Is it weird to say that slavery wasn't real to me before this trip? For all the videos and pictures and stories I've been flooded with my whole life I never GOT it until I slipped and slid my way into total darkness surrounded by a bunch of other people, and could neither see nor smell the sea, only feel it through the stone bones of the castle in which I was buried. The press of bodies in the dark and the two tiny windows for air and light conspired to make it that much blacker. I knew about slavery, but until I stepped into the male dungeons at Cape Coast Castle I didn't believe or understand. Maybe now I do, as much as the person I am is able to understand. It is too big, and even standing in the dark and steeped in it I am too detached.
The European presence on the coast of West Africa started with the Portuguese in 1471. By 1482 they had founded a settlement and begun construction on a castle at a sight rich with gold, which they named La Mina, or the mine. Over centuries, that name has evolved into Elmina, and the castle they built still stands, the oldest and largest castle on the coast. It was originally used as a base of operations for trade and missionary work among the peoples of the area, and has many large warehouse rooms to store goods awaiting transport via ship to Europe. With the birth of the African slave trade, those warehouses were converted to slave dungeons, and over the three hundred or so years of the trans-atlantic slave trade, 11 million people passed through it on their way to plantations in the New World. It was controlled first by the Portuguese, and then in 1637 passed (through bloody fingers) into the hands of the Dutch, who were there until 1872, when, unable to make legitimate trade pay, they traded the fort to the British for interests in Suriname and the East Indies. The castle belonged to the British for almost one hundred years, and was used as a training base for the Royal West African Force, the African troops who fought in WWII. After that it was used as a police training barraks until Ghanaian independence in 1957. With all the layers of use since the 'end' of the slave trade in 1807, it is still impossible to miss that purpose. The entire building screams it. The female dungeons still smell like something that may just be 500 years of ocean mildew, but when combined with my imagination is the stench of suffering. Women who misbehaved (refused to surrender their bodies for use by the governor) were chained in the courtyard and forced to hold a cannon ball above their heads in the hot sun all day long. Women who did go to the service of the men were washed in that courtyard by the male soldiers and brought up a set of wooden stairs that led directly to the bedroom of the governor. In contrast to the dark, overcrowded dungeons, the governor's chambers were light and full of air from huge windows. They were floored in wood, and from every side was a view of the ocean or the town, spread beautifully over the hills behind. From one of the walls, looking to the east down the coast, you can see Cape Coast Castle, the British counterpart, on a strip of land extending into the ocean. Elmina is the oldest castle used in the West African slave trade, but it is not the only one.
Cape Coast not the oldest castle on the coast, but it is the first built expressly as part of the slave trade infrastructure instead of being converted from another purpose. And the method and thought that went into the storage and transportation of the human merchandise housed there is nothing if not thorough. Dungeons are located either side of a courtyard overlooked by the balcony of the governor's chambers. The sun is bright, and from the cannon mounts atop the wall the view of the Gulf of Guinea and the tropical coast of Ghana is stunning. The male dungeons are three largish rooms that are completely dark except for tiny windows located ten feet up the wall, and the light and air from these has to thread itself through feet of thick stone wall. Walking out of the sunny, bright courtyard and down the ramp into the dungeons was like walking into a grave. It was so dark I could not see anything, including where I was going. The museum has strung a little electrical cord and a single light bulb in each dungeon so that visitors can see where they are going. When we got to the dungeon itself the guide turned out the light. Our tour group was about fifty, and with all of us in there and the light off it was hot, cramped, and unpleasant. The guide told us that though the rooms had been designed to hold fifty persons they were usually occupied by three times that number. They were taken above to the courtyard twice a day to be fed if they had behaved. If not, they were thrown food in the darkness and had to fight over it. There is a tunnel, walled over since the official abolition of slavery in the British Empire two hundred years ago, that connects the male dungeons with the female ones, no less dark and gruesome. Male and female slaves are reunited briefly before walking out the Door of No Return, which leads to the port side of the castle and the waiting slave ships. There were two ways to escape a walk through that door and the fateful middle passage. If you were a female slave, you wore only a loincloth, just like the men did. And when you were eating all the male officers of the castle stood on the balcony watching and weighing and selecting. If one of the slaves was chosen, she was washed and dressed and presented to the officer to be used for his pleasure. If she performed well, she became his concubine and worked as a domestic slave in the castle. If she became pregnant her child was taken from her and educated at the castle and given his father's name. So women could escape the Door of No Return in exchange for their bodies. Men were also used that way, but the only way for them to avoid the ships was death. Also off of hte courtyard is a door that is marked today with a sign saying 'CELL.' This is where the 'stubborn slaves' were imprisoned, men who fought the indignities being forced upon them. The cell is a room that fits only about 30 people total. And when the door is shut there is no light and no air. Not even from a tiny window high on the wall. Being locked in that cell was exactly a death sentence, carried out through suffocation and starvation. I was there for maybe 45 seconds. I cant imagine being there for days, watching people around me die and knowing that I was going to die as well.
Nine years ago, two African American freedom fighters were disinterred from their graves in Jamaica and the United States and brought across the Atlantic the other direction and over sea to that Door. After a ceremony, their bodies were brought back in through the door, now marked Door of Return on this side, and buried in Accra. This process was a symbol of the desire to see Africans from the diaspora to return to their roots, see this place once in their lives, and pass through the door of return as a form of closure on this period in history. Our guide at Cape Coast told us, when he showed us the church built above the male dungeons, that only God can know, and that we should not pass judgment. Our guide at Elmina castle kept saying, over and over again, "Thank God, and thank God again" that this no longer happens and will hopefully never happen again. For all that I am not sure which God I believe in, I do thank God that it is history instead of present, and that I do not have to bear the weight of judgment on my shoulders.
How many times will Africa break my heart?
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