labeled them and the freedom fighters as we called them were kept separately as well so they would not be able to influence the rest. Their cell contained absolutely no ventilation and was even more suffocating than the others. They also showed us the “door of no return”, from where the slaves would leave the castles on the ships. Those who went out never came back, and hence its name. The castle contained two churches. One built by the Portuguese and one built by the Dutch when they took over since the Portuguese were predominately Catholic and the Dutch Protestants.

I am still unable to recount everything about those torture chambers. Thinking of them still makes me shiver.

The moment we finished our tour and exited, there were tons of local sellers waiting for us to come to buy their products. They pounced on us with trays or jewellery, beads, etc. One ploy used was that they would come up to us and ask us for our names and start writing it on a seashell. As the guy who approached me started doing that, I told him I had no money, he said its no problem and that it was just a token of his friendship. Then he passed me a yellow form saying he was collecting donation for some school’s soccer team. I turned it down immediately and returned the seashell. I almost went through the whole bunch of people when this guy names Tony came up to me and introduced himself. He asked me if I was Indian and where I was from. I told him that I was from Singapore and he stood there talking to me for a while. He then asked for my email and handphone number. I did give him my SAS email and real Singaporean number because I figured he would not make an international phone call and also my number now has been deactivated. But as I was boarding the bus, he called me back and wrote my name on a seashell and gave it to me to remember him by. As I sat on the bus, he came down beside my window and his friends were making fun of him. One of them asked me to donate to the scam football thing and asked me to pass the paper to a friend of mine, none of us donated. Then the other guys were asking me for a dollar or something. And finally one guy asks for something to remember him by and when I tell him that I have nothing, he points to my hairtie around my wrists and asks for that as a token. I give him my hair tie and he gives it to Antony. They asked me if I had a boyfriend back home or if I was married and when I said no to both one guy remarked that “you so pretty, you should find a boyfriend” to which I just laughed, thanked him and said I will when I get back. He told me then that I should find one from Ghana and take him back with me and they all pointed to Anthony and laughed. I could just smile sheepishly. The lifelong learners of the bus told me its probably a bad idea to give emails as they will email you for money. But with emails I have the option not to reply and plus, its an SAS email and will be deactivated after a couple of months so I figured nothing to lose.

After that incident, we drove to a beach house resort kind of place for lunch. The food was good and the people I hung out with were interesting. After lunch, we just hung out at the beach, played around for a bit. I bought some stuff from a local craftsmen and we left for the second slave castle.

The second castle we visited was the Cape Coast castle. The castle was built by the swedish for the trade of timber and Gold in 1653 and taken over by the Danish in 1663 and then by the British in 1664 and used for the Atlantic Slave Trade. After the independence of Ghana, it was returned and now is a World Heritage Site as declared by UNESCO. Barack and Michelle Obama visited the site in July 2009.

Our tour guide who was with us the entire time usually works at this castle and gave us the guided tour. He told us how the slaves were segregated when they entered the castle and how the body of the slave is stamped by with agent  (the person who brought them in) and future owner’s names. The slaves were bought even before they were shipped and reached their destination. They were commodified that early on. Since the sale had taken place, one would assume there is incentive to keep the slaves in healthy conditions so that they would eventually reach the destination. He then talked about them trying to break down the resiliance of the slaves. If a slave had a community, a belief, a name, an identity he was not a slave! Everything core to the person had to be broken down, and hence the horrible conditions. Can you imagine having a tag imbedding in you and going through the process where they complete just break you, tear you away from everything you have known?

 He brought us to room where now a spirit lives. Apparently, the spirit used to reside there but when the castle was built, locals moved the spirit away with prayers and now since it belonged to Ghanians again, the spirit has been restored to its original place. The spirit - keeper showed us how the prayer took place as all the kids clicked photographs and shot videos of the event. Its sickening to see how religion degrades its sanctity to become a spectacle for an uninformed, apathetic, indifferent bunch  of tourists. I guess, money corrupts even religions practices!

We entered the male dungeons and we were immersed in complete darkness with the exception of a little window through which the slaves were watched. The slaves were subjected to the same tortures as those in Elmina castle. We visited the “door of no return” where the sign had been changed to the “the door of returned” to invite the family members and desendends of the slaves to visit and pay their respects. The site from the door is amazing. The blue ocean, vast sky and greenery in the distance. Yet, walking out that door to that beautiful sight would possibly be the worst thing in the lives of these people. Its awful to see how such beauty can be associated with such horror. We visited the female dungeons and then the room where they kept the rebels. The room was completely dark. Pitch black. My heart just sank being in that room.
When we walked outside, there was the sign on the wall reading ”In Everlasting Memory of the anguish of our ancestors may those who died rest in peace. May those who return find their roots. May humanity never perpetuate such injustice against humanity. We, the living, vow to uphold this” Reading that made me swell up. I did not continue the rest of the tour, instead went to sit on the wall facing the ocean. A multitude of things went through my mind, things I just cannot put into words. How could humanity ever perpetuate such crimes? Even in those times, how could we subject fellow human beings to that kind of horrible treatment?

How did the church and religion organizations stand for these? There were churches and religious organizations within these slave castles/ dungeons. They supported what was going on and provided excuses to perpetuate the actions! Is that what religion ultimate stands for? It is a tool that we use as a ploy to get what we want and do what we want. We justify it by just cocking up some bullcrap about it being in some religion text. The Brahmins treated the other castes horribly giving some of these things as reasons. How could we do it? And knowing we did it, how can people still stand by their religion in today’s world. People still justify treating the untouchables in India that way, just as churches justify the acts of slavery. And ultimately how can the victims of the crime believe in the same crime as the perpetuators of the crime? I would be so pissed off and have lost my sense of believe in God completely or at least that God. In Ghana, the majority are Christians because of their colonization. Shouldn’t they be totally put off by the idea of God in that context?

Lastly, reading the sign I broke down. Today, slavery still exists and is still one of the biggest crimes thriving around the world. The form of slavery has changed from being used as workers to sex slaves around the world. Human trafficking to me is no different than slavery. And that crime is ever so rampant. How do people stand by it and not do anything? How do perpetuators of the crime live with themselves? Desmond Tutu talks about how people are innately good in his book? Are they really? Do these people who perpetuate these crimes have a strand of goodness in them?

The rest of the day was a blur. I was way too overwhelmed to think or do anything. I was so caught up in my own thoughts. That was definitely the most powerful trip ever.