Ghana - Day 3

Day 3 - 7 hours later, Alisa and I are up, sadly checking out of our room and heading to breakfast. Breakfast was an international style breakfast. With fruits such as pawpaw(papaya), white pineapple, and grapefruit. All kinds of toast, U.S. brand cereal and a made to order omelet bar. They did have a pineapple ginger juice that was interesting. It was more ginger than pineapple and cleared up your sinuses if you were congested. I briefly talked to the roomies, Emily, Ana, and Shelley on the phone. Em was sooo confused when I called her because it was restricted and she didn't know who it was. Got to talk to them for a little bit, then I hurriedly and called Daniel. Talked to him for about 10 minutes catching up and seeing how he's doing. We had to get on the bus so I had to cut the call short.

We went to Cape Coast Castle which was a castle that housed slaves before they were shipped out to the Americas. They were also used to house goods. We had a tour guide take us down into the slave dungeons where the slaves would be kept for months at a time till the ship came that would take them across the Atlantic. Walking down into the dungeons, it was really dark, slippery and you suddenly felt congested. The tour guide told us that these dungeons would hold hundreds of people and there was no room to lay down and even if you did lay down you would be laying on human waste. There was a channel dug in the floor that would be used for the human waste, but he said that the human waste so high it was as high as your knees. You could see the line in the walls where it was significantly darker compared to the rest of the whitish walls. The dungeons had little light with one small 1 square foot hole that had light from the outside wall of the castle. When the ships came all the slaves would go through a dark tunnel that went directly to the outside gate where they board the ship immediately. This tunnel would have posts about 7 feet above it where soldiers would make sure the line of slaves were still moving. Males and females had different dungeons they would be in. The female dungeons were significantly smaller, but still had the small amount of light pouring in. The female dungeons were visited often by soldiers who would rape them and then they would take the "beautiful" ones to their officials upstairs. It's just so crazy to think that in those dungeons, where I stood, hundreds of people died every couple of months and once one group was gone off to the middle passage, hundreds more would come in and take their place. You couldn't fight back either because they even thought of different cells where the the ones that would fight would go and that's where they got no food and water and would die there. The smell was bad even in those dungeons even after soo many years had passed.

Afterwards we went to Elmina Castle which was used the same way Cape Coast Castle was. The dungeons in these castles had a little more light for the males and the females were on one of the higher levels of the castle and would have bars in the big windows so they at least had fresh air. Females were often presented in the central courtyard where the governor who was looking from a balcony would choose which women he would want to sleep with. If a women would refuse and fight back they would be tied to the cannonball and would have to stand there for days till the governor decided to release them. It was horrible what living conditions they would have to be in and again many would die in those dungeons and wouldn't even make it to the ship. These castles look so beautiful and majestic on the outside, but there were a lot of horrors going on underneath the castle.

We left the Castles and went to Mabel's Table, a restaurant and had local Ghanaian food. I totally forgot to take a picture of my plate, but there was really good fish, chicken and fufu with peanut soup and meat. Fufu is a kind of white paste that is either made out of cassava or rice. I think this one was made out of rice and the peanut soup is really oily with lots of peppers and made with mutton. I didn't drink much of the soup because I was afraid my stomach wouldn't be able to handle the oiliness, but it was really spicy too. After we ate we made the long ride back to the ship which was about 5 hours. I was hanging out with Rachel most of the time and she invited me to go with her and some friends into Accra (about 2 hours away from the ship) and spend the night there so we can get up early and go shopping in Accra. When we got up and meeting at the gangway to leave, we found out that people were just going into Tema to go out. Rachel and I ended up going with them. They played Shakira's song, Waka Waka (We're in Africa!) and Wave Your Flag. It was amazing they played that and a lot of SAS students were there with us and started dancing too. We can actually sing it cause we were IN AFRICA! =] Rachel and I got back at about 11:30 because we had an early morning the next day =]

Miho =]