Day 8 & 9

Sadly I wasn’t able to blog this weekend until now, because we were on a trip. However, I have lots of pictures, and lots to fill you all in on. Friday morning we left early in the morning to drive to Cape Coast where we visited the Cape Coast Castle and Kakum National Park over the weekend. We drove three hours to Cape Coast, discussing the Central Region of Ghana with a historian who came on the trip to answer questions we had and help in our tour of the area. We passed through a refugee camp on the way that was pretty rough. I’m not sure what these people are coming from, but the conditions aren’t the greatest. Huts and shanties abound and children play in the mud. But, they are safe from the wars that are tearing apart the many of the regions of Africa around Ghana. In all honesty though, they didn’t seem to be living any worse than the poorest of the Ghanaians, which I suppose is a good thing that they aren’t being left completely desolate.

As we drove on we also had our first encounter with a group of local children. They apparently LOVE pens. They all asked for them and whenever you gave out one, they always fought over it. At one point I saw a young boy steal a pen from the smallest of the girls because he wanted it. It was quite sad to think that it would come to that. But as we talked to some of the guides we found out that poorer children have a hard time affording any school supplies. So, as soon as they are of school-age and sometimes earlier they are scavenging for pens and pencils, which are quite expensive here. In all I think our group gave out about 12-15 pens and pencils. I think we succeeded in getting one to each child in the group there. The other part of it though was just seeing their faces as we drove away, each of them with a pen or pencil in hand, even the littlest girl who looked to be about 2 years old. They were so grateful and happy for their good fortune of having received a pen. I can’t even imagine an American child who would be truly grateful for receiving a used and very simple pen. But these children were grateful for every little thing. It was heart-warming and a wonderful moment for me to remember to always give thanks and be grateful for even the most simple of things.

We continued on to Cape Coast Castle which was first a Portuguese then a Dutch and finally an English fort holding on the coast of Ghana, which was once known as the Gold Coast. Ghana was also one of the biggest centers for slave trade. The Cape Coast Castle is one of several slave castles left standing on the coast of Ghana. In fact, from the Cape Coast Castle you can actually see Elmina Castle off in the distance about 9km away, I believe. Anyhow, as we entered the castle the mood had started out light and excited. As we toured the museum there we were all instantly sobered. The mood got more and more dark as we followed our tour guide through the dungeons where slaves were kept. The men and women were separated and then shoved into tiny rooms with hard stone floors and tiny windows more than 10 feet in the air, which would have been the only exchange of air that these people got. It was heart-breaking at first, but then as we moved to the next chamber and I walked past a Ghanaian student group it became absolutely unbearable. I couldn’t hold back the flood of tears that came as I was hit with the sudden realization of the cruelty and inhumane treatment of these people that took place in these exact rooms. It was all I could do to keep from sniffling the entire tour. It still tears me apart to think of all of the awful things that these people endured, only to be stuffed on to ships for weeks, many of them dying before they even reached America. I couldn’t help but feel guilty for this systematic degradation of other human beings that was enacted by people who may have been my ancestors. I can’t bear all of that guilt, and I know that I am not to blame in the slightest. However, something in me is sickened at the thought of the circumstances that were created for these men, women, and children. They tore apart families, tribes, destroyed entire cultures of people. What can be more cruel than taking away someone’s family, home, and humanity and then forcing them to abandon their native cultures, losing their native languages, their religious practices, and having all that is sacred striped from them and replaced by empty bible bashing religion. Now this isn’t to say anything against today’s Ghanaians for converting to Christianity, but I think it was incredibly wrong for Europeans to think that the “Christian” thing to do was force families apart, rob them of their humanity, and then blackmail them into converting to Christianity or else. Needless to say, I was pretty broken up as well as angry from the tour of this slave castle.

The Door of No Return

The symbolic Door of Return for Africans coming home

The slaves' last sight of their homeland

Shrine of offerings in the male dungeon

View of the sea from the Castle

The Castle battlements

The male dungeon entrance

After our tour at the castle, we preceded to our botel (no I didn’t misspell it). A botel is basically the word for a Ghanaian hotel that is on the water. Our hotel was actually on a sort of peninsula more than an island, but it was pretty cool either way. Sadly you can’t really tell that there is water on three sides unless you walk all the way around because of the actual hotel buildings blocking the view of the water. However, the REALLY cool thing about it was that there were crocodiles in the water. So I got a really cool picture of that. The night at the hotel was pretty awesome as well. We had dinner at the hotel restaurant (which was incredibly slow- it took about 2 hrs after I ordered to get my food- and they ran out of tilapia so I had a really weird fish that wasn’t really that good) but on the up-side I had lots of good conversations, there was a live band at dinner so we danced a bit, AND they let us make some music ourselves. So one of our group members, Bobby, got up and played the guitar. It was quite the hidden talent. He just started playing on the spot, just ad lib and it was pretty freaking awesome. The guy on the drums just went with him too. So that was pretty awesome. And I got an entire room of people to sing “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” which was A LOT of fun. To end the night we all got in the pool and tried to teach a few of our Ghanaian tour guides how to swim. You’d think that living so close to the coast one would learn, but apparently not. Then we eventually got yelled at my some Brits who were apparently trying to sleep in the room right next to the pool.

A tree on a little island by the botel where birds flocked

Our Botel

One of the crocodiles snapping at bread someone threw

Then today we got up early and had a complimentary breakfast at the botel, then headed out towards Kakum National Park for our canopy walk. I was most excited about this part because it was supposed to be a good hike in the woods. I was a bit disappointed at first because it was VERY touristy, with lots of loud people, including school groups. I wanted a quiet walk in the woods, and I got a loud romp through the woods on a stone walkway. By the time we got to the actual canopy part I was wholly un-thrilled. The hike was barely even 10 minutes and even though the steps were sometimes steep there was a constant chatter around me from the tourist so that I couldn’t just concentrate on the sound of my breathing and the breath of the forest. That was really frustrating. But once we got on the actual canopy walk I found out that only 5 people could be on a given bridge at once AND most people took the shorter route which was only 3 bridges instead of 7. Of course I went on all seven and thoroughly enjoyed it. To make things even better, it started to POUR as soon as we got up to the canopy so even more people turned back and the sound of the rain drowned out the sound of the humans. I took lots of pictures, loved the heights, the sway of the bridge, and the coolness of the rain. The only thing that could have made it better would have been to completely get rid of the other human beings and to have been able to take as much time as I wanted up in the trees. I also really wanted to do another tour which was specifically geared towards seeing the wildlife (including monkeys, all kinds of birds, and ELEPHANTS). Needless to say, I am definitely going to try and go back for that hike.

On canopy

My roommate Katie

ME!!

The Canopy Bridge

Wilder (a group member) on canopy

View from the Canopy

Awushi trying to protect her hair from the rain

The bridges

Our group on the canopy walk

Obed (purple) and Shaddrock (red) two of our guides

Soaking wet after the canopy walk in the rain

And yes I did!

All too soon we were done on the canopy and walking back down. We continued on to lunch at the University of Cape Coast, where I cleaned off the mud that had been splattered on to the backs of my legs and changed into a dry shirt which was quite heavenly. When we got back to campus three hours later, we were all hungry and on our own for the first time without meals provided by ISEP. So, to top of an absolutely magical day at Cape Coast, we ate some absolutely magical egg sandwiches from the night market that just hit the spot.