Connecting the Dots: Slavery and Identity

Three weekends ago my group traveled down to Cape Coast, a beautiful coastal region of Ghana west of Accra. This area boasts gorgeous postcard-perfect scenes of palm trees lining the ocean beach and women carry bowls of pineapple on their heads for sale. It also represents the heart of the West African slave trade in the 16^th and 17^th centuries. I have not managed a post on this trip until now because it is difficult to put into words – as is obvious to me as I sit and try to write it now.

The importance of the Cape Coast Region lies in its position as the main link between the maritime trade routes of the European powers and the terrestrial trade routes through the Western Horn of Africa. Through the 1700’s, Cape Coast economy was most consumed by its role as the heart of the slave trade – up until its abolishment in 1807 by the British parliament. Most of the slaves were captured in modern-day Nigeria, Mali and Burkina Faso, but also included many other West African countries. Of the forty-something European castles/forts that line the coast of West Africa that were at some point used for the trade and shipment of slaves, 31 of them are found along Ghana’s shores.

Our first stop was in a small town called Assin Manso, an hour from Cape Coast. This used to be the most important stop along the slave trade routes. As the exhausted, dirty captives made their way towards Ghana’s coast from the interior of West Africa, this spot on the banks of the Ndonkor Nsuo (Slave River) was where the slaves were made to bathe before being rubbed down with palm oil to make them look healthy, then sold to slave traders before making their final trek to the dungeons of St. George’s and Cape Coast castles, where they awaited the ships bound for the new world.

Our next stop was at Elmina. St. George’s castle in the fishing village of Elmina represents the oldest remaining colonial building in sub-Saharan Africa, having been built by the Portuguese in 1482. Our tour took us through the male and female slave holding cells, in which 200 hundred years of feces and urine combined to raise the ground 3 and half feet from the original stone floor. It was horrible to stand in the dank dungeons which lack light and air, and imagine the terror and anguish felt by so many people. Indeed, we could actually see it, as fingernail clawings were still very distinguishable on the floor and walls. We also saw the secret trap door that took the female slave of the general’s choice up to his private quarters where he would rape her, and on the way down she would be made available to anyone who wanted “sloppy seconds.”

The most intense part for me was the “door of no return,” which apparently all such slave castles had. This door opens from the final dungeon out of the castle wall to the ocean, where small boats would ferry the captives to the giant ships waiting further out in the water. This door thus represents the end of Africa and the beginning of a long and arduous trip in which only one in four slaves would survive. It was intense to gaze out of that passage, facing towards America and all of the struggle it held in store.

After Elmina we went and did a tour of the Cape Coast Castle, a similar but even larger castle compared to St. George’s. It is reputed to be one of the largest slave-holding sites in the world during the colonial era. At any given time, the Cape Coast Castle held as many as 1500 slaves awaiting shipment to the “new world.” The castle has beautiful white-washed walls and boasts a stunning scenic view of the coast, making it all the more haunting as we descended into the claustrophobic dungeons. It was disturbing to see how similar it was built to the St. George castle in terms of the way it housed the slaves and the tunnel passageway to the door of no return.

One of the most interesting parts of these tours was observing how the context of race in the past and present was handled by the tour guides. The castles actually offer race-segregated tours (that we never actually did), which I think is an important option. One of our tour guides took the opportunity to stop our tour group and announce that he realized that those of us who are white did not directly contribute to the slave trade (awkward), while our other tour guide made a more subtle acknowledgment of the race and power equation by explaining how even before the Europeans came, Africans would enslave other Africans as trophies of war (I however find this to be an entirely off-based comparison). In any case, it was clear that all of us Americans were trying to grasp slavery and our identity within it from a different angle than that we are familiar with: looking outside of America in.

As I watched my African-American friends grapple with the truth that most of them will never actually know which country their ancestors originated from, I couldn't help but think about the basic human need for belonging and identity. Is it enough to know where you were born, and where your parents were born and possibly your grandparents? America is unique in that with the exception of Native Americans, a great number of us do not know exactly where we come from when we try to go back to the continents on which our ancestors left - by force or through the hope of a better life. When I lived in South Korea, most everyone had detailed family trees that went back hundreds and hundreds of years. Traditions are formed upon the basic knowledge of where one came from in the course of history. In comparison, I find myself a bit lost from time to time in America, as I have not attached myself to a certain religion with which to belong, nor do I feel I have a particularly strong link to my ancestors who came to America as far back as the 1600's. But I have been raised to search for such identity within myself, which I believe is one of the reasons why travel has become such an important part of my life. It is through the experiencing of other cultures, religions, traditions and history that I can gain understanding of my identity as a person - as someone trying to understand themselves through the world around them.