Cape Coast Castle & Global Mamas: An exercise in contradiction

Our trip to Cape Coast Castle was, as expected, an emotionally challenging day. Leading up to the day, I felt a mix of dread and excitement knowing that I was lucky to have the chance to visit this place, but worried about what they day may hold. We started our journey early in the morning, and not surprisingly, the ride was rough at points, smooth at others. Eventually, we were riding alongside the Atlantic Ocean, which was a welcome sight for me, someone who is lucky enough to live on the very same ocean in another hemisphere. On this eastern side, though, she looked more like the Pacific does along the western coast of the US: gray, wild, and terrifying. Unlike my Atlantic, which is often tepid and bright blue, this ocean looked inhospitable. I imagined what it must have been like for the captive humans as they looked out into the abyss, not knowing what awaited them on their journey, or upon their arrival in the Americas. On a good day such as this sunny one in July, this ocean did not look inviting.

Cape Coast was built by the British in an attempt to rival Elmira Castle, the Portuguese fortress down the coast. The Spanish and the Portuguese started the slave trade from the western coast of Africa in the 1500s after they realized the Indigenous populations in the Americas could not survive the brutal treatment they were subjected to by their captors. The Arabs had been trading humans from the east coast of Africa already, and word from the middle east was that these humans could be worked harder and longer because they were stronger than other populations. We know now that none of this is true, that there is no genetic difference between African peoples and peoples elsewhere beyond a small DNA marker that determines the amount of melanin in ones skin, but these beliefs prevailed as the Spanish and Portuguese began negotiating with West African tribes like the Ashanti, the Fente, and the Ewe to create a trade of humans from the interior of Africa to the coast.

When the British decided to get in on the action, they established their base at Cape Coast and began exporting humans to their colonies in the Caribbean like Jamaica, and eventually to Virginia on the North American continent. This business, which began as a way to provide exploitable workers to lucrative cash crop fields in the Americas, outpaced its original purpose as a multi-million dollar industry on its own. It is estimated that up to 12 million human beings were transferred through castles in West Africa to plantations in the Americas from the 1500s to the early 1800s when it was finally stopped. So many never made it to the nightmare on the other side of the sea, perishing during the brutal transatlantic middle passage and dumped overboard. For those who were sold to the British, specifically by the Ashanti and the Fente, Cape Coast was the last time they set feet on the continent of Africa, and the "Door of no Return" the last place they could breathe fresh air between the dank dungeons and the danker hull of the ships. Actually being there, standing on that hallowed ground, was even more powerful than I could have imagined.

In our tour group was an African American family, and some African families. The different ways in which those two groups experienced the tour was something I had not expected to focus so much of my attention on, but as a white person from the US, I felt like I was just along for the ride, soaking in as much as I could. The African American family was noticeably disturbed. They were reluctant to take photos (as was I), and prefered to remain quiet in places like the dungeons as we listed to our tour guide explain that we were standing on the fossilized remains of human excrement, vomit, menstrual blood, and urine. The African families, however, prefered to take photos of themselves in the dungeons, often making hand gestures like peace signs and smiling. They also spoke loudly in their languages, and allowed their young children to loudly watch TV shows on their phones while the tour guide was speaking. At one point, the guide was giving us a beautiful lecture about the women who dared to rebel, even though they knew it meant more rape and torture, and the sounds of a theme song from a French-language cartoon overtook her and the point she was trying to make. For those families, this was just another stop on their tours. Until we got upstairs. In the governor's quarters, they became very agitated when the discussion turned to the post-enslavement era, when Cape Coast Castle was used to decimate the authority of the local chiefs in favor of the British rule. THEN, these African families were visibly upset and had many questions about various bonds and contracts between chiefs and the British, clearly angry about the ways in which the British violated their treaties and promises. It was fascinating to see the difference in the way this tour impacted each of us depending on the lens with which we view the world. When we asked a professor and the University of Ghana about this dichotomy the next day, she said the same thing my host teacher, Obed, said when I asked him about the slave trade and West Africa's role. To many, it's just a "thing that happened, and the chiefs were wrong, but they apologized and now it's over." Obed went so far as to say that until he visited the US, he did not realize the extent to which it is certainly NOT over for Black Americans in the States, or for anyone living in the Americas grappling with the very real impact systemic racism has on our society every day.

Visiting these spaces, and having the chance to really imagine these moments in the lives of the very real people who endured these horrific experiences, moved me in an unexpected way. I knew I would feel awful, and that even though my own peasant ancestors in Poland had no direct relationship to this particular genocide, I saw more than ever the responsibility we all have to own the mistakes of the past, and to continue to work to fight the injustices that still remain. We must educate others, and ask that all humans take responsibility for the ways in which we treat others. In Ghana, they are working to reshape the curriculum so that more attention is paid to the slave trade, and specifically to the ways in which tribes in Ghana benefited greatly from its existence, but there is resistance. Just like in the US, there is a feeling that we should all just be able to move on from these things that happened so long ago, as though generational trauma is something that can just be ignored, or as if the economic ramifications are not still playing out. I'm still processing my feelings on the visit, and probably will for some time.

After our visit to the Castle, we went to Global Mamas where we learned to make red red, kelewele, and palova. We went from one of the saddest, grayest, darkest places I have ever visited to one of the most vibrant, beautiful places I visited in Africa. We cooked together, and shared this amazing meal together, and it was a reminder that even though humanity is capable of horrific violence and tragedy, we can choose to find ways to come together as people, and choose to find the light and the JOY, if we make the effort. It does not mean we should forget... but maybe we can learn to do better.