As I alluded to in the 40 on 40 posting we spent the weekend in Cape Coast. We had looked into various ways of getting there, but in the end, given our limited time (CCS frowns on missing your placement so we had to leave after lunch Friday and be back by Sunday evening -- not easy when traffic means that the trip could take up to 10 hours either way) we hired a van and a driver for the weekend. It was expensive by Ghana standards but not by Canada's -- it worked out to be about $75 each round trip.
We got to the hotel late on Friday and slept. We opted not to stay at the tourist hotels down by the water and chose instead one with a great name -- Mighty Victory -- and reasonable prices -- about 26 dollars a night for a king size bed, air conditioning and a private bathroom. (As I write for the second time about the cost of something I am reminded of Oscar Wilde's line about knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing; I don't think that is case here -- I do think, however, it's interesting to see the relative value placed on things in a given place by how much a particular good or service costs).
We started the day at Kokum National Park. Compared to our visit to Mole National Park in the north 11 years ago, this one had considerable infastructure. The visitor's area before entering the park itself would have been on par with many North American Parks of the same size. The big draw is the Canopy Walk, a series of 7 suspension bridge high up in the trees built close to 20 years ago by some Canadian engineers. They spent a great deal of time reassuring us about its construction, semi-annual maintenance and daily checks. This certainly felt reassuring, but for those of you who suffer from a fear of hieghts, you know that the fear is completely irrational so providing rational explanations of its safety don't add up to much in the end. Still I managed and Sylvie had no problems (as long as there weren't many people on the same bridge in order to limit the swaying). I am proud to say that I did all 7 bridges, despite the out that the engineeers built into the whole contraption by allowing you to only do three bridges if you got freaked out after the first.
The driver suggested a restaurant between the park and town for lunch. We realized that there was a bit of a circuit because after we had been there for a bit others who had been in the park began showing up at the same restaurant. It's a bit of a novelty place with alligators that tourists can pose with. Sylvie enjoyed the alligatiors, but in general the whole place felt too forced. A couple of American from the South discussed hunting and the importance of the NRA. The conversation didn't help make the place any more enjoyable.
After lunch we went to Cape Coast Castle. This is one of 3 UNESCO World Heritage Site Castles on Ghana's coast that played a big role in the slave trade. As people from the northern regions and tribes were captured (often with the help of southern and central tribes and people) they were held in the bowels of these buildings (although they're always refered to as castles, that word feels like it comes with too many positive connotations) before being loaded on ships bound for the US, Caribbean islands and Brazil).
Alice and I had visited another one of these castles further down the coast in El Mina when we were in Ghana the last time and that visit still ranks up there as one of the most disturbing encounters with history. You can read about the horrors of this part of the slave trade, but walking through the buildings that were built to facilitate it makes it hard to look past the most troubling aspects of it (and there are so many troubling aspects that they become impossible to quantify).
It's always hard to compare these things, but I didn't find Cape Coast Castle as jarring as El Mina. Part of it is that Cape Coast Castle is by far more of the tourist mecca (the Obamas visited during their visit to Ghana 4 years ago) and so there are all the things that come with tourist sites -- gift shops, markets, tourist trinkets, etc. The groups on the tours are also a lot larger (there were only 4 at El Mina 11 years ago, compared with about 30 on our tour -- one of dozens of tours going on while we were there). At one point we're standing in the grotto rebellious slaves were put in as punishment for standing up to the captors where they were held before being executed. They closed the door and turned off the light (a 20th century addition, to be sure) so that we could feel the isolation and damp darkness. Once the lights were turned back on people are posing beside the walls with scatches still in the walls from prisoners, smiling as they would if they were standing beside a wax statue of Barack Obama at Mme. Toussaud's. Weird doen't capture it.
The other big difference between the two castles is that at Cape Coast they bricked up the tunnel that the male slaves were forced to walk to get to the Door of No Return. At El Mina the tunnel remains open and you walk down as it gets narrower and narrower as you approach the door, to the point where the slaves would have had to crouch down or crawl to get through to the waiting boat. In Cape Coast, the guide explained that they only opened the bottom third of the door, which accomplishes the same thing. Somehow, though, it didn't have the same visceral impact. I can still vividly remember realizing that there was no way that the Europeans viewed the slaves as animals. If they had they would have build a much more efficient method of getting them on the boat. The construction of the Door of No Return made it clear that they knew these fellow humans had be broken down psychologically to be sold into slavery.
The other big difference, of course, was visiting this time with Sylvie, who's not just 7 but of African descent. We thought long and hard about whether to make the visit and talked with some black friends in Canada who had been to Cape Coast. In the end we decided that Sylvie would probably wonder when she's older why if we were in Ghana we didn't visit one of the castles. It's hard to know how she interpreted the visit. She definitely took it seriously and she held my hand tight throughout the visit to the dungeons (letting it go when we were in the airier Governor's Residence). Sylvie tends to take time to process and I know that she will think about aspects of it and will ask questions when she feels the time is right. By the end, it was like any other boring museum tour for a 7 year old and she was eager to get onto something else.
As white parents of a black child we're constantly second-guessing ourselves and wondering whether we're doing the right thing when it comes to black history and culture. As contradictory as this might seem: I think it was good to visit, but I'm not still sure whether it was the exact right thing to do. Maybe all parenting -- black or white -- is thus, I don't know.
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