Touring Along Ghana's Coast

One of our constant companions in the time spent in the Ghanaian Embassy in Cairo was a large, techincolor-quality poster of Elmina Castle, advertizing it as the oldest European building in Sub-Saharan Africa. Built by the Portuguese in 1482, it was taken over by the Dutch 150 years later, and used by them until the British got it in the late 1800s. But of course, like other castles along the West African coastline, this served only secondarily as a domain for European royalty. Primarily, it was a fortress for holding captured people until they could be loaded onto ships as slaves.

From the first sight of the fort from the road, it was overwhelming, disturbing, and nauseatingly spooky to think that, in a physical sense, the Middle Passage started here. Following a guide through the rooms as he spoke about their uses only increased that feeling. There were the male and female dungeons, and the deeper dungeon that he called "the room of no return," from which the loading of the captives into the underbellies of the ships actually took place. (The ocean no longer reaches up to the door, but it used to; indeed, the dungeons were designed to increase the terror of the captives, most of whom were from the interior and had never seen or heard of the ocean before, by surrounding them with the thunderous sound of the waves crashing against the outer walls). He also showed us the cell where drunken or disorderly Dutch soldiers would be locked for the night, complete with two windows to circulate air. By contrast, the cell next door, for Africans who challenged the slave traders, was airless. Men and women were locked in there to starve to death for their crime of resistance, and the bodies were only removed after the last one had died. One of the sicker elements of the castle was that the governor's rooms, a series of spacious chambers on the upper floor, had courtyard balconies and windows looking directly down over the entrances to the dungeons. You could almost imagine him sipping Medeira and smoking a pipe, looking with satisfaction over the cargo that would bring in his next payload.

The town of Elmina itself was a bustling sensory experience. Although the castle is one of the biggest attractions in Ghana, the tourist industry has scarcely registered on the consciousness of the town as a whole (not a bad thing, to be sure), and it still has the feeling of a vibrant small fishing and trade town. Brightly-painted wooden boats moved regularly between beach and ocean, sometimes passing the narrow inlet that divides one side of town from the other to deliver their catch to the market area. The market itself looked from above like a bed of zinnias-- a densely packed, stunningly colorful mass of what turned out to be people, energetically engaged in buying and selling small silver fish. Elsewhere, women carried aluminum basins, 3 feet in diameter and brimming with fish, on top of their heads, never registering any disturbance to their balance in the busy streets. The scene heading away from the castle and market, along a beach lined with fishing shacks and dominated by laughing children playing in the water, looked idyllic viewed from the castle. As we actually walked it, though, it was a bit depressing: trash and animal (and human?) waste lined the area where the children played, and was home to several nasty vultures digging through the fish corpses; sewage water tricked steadily to the ocean from the clustered tin-roofed shacks; and larger groups of men sat around by the boats, chatting while the women minded children and food stands.

The next day we had quite a different activity, taking a tro tro (public transportation van) out to a small patch of tropical rainforest 30 kilometers inland, Kakum National Park. The main attraction of the park is a canopy walkway, a series of seven bridges with metal ladders covered with plywood as their base and thick netting as their sides, suspended 90 feet above the ground between viewing platforms attached to massive trees. The hundreds of Ghanaian school children visiting the park the same time we were prevented it from being a meditative nature experience, and we didn't see any of the monkeys, elephants, or 600 species of butterfly that live in the park, but walking through the canopy between the trees was an awesome feeling all on its own. As I'm usually afraid of heights, I was careful to follow the rule about not looking down at first, but as I went on I got bolder, and more curious-- the coolness of the view down and across the canopy was worthwhile, but in the end I couldn't try it more than once. After the canopies, we took a short guided walk through the rainforest to learn about trees and other plants. It was cool, except for two unfortunate occasions of stepping into groups of hyper-aggressive biting ants, who managed to get themselves into our shoes before we'd even seen them on the ground. Some also made their way into my pants (I think my first time actually ever experiencing ants in the pants), where they showed their intention to bite all over, so I had to pull them down and have Erik pick the ants off my legs. Luckily, the hundreds of school children were not on the walk to see that.

Throughout this time, since Kumasi, we'd been traveling and hanging out with a great guy we met there, Marcus, an English free-lance journalist who had been in the Niger Delta working on a story about the conflicts there. He had spent three years in Mexico City previously, so it was very easy to form an initial connection over travel and beer, and as the three of us continued to take meals and visit tourist places (and eternally not-working internet cafes) together for close to a week, we logged a great variety of conversation-hours. We were all hankering for the beach, so the day after visiting Kakum we headed to Kokrobite, a fishing village/rastafarian enclave/ex-pat hang out just outside Accra.

We arrived just in time for Saturday night, a raucous, young-white-kid filled, music-pounding evening that might have been fun, had we not been exhausted. As there were no rooms left, we were staying in the loft, an open (but mosquito-netted) area directly behind the band and next to the bar-- which for that night meant that though we could go to bed early, we certainly couldn't fall asleep until late. In addition, though, the whole scene of the evening felt strange and sort of icky-- my impression of the crowd was that they saw Ghana as a cool backdrop for a party, and Ghanaians as interesting props within that, and that was about it. I have no doubt that my judgement was overbroad and unfair, but at the same time, there was something that just didn't feel right about it all. Happily, though, the big groups that had been there for the weekend took off Sunday afternoon, and Big Milly's turned into a relaxed beachside hangout. The only non-beach or food related activity we did in Kokrobite was go to a drumming, dance, and acrobatics show at the Academy of African Music and , a three-hour immersion in sound and movement that was tiring to watch, nevermind to actually perform. One of the astounding things to witness was the way the percussionists communicated as they played, engineering major changes in rhythm through subtle individual shifts. Otherwise, in addition to Marcus, we really enjoyed talking with an American couple who were traveling a bit in Ghana from Mali, where they have been living and starting a public health NGO. (The woman, who was one of the founders, was still in college-- we were very impressed). We also had conversations with some young people who are in Ghana as volunteers in orphanages. Talking with all of these smart, observant people-- like our earlier conversations with John in Sogakope-- was both heartening and disheartening, the former because of their energy and insights, but the latter because of all the destructive or unhopeful aspects of government and society that they face as obstacles to the change they are trying to bring around.

In this special week, we've had our share of longings for turkey with all the fixings and copious amounts of pie. But more than anything, we've been feeling great thanks for both this opportunity to travel and, especially, for the friends and family we are surrounded by, even so far away. We'll be thinking of you Thursday-- and hope you'll eat an extra piece of pie for us. Happy Thanksgiving.