Back Though the Door of No Return
"Africa is a historical truth ... no man can know where he's going unless he knows exactly where he's been and exactly how he arrived at his present place."
- Maya Angelou
When U.S. citizens of the African diaspora decide to trace their roots, Ghana is the place they often start. Perhaps they recall that W. E. B. Dubois lived his last days there. Maya Angelou lived there for a short time and Malcolm X made a visit. Ghana gave the world Kente Cloth, West African Dance, Adinkra symbols, and more recently, Fantasy Coffins.
But it is Ghana’s geographic legacy – when it was known as the Gold Coast – as an integral part of the highly organized, very lucrative, and totally reprehensible triangular trade route that forcibly transported over 12 million enslaved Africans, of which at 500,000 landed in the United States (NPR 2006), that is probably the more significant draw.
Traders form all over Western Europe, starting with the Portuguese, sailed to the Gold Coast to plunder its rich gold and timber resources. Captured Africans were first transported to Portugal as slaves in the 1440's. In 1518, Spain was the first country to forcibly transport enslaved Africans across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. Soon the British, Dutch and French joined in, seeking their own share of the profits from the sale of human beings to feed a new economy. By the end of the 18th century, it is estimated that every year, over 70,000 captured men, women and children were incarcerated in fortified outposts along the West African coast (BBC News Service). If they managed to survive the torture, rape, and inhuman conditions in which they were held, they were then forced to make the long and difficult voyage – known as the Middle Passage – across the Atlantic to be sold to plantation owners in the United States, South America, and the Caribbean.
By 1874, when Britain abolished slavery, the Gold Coast was a British colony. When independence from Britain was achieved in 1957, the fledgling democracy took the name – Ghana – from a thirteenth century kingdom that was once located five hundred miles north of its capitol city, Accra. Today, there are two notable historic sites open to the public on the coast of Ghana, where one can learn more about this “trade” that spanned over three centuries: Cape Coast Castle, and Elmina Castle.
Both Cape Coast Castle and Elmina Castle (which is a designated UNESCO World Heritage site) attract significant numbers of American visitors. And the government of Ghana is pleased to welcome them with open arms with the hope that they may feel like they are "coming home," and maybe decide to stay and invest in the country. Many visitors come seeking insight and understanding, all the while knowing that the experience will be difficult. One visitor, Renee Bouvelle, from Washington D.C. who was interviewed at Elmina Castle said: "You know, it's horrible that this happened, but if this didn't happen, then . . . my mother and I, and other people in the diaspora, wouldn't be here. And the thing, I think, to realize, is people had to be marched from all over, survive that, then they had to survive living in here, then they had to survive in the boats, then they had to survive during the slavery, then they had to survive in the Apartheid, the Jim Crow that we had in the United States, and you look now. Out of all the people we have, no matter what we touch, we excel in." Her mother, Virgie Bouvelle added: "I guess it helps me to understand the strength that we have today, but it doesn't help me to understand the brutality of slavery." (NPR, 2006)
Inevitably there are also reports of antagonism (and also confusion) about the role Africans themselves played in the slave trade (NY Times, 2005). Yaa Gyasi, Ghanian born author of the book Homecoming, who immigrated to the U.S. when she was nine, said in an interview: "Ghanaians don’t talk about (Cape Coast Castle) at all. They don’t talk about complicity at all. I asked my parents whether they learned about it at all in school; they don’t really teach it, to my understanding. It is not something I would have been interested in if I had not lived in America or had not grown up in Alabama, where you get to see the result of what all of that is. You put it out of your mind if you or your family ended up in Ghana but not when you end up on the other side." (Slate 2016).
Cape Coast Castle
Built by Swedes who named it Carolusburg, Cape Coast Castle sits prominently in the town of Cape Coast (previously known as Cabo Corso) which lies about ninety miles west of Accra. Its cannons area all focused towards the Atlantic Ocean, and the view is spendid. It fell into Dutch hands for a brief time and was then seized by the British in 1664. For the next 150 years, it served as the base of the highly profitable British transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans.
Inscribed (ironically) over an archway at Cape Coast Castle are the words: Freedom and Justice. To those complicit in the enslavement, torture, and trafficking of men, women and children from all over Africa, it was clear that these words applied only to White Europeans..
From the courtyard, one has a view of the multi-story section of the castle reserved for the British officers. Their accommodations were designed to shade them from the harsh sun and heat in large comfortable chambers with high ceilings and breezy verandas. From the windows high above the courtyard, they could observe those they had captured, and decide which of the women they would rape that night.
Entrance to one of the male slave dungeons.
Passageway with additional slave dungeons to the left.
There were five dungeons designated for men, and two for women. At any given time, they would be 1,000 men and 300 women between the ages of 15 and 35, held captive (Post-Gazette 2009). The dungeons had no natural light and no toilets. They would have been flooded with human waste. Many perished, but still many others survived.
The infamous Door of No Return. All those who managed to survive imprisonment at Cape Coast Castle would pass through these doors – human beings traded for manufactured goods.
Today, just beyond the Door of No Return, life goes on. Fishermen in hand constructed wooden canoes barrel onto shore at high speeds
Elmina Castle
Elmina Castle is located thirteen kilometers away from Cape Coast Castle, where the Portuguese had established a settlement focused on gold and ivory trading. In 1482 they constructed a fortress there which they named São Jorge da Mina (St. George of the Mine) Castle. It is supposedly the oldest European structure in sub Saharan Africa. Like Cape Coast Castle, it started out as a fortified trading outpost, but later became a major player in the triangular transatlantic trading trade route. In 1637 the Portuguese were ousted by the Dutch, who continued the trading in enslaved humans primarily to Brazil and the Caribbean until 1814. Up to 1500 captured Africans were held in Elmina's dungeons, for six to twelve weeks, and many succumbed to malaria, yellow fever and infections from the unsanitary conditions of their incarceration.
Entry to the castle courtyard is up a series of ramps and bridges.
The Ghanian mid-day sun and heat are intense in Elmina's white washed courtyard.
Trading places: the African tour guide locks the predominantly Caucasian tourists in the slave cell.
The skull and cross bones marks the house of the condemned where those who had repeatedly tried to escape awaited death.
View over the ramparts, for a glimmer of the ocean, Elmina Castle
REFERENCES:
Guided Tours, Cape Coast Castle and Elmina Castle, April 12, 2014.
BBC World Service. "The Story of Africa: Slavery." http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/features/storyofafrica/9chapter4.shtml
Isaac Chotniner. "I Was Thinking About Blackness in America." Interview with Yaa Gyasi. Slate Book Review. 2016. http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2016/06/yaa_gyasi_on_her_debut_novel_homegoing_and_getting_blurbed_by_ta_nehisi.html
Ofeibea Quist-Arcton. "African Slave Decendents Trace History in Ghana". NPR Morning Edition with Renee Montagne, 2006. https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=5171347
Lydia Polgreen. "Ghana's Uneasy Embrace of Slavery's Diaspora." New York Times. 2005. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/world/africa/ghanas-uneasy-embrace-of-slaverys-diaspora.html
© 2018 Deepika Shrestha Ross