Kristen Kenny’s Blog

a super tourist for a day

9/7/08

From what I can tell when people visit Ghana as a tourist at some point they all go to Cape Coast. I had been meaning to go since I arrived but the planning hadn’t quite worked out. Since this was my last full weekend in Ghana it was now or never. My original plan was to get to Cape Coast Friday night or Saturday morning and leave Sunday afternoon. One of my friends from the lab, Jake, said he would go with me. I was glad to have someone to go with and a Ghanaian besides who could speak the language and get us fair prices for things. Jake thought we could see everything all on Saturday so the new plan was to go and come back all on Saturday. It ended up working out well but made for a long and tiring day. Next time I would spend two days for sure.

Saturday morning I got up at 4am so we could make the earliest bus possible. Jake showed up late at 5:30 and then we were on our way. There are large, more comfortable buses that travel between cities called STC buses so we took that instead of a tro tro. It is about a 3 hour drive from Accra to Cape Coast if traffic is light. The ride went well despite some a/c issues. An African movie played on the bus but I kept falling asleep so I missed most of it. It seemed similar to many of the African tv shows and the novellas I had watched. The movie was a drama about the troubles this woman was having with love, marriage, and family.

On our trip we visited Cape Coast Castle, Kakum National Park, and Elmina Castle. The first stop was Cape Coast Castle. The castle was originally a fort that had changed hands among European powers before the British finally took control around 1665. At that time the British began expanding the fort into what is now Cape Coast castle. Cape Coast was the capital of Britain’s Gold Coast and was a key city for trade especially for the slave trade. Inside they now a have a powerful museum about the slave trade. It follows the history of the people from the region, through the slave trade, to the abolition of slavery and even covers the American Civil Rights movement and people of African descent coming to trace their roots. We also went on the guided tour of the castle through the slave dungeons, in tunnels, to the Governor’s room, etc. It is difficult to fathom the massive amounts of people held there as slaves and the horrible conditions they lived in. Also the history of what happened there contrasted sharply with the beautiful day and gorgeous views of the ocean. It was shocking to go from the tiny dungeons that held hundreds of slaves to the large rooms just above meant for the governor alone. The dungeons were dark, tiny, poorly ventilated, with no place for people to relieve themselves or drainage. So many people were held captive and died in those rooms. The dungeons are connected by large tunnels to a door that opens to the ocean. It is titled the Door of No Return for through this door the slaves were put on ships and sent across the ocean to the Americas. Several years ago the descendents of slaves were invited to the castle and came in through the Door of No Return making it the Door of Return which is posted on the ocean side of the door.

Our second stop was Kakum National Park to go on the 40 meter high canopy walk. The park protects the largest concentration of rainforest in Ghana. There is a guided and at times steep walk to the canopy. We did not see any animals on the hike (except for a snake near the entrance) but the forest was full of large beautiful trees. Our guide knew a lot about plants and trees including which plants were used for medicines. The canopy walk included 7 bridges with 6 tree stops. The bridges have a plank floor about a foot wide with interwoven rope sides. The walk is very wobbly but there are no places where you could fall out. A number of visitors started out on the first bridge but turned back due to fear. To be honest I wasn’t scared and enjoyed the canopy walk very much.

By the time we were done at the National Park it was late in the afternoon. We debated but eventually decided to head to Elmina Castle. Elmina is a small fishing town very near to Cape Coast. There is another castle there which had been first built by the Portuguese in 1482. Eventually it was taken over by the Dutch, later the British and today is controlled by the Ghanaian government. It was also prominent in the slave trade, having housed thousands of slaves. The castle is similar to Cape Coast castle but seems to be larger and to have a more intricate architecture. Again it was hard to reconcile the beauty of the white walls and views of the ocean especially at sunset with the horrible things that had occurred in that place. One of the interesting but very sad and disgusting stories from the castle was about the women slaves. They were housed right underneath the Governor’s room. He would pick women to come to his room and were they were raped. When these women became pregnant they were moved to houses near the castle where they lived with their children. These children were then given positions of power with in the castle because of their Dutch fathers. Now there are a number of Ghanaian families with Dutch last names dating back to this time. It is curious how even though they had African mothers they were given positions of authority and shows how the European powers turned Africans turned against Africans to maintain rule.

Finally we were on our way back to Accra after a long hot day of touring, walking, and learning. I am glad we were able to cram all that we did into the day. I think spreading it out over two days would have been a little more manageable. We could have taken our time and wandered around a bit more. The ride back was an adventure unto itself. By the time we were leaving there were no more STC buses for the day. We took the biggest tro tro I have seen back to Accra. First we waited on crowded and hot on the bus for it to fill up. We were some of the last people on but waited 30 minutes for the last seat to be filled. Then about 2 minutes outside of the station we stop to fix something. The other passengers were mad and yelling at the driver for not fixing it before we left. Finally we were on our way again. About 5 minutes later there is more grumbling and yelling from the passengers. I hadn’t noticed but the headlights were not working and we were driving in the dark. Finally the driver pulled over after passengers threatened to call the police. The lights took awhile but eventually came back on. Luckily we made it back to Accra with no other mishaps. Our ride from Accra to Manna Mission was another story. There was a festival in Teshie so there were tons of people out on the street walking around and dancing. There was music blasting from every other shop on our way home. Traffic was ridiculous. I think it took us 2 hours to go about 5 miles. It kind of reminded me of LA. I am pretty sure I could have walked there faster. It wasn’t all bad though. It was fun to hear the music and see all the people dancing and celebrating. The driver was friends with many of the people outside the bus and the crazy boys would jump on the bus, dance in front of it and up on it. It was pretty wild. At last I made it home to my bed. My day as a super tourist ended with some sweet sweet sleep.