cape coast

So this blog is definitely overdue, but I wanted to write about my trip to Cape Coast. Cape Coast is a town located along the coast (surprising, I know) and is also the home of some of the largest slave trading castles that still exist today. A few weekends ago, I travelled there with the 6 other girls from Elon (Rachel, Maggie, Joanna, Natalie, Kaya and Ayaan) in a very nice car paid for by Elon (thank you, Dr. Digre!). We went to Kakum National Forest, where we did the canopy walk. The canopy walk was constructed in 1995 and consists of bridges connected to trees many feet from the ground.

After the canopy walk, we went to Hans Cottage Botel (we assumed that a botel means the same thing as a motel or hotel?) and ate at their restaurant which is surrounded by a pond of alligators. I couldn’t wait to meet up with the Elon Winter Term class, because two of my suitemates from last semester, Gretchen and Lauren, were on the trip! It was so weird for all of us to be together in Ghana, but so awesome. Dr. Digre also arranged for Elon to pay for the 7 of us from the University of Ghana to sleep at the resort where the winter term people were staying…the same place where Barak Obama & family stayed when they visited Ghana! It was so nice…and so weird to be in such luxury! (Although our hostel on campus is certainly luxurious for Ghana).

The next day, the seven of us from the university went our own way to go to both the Elmina and Cape Coast castles (the winter term trip had already done both of these). We first went to Elmina Castle (really St. George’s Castle, but located in Elmina). Elmina was ruled by the Portuguese for two hundred years following their landing in 1471, and then ruled by the Dutch after they defeated the Portuguese. Both the Dutch and Portuguese used the castle as a slave trading post. It was sobering to walk through the slave dungeons, see the somewhat-hidden passageway where the residing governor of the castle brought female slaves up for sex, smell the still-present odors in the various dungeons, and look at the tiny windows used for ventilation, food and water for the hundreds of slaves packed in a small room, wondering how any could have survived the malnutrition and disease.

Before we headed to Cape Coast Castle, the 7 of us attempted to find a vegetarian restaurant called Baab’s Juices (the other 2 vegetarians and I were so excited at the thought of salads, tofu, healthy food!) that our guidebook raved about. Our taxi driver abruptly stopped the car and motioned us out, promising us that we had arrived at our spot. We got out, peered around, and saw a boarded-up shack across the road that looked like it may have been the restaurant. I was pretty convinced that the restaurant had closed, until a Ghanaian came running up to us, and after sort of convincing us that she was Baab herself, hurried us up a very vertical flight of stairs into what I think may have been part of her house. There was one table in the room, and her and various other unnamed people brought chairs out of what I think was their house for all of us to sit in. After awhile (I am trying to move past the thought of anything happening fast in this country), Baab served us warm fruit smoothies in red cups. We’re still unsure what exactly happened….

We then took the tour through Cape Coast castle, which was similar to Elmina in the size of rooms, the tiny windows for ventilation, and the pungent odor still lingering in the air. Particularly disturbing was the tiny jail dungeon. We were told that white guards who worked at the castle were put in this jail if they were found to be having sex with the female slaves, and that many slaves were placed in the jail for minor offenses (I am afraid to think what was considered a minor offense) or for larger ones, such as trying to escape. Our guide explained that the white prisoners were given food and water through the peephole in the door, but the blacks were not, and so they starved to death.

I am so glad that I had the chance to visit both of these castles, but my heart was heavy as we trudged through cellar after cellar. Seeing the churches established at both of these castles was especially horrifying. How could people worship God as thousands were fighting for their lives just a floor below them and not be moved to action? How could the church think it was okay to enslave and exploit other people made in the image of God? Yes, these people may have looked different than them, but let us all remember that Jesus was not white…he actually probably looked Middle Eastern.

At the end of the tour through Elmina, the guide said that he did not want people to leave in bitterness or anger towards those who enslaved Africans; that we had to move past the tragedies that occurred in Africa and all be united as human beings. While I do agree that we should not be constantly lamenting over past sins, what made my heart heavy is that slavery is still happening today. There are more than one million child prisoners. Thousands of children have been stolen to work for Joseph Kony in Darfur. Millions of women and children, both boys and girls, are enslaved in human trafficking -- for sex or labor. Slavery isn’t over. That doesn’t even begin to think about the billions of people virtually enslaved by poverty. I wonder if in two hundred years Christians will look back at the state of the world in 2010 and think just as I did while standing at the castles: how could the church stand by and do nothing in the face of such injustice?

A plaque at each castle reads:

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 again perpetrate such injustice against humanity
We the living vow to uphold this

It is a beautiful saying. I am just wondering whether we have really vowed that at all.