Upon arrival we went into the castle and paid admission. The fee was steep by Ghana standards at 40 cedes per person but it is a UNESCO World Heritage site so I suppose it demands a sizable fee. They do tours every hour and we happened to arrive at 1pm on the dot so that was convenient. The tour guide was knowledgable, spoke decent English and did a good job of stating the facts without any undertone of animosity towards the white folk on the tour.
Hmm maybe I should back up. Some of you probably don't know what Cape Coast Castle is... so lets do a quick history lesson. The fort was initially built by the Swedes but was made into a castle by the British occupation in Ghana in 1665. The castle became a glorified holding prison for captives who were to be shipped out as slaves. The British would cause intertribal wars solely to take possession of the war prisoners to sell into slavery. Children were kidnapped or forcibly removed from homes. Some people basically pawned their family members to get guns/ammunition to defend themselves with the intention to pay back the British and get their family members back. Rarely could they afford the required duty fee to do so.
Photos of the Castle
The Obamas came here in 2009 to see the castle and pay their respects.
There's a wreath in one of the dungeons that they left to honor Michelle's ancestors.
It was a somber yet very educational tour. We went into the men's dungeon first. It was dark, damp, and had only three small windows through which the only light and air came in. We were told about 1000 men were kept in there at a time in shackles. There was a trough in the middle of each room which was intended to remove urine and excrement (and from what we were told, did a poor job of that given the volume of people it was "serving"). From there we saw some tombs of fallen British people who lived at the Castle as well as the minister who ran the church at the castle. Next, we went up to see the cannons that defended the castle against foreign ships.
We went to the women's dungeon next which was two smaller rooms rather than the one long narrow room for the men. Apparently, the governor of the castle got to select the better looking women to be in one room and the rest in the other. He then selected from the "good looking dungeon" when he wanted to take advantage of a woman and then sent her back to her dungeon.
Some of the wreaths in the male dungeon. This room had the entrance to the tunnel,
which has now been walled off to signify the end of slavery.
Probably the most heart wrenching part of the castle was the exit. The men had a long underground tunnel that ran the length of the fort and then they came out over by the women's dungeon. They exited the fort through a very narrow door, above which is a sign labeled "The Door of No Return". What awaited them on the other side? The 3-4 month journey on a ship to the Americas. From capture to arrival in the Americas, approximately half of the prisoners would die. Many due to illness, poor conditions, lack of food, but, the most inhumane to me was that they would toss people overboard by random... solely to lighten the load of the boat when in a particularly hard to navigate part of the journey.
The other side of the Door of No Return where the ships would have been.
In an effort to have a positive paragraph in this post, there was a family who came back to Cape Coast Castle in the 1990s. They had an ancestor who had been fortunate and able to survive the hardships of both the journey and slavery itself. They brought him around to the door and walked him back through it back into the Castle, after which they hung a plaque outside that states "The Door of Return".
Upon finishing the tour, we went to the small museum and then had some lunch at a little place on the ocean. After lunch, we hopped back in the car with Frazier for the ride home. We hit a lot of traffic on the way back so it took longer to get home than it took to get there. We like getting out of Accra and seeing what the country has to offer but it's often difficult without a vehicle. All three of us enjoyed the Castle and the educational value of the experience. We got cleaned up and then went to a Japanese place for dinner. All in all it was a good day.
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