It may seem obvious, but a visit to an old slaving fort is not the best way to start a fun beach vacation. This is, I would think, one of the main impediments to Ghana developing a conventional tourism industry- its long coastline along the Gulf of Guinea is punctuated, at regular intervals, by old slave castles. Nowhere on the coast is too far from the forts that you could justify not visiting one- it would be willful ignorance, burying your head in the sand.
So it is that Ray and I came to Cape Coast Castle. The most famous of them all, it sits above the small harbor in the old capital of the Gold Coast colony. The city of Cape Coast is an atmospheric place; the British colonists contributed much of the design and the architecture and the local inhabitants contributed much of the color and life. Its focus, however, is unquestionably the Castle. Western tourists troop there, not so much with a sense of excitement, but one of obligation, even dread.
My first thought was that the Castle was far too pretty a building for the purposes it served. A slave fort should be austere, even scary- dark stone walls, parapets and turrets, distorted gargoyles, spikes and bars. Cape Coast Castle looks like the nicest administrative building in Gibraltar or Santa Barbara. It is white walls, red tile roofs, balconies and staircases- the exterior fortifications and the cannons seem like after thoughts. It was originally built in the seventeenth century, changed hands many times, and ended up, after the close of the slave trade, as the administrative center for the colony, which perhaps explains its current benign look. Regardless, coming upon this place was a bit like finding Auschwitz set in a sun-dappled meadow, traversed by clean, babbling brooks.
The real horror of the place comes below, however, in the slave dungeons. This is where the captives were held, for weeks or months, in near total darkness, awaiting the ships that were to carry them to the Americas. The thing that strikes visitors, and unsettles them when it does, is just how small the dungeons are. A thousand slaves at a time were kept in a handful of chambers the size of classrooms. This was spacious compared to what was to follow in the Middle Passage.
The tour itself is, if not light, as far from maudlin and melodramatic as you could make it. It is understated in its horror, I should say. At the end, there is even a display about the positive impacts of the slave trade. And while those of us from the West- white and black- were stony-faced the whole time, the Ghanaians were more laid back, trying to lift up the old ammunition rusting away by the cannons and letting their children run around on the ramparts. There is just one real gut-punch stop on the tour and it comes near the end. There is a doorway through which the slaves passed, on the way out of the dungeon and towards the transport ships. It is labeled The Door of No Return.
We emerged from the fort destined for days at the beach, but I was hardly in the mood for it. We traveled down the coast to the twin villages of Butre and Busua. Ghana does not receive many normal tourists, but it does do good business with the do-gooders, volunteers and NGO workers not just in Ghana, but from throughout West Africa. Busua is the center of this trade, the place to which every Peace Corps volunteer from Togo to Ouagadougou seems to turn for relaxation. It is like any other small town in Ghana, except much of it is given over to serving the whims of homesick foreigners. As such, it provides an interesting look at what we miss when we’re far from home: pancakes (there are dozens of places advertising them), Thai food and pool tables. Mostly, though, I’d guess that they miss each other, which is why they all flock to one otherwise non-descript section of coast.
That is in-season, of course, and this was decidedly out of season. Rain, clouds and wind mark this time of year, the rainy season, and keep the foreigners away. There were as many tourists in town as hotels, making it a sad, sleepy place. In one restaurant, the proprietor had to have us pay in advance so that he could afford to buy the ingredients. After the meal, he got on his knees and begged for money so that he could pay his electricity bill and have his lights restored. On the walls, the messages scrawled by past diners- “Your food is SO FETCH- Chrissy, USA”, “Wish I could live in this restaurant- Owen, PCV, Burkina Faso”- seemed, like Mayan glyphs on an old temple wall, to be legacies of a glorious, but ancient, past. The dates, however, were from just seven, eight, nine months ago.
Across the headland in Butre, I stayed in a small place on the beach which had also, incidentally, lost its electricity for some number of months. The place was owned by a Swede, but came with a number of hangers-on, mostly Rastafarians. I’ve found my tolerance for Rastas lasts about five minutes, after which every banal piece of advice (“Gotta live wit’ no worries”), every verse of a cappella reggae they sing, every utterance of “Respect!” just adds to my aggravation. I was not happy. Ray is a member of an ultimate Frisbee team, so he pulls out the disc whenever he gets the chance. We were tossing it around on the beach with one Rasta who, I suppose aiming it towards me, threw it 90 degrees in the wrong direction and into the deep ocean. After many minutes of searching, we finally found the Frisbee. The Rasta pulled me aside.
“You got to work on your pursuit, young man.”
“You have to work on your accuracy.”
“Accuracy no Rasta.”
