Sorry it's taken forever to post this...

After returning home from Cape Coast, we had an exciting game to go to on Sunday. The Ghana Black Stars were playing Sudan in a World Cup Qualifier. For some reason, I always land myself in places when they are experiencing a big series of football matches. I absolutely love it. If I thought the Europeans were crazy about their football, it doesn't hold a candle to the organization and hutzpah of African fans. Before the match, there were veritable parades of people dressed in red, green, or yellow, chanting, singing and marching with flags raised high. When we sat in the stands, we noticed that people had grouped together by color and they all had cheers and giant flags that they sent up and down the aisles. It was a blast to be a part of it. There were four or five guys who were wearing tiny shorts and had painted the entire rest of their bodies in Ghana's colors with black stars here and there. I myself had drawn black stars on my cheeks and donned a jersey.
It was an exciting game and Ghana won, 2-0, qualifying them early for the World Cup! The actual president of Ghana stood just above us in the stands and popped a bottle of champagne in celebration. Throughout the following week, I'd had a few people say to me that they'd seen me on tv. I laughed and took this as "I saw an oboruni with brown hair on the screen who looked just like you." Many members of our group have gotten the odd comment that all oboruni's look alike, which I find pretty funny. Then, on Thursday, one of our Upals' taps me on the shoulder and says "you were on tv!" Apparently, during the football game, the tv camera's had zoomed right in on my black star-adorned face. I've only been here for a month and a half and I've already been on national tv! How cool is that??

The school week passed with ease and little excitement. Suddenly, the weekend was here again and we were headed back to Cape Coast, this time with all 50 of us. The point of this trip was two fold: to see one of the slave castles and to visit Kakum National Park. Half of our group went to Cape Coast Castle (the one Obama visited when he was here) and the other half, myself included, visited Elmina castle. Elmina is one of the oldest slave forts still in existence and at one point or another, it was controlled by each and every European power that swept through and terrorized the land of Ghana. It started with the Portuguese in the mid-16th century who initially came for gold. In fact, Elmina, the name of this small fishing town, is derived from the Portuguese words for "The Mine." Soon, however, they discovered an equally compelling commodity: Africans. Soon the Dutch had their eye on Ghana, then called the Gold Coast, and quickly gained trust and help of the Ghanaian people who thought that they would suffer far less at the hands of these new foreigners. The Ghanaians, who knew their land far better than the Portuguese, led the Dutch to victory and the Dutch soon took control of Elmina Castle. Eventually, power changed hands yet again, this time to the British who kept Ghana as a colony until Ghana's independence in 1958.

As we walked through the halls of this 400 year old death chamber, I tried my best to experience with all my senses. Now, this sounds incredibly hippie, but hear me out. I cannot even come close to imagining the hell that so many victims in our past and our present have experienced. Walking into the courtyard near the women's cells, I looked up at where the governor would stand to pick his woman of the day, and tried to imagine being chained in tight rows, crushed together with other women, former friends or foes, wincing up at the sunlight I've hardly seen in weeks, and praying not to be chosen. If I was unfortunate enough to be chosen, I would be chained to a canon ball, stripped of whatever rags I still owned, and doused with freezing water, in front of all the other women and soldiers. When the governor was done with me, I would maybe be given a meal, if I was lucky but if I wasnt lucky, I may be passed around the men and then tossed back into the filthy cage masquerading as a waiting cell. As we walked into the cell that has since been thoroughly cleansed, I was still struck by a distinct smell. It was a wet, molded, sweaty, human smell that even 200 years couldn't get rid of. I looked down to the cobblestones which had been long worn down by the trampling of thousands of weak and hopeless feet. I would wait in that cell for months, with the sick, and sometimes the dead. Meals were few and far between and bathing, non-existent. Finally, I would be shuttled like cattle through a dark tunnel into the room of no return. There, I may be able to catch a glimpse of my husband or child for the first time in months, never to see them again after. The slaves life would only get worse from there. Those who survived the squalor of their close-quarters aboard the ship had masters awaiting them, to be sorted and sold like farm animals. No one knew what to expect but few expected to live and those who did were not necessarily the lucky ones.
Walking through this building while using my imagination and the smells, sounds, feelings of my surroundings gave me just a tiny glimpse into the life of those who suffered 200 years ago. Taking everything in this completely made the experience so much more powerful to me. In a previous entry I mentioned the irony of the beauty surrounding Cape Coast compared with it's past and Elmina was no different. While standing on the top of the fort where canons guarded every corner, I could almost forget where I was. Every morning when the governor of the fort walked out of his quarters he would see a scene very similar to what I was currently seeing. The fishing boats the locals were using then were little different than the ones I was now seeing. Palm trees dotted the coast line which, parallel to the Atlantic, stretched out beyond my vision. Most of the solid infrastructure that still marks the main town area were built by the colonizing powers as places to house their men and their "african wives." This of course essentially translates to "slave woman whom I impregnated."
After everyone had returned from the respective visit, we all got together to discuss our experiences and how far we feel the world has come since the days of slavery. It was a fascinating political and social discussion about world affairs and human rights. We dipped into naming the types of modern slavery (human trafficking, child soldiers, child prostitution, certain religious sects views towards women, sex workers, child labor etc) as well as social responsibility which is something I find incredibly important and woefully unaddressed. Someone posed the question of whether or not we've learned from slavery, the Holocaust and the other tragedies our species has witnessed. Another student replied with "We've learned that there is evil that must be stopped but our reaction time is still just too slow." I think this hits it right on the mark. I think most people today know that it's wrong to treat other human beings like meaningless products (at least I hope that's the case) but there is still so much strife in this world that is going on and we're doing nothing to stop it. I might soon actually use this blog to brief the readers on the human tragedy that has drawn me to this continent: Northern Uganda. In 2004, the UN named Northern Uganda as the most desperate but forgotten crisis in the world. The crisis has continued and nothing has been done...but I'll write more about that later.
People who hear about these passions of mine, as well as, admittedly, my bitterness at the International Community for ignoring them, often ask me "well what are we supposed to do about it?" You talk about it and talk about it and educate people. Don't let people be ignorant and eventually, hopefully, word of the issue will reach the ears of those who may have power to change. Even if it doesn't reach someone in power, don't let people become numb to each other's pain, because that will be our downfall.
On a lighter note...the next morning we journeyed to Kakum National Park. This is a rainforest fairly near cape coast where you can camp, hike and do a canopy walk. The canopy walk was INCREDIBLE. They essentially strung rope bridges across a decent part of the park at the canopy level, allowing you to look down on the life of the park. There are actually a good number animals in the rainforest but you almost only see them early in the morning before visitors come and scare them off with noise. There are monkeys, 600 different kinds of butterflies, pythons, leopards and even a small herd of elephants. The butterflies were gorgeous and everywhere. I was even lucky enough to see a little monkey jumping from tree to tree and pointed it out to a few friends. It was so cute!!
After that we all shuffled onto the bus and drove back home for a night of good sleep before monday classes.