Happy Independence Day (MON 3/6)

On Monday we drove 3 hours from Accra west to the town of Cape Coast.  Cape Coast was once the capital of Ghana, and was the birthplace of Ghanaian education.  Today it is a fishing village, but many very old colonial buildings remain. 

Cape Coast is also the home of the Cape Coast Castle.  The castle was built in 1654 by the Swedes as a timber trading post but later it was seized by the British and it used as a slave castle.  The whitewashed upstairs portions of the building housed government officials and even a church. Under the ground, there were dark dungeons, which were used to house slaves that had been captured from across Africa.  Most stayed one to three months, about one third of them died in horrific conditions. Those that happened to survive the inhumane conditions were eventually marched in chains through underground tunnels to the Door of No Return, where they were loaded on ships for a Transatlantic journey to foreign lands.  

Touring the castle was very emotional for me, I felt physically ill when we entered the dungeon areas, thinking of the tragic injustices that had taken place in this very spot. I am still struggling to process everything I saw and heard at the castle.  Cape Coast Castle has been designated as a World Heritage Site as a reminder for the world of what happened here.

A plaque at the 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 perpetuate such injustice against humanity.  We, the living, vow to uphold this."

I saw lots of interesting things on the drive to and from Cape Coast, I will just leave a few here, along with my meal of chicken stew (spicy!), banku and yams.  Banku is a fermented corn dough that is cooked in banana leaves.