I probably haven’t posted in a little while because I don’t want to think about leaving here. Anyway, classes ended last week, and that brings us to the reading days period. I actually missed my final week of courses due to a bad case of the flu that kept me bed-bound for about 3 days. I never thought I’d be keeping my fingers crossed for the flu, but when my symptoms started showing up I figured anything would be better than malaria. Luckily, it ended up being a virus my immune system had fought before, so I recovered after a few days.
Before my bout of the flu, I took my second overnight trip to Cape Coast with Jason, Ashley, and another international student named Monique. Anand, our friend who was here last year, told us about his friend Lolonyo in Cape Coast when I first got here, but I hadn’t given him a call until the day before we planned on going. Characteristic of the incredible hospitality that so many Ghanaians have extended to me here, Lolonyo not only offered to pick us up from the bus, but also hooked us up with cheap reservations at a hotel. As if that wasn’t enough, he also ended up spending the entire two days and evening with us and acted as a tour guide during the whole trip. He’s working on his masters degree at the University of Cape Coast, so we stopped by the school and took a look at the impressive campus before we got dinner. We ate at a restaurant adjacent to Cape Coast Castle, and it was a pretty strange experience enjoying chicken and red-red (beans and plantains) while gazing out on the very shore that my ancestors could have departed from. We took a nice walk on the beach afterwards, and needless to say, it was a very thought-provoking evening. Lolonyo took us to a club later than night and we headed to bed afterwards to prepare for next day.
While the Cape Coast Castle, the first slave castle we visited back in late August, was a major exporter of slaves, the Elmina Castle seems to have very important historical significant as well. Elmina seemed to be a larger hub of slave trafficking, and apparently it is the oldest standing European structure in Sub-Saharan Africa (some of the locals shared that with us like it was something to be proud of… go figure). It’s about 15 minutes away from the first castle, so after we reached town we had no problem getting there. After our first visit to Cape Coast, I’ve had time to digest the whole experience so this time around the tour wasn’t as difficult. While the first walkthrough on our last trip was an intensely emotional experience, this one was more thought provoking and a bit less painful. The beginning of our tour took us to the male and female quarters in addition to a church where (ironically enough) the Portuguese traders worshipped on the premises. After these first few stops, our party was joined by a group of Nigerian tourists. They appeared comfortably middle class, and the attire worn by the women in the party indicated that they were Muslim. Anyway, as they walked with us into one of the holding cells, one of the men commented to his wife, “Why are you sad? Don’t be upset- this is history.” umm?! I guess, from his perspective as an African whose lives in the land of his ancestors, it’s possible to dissociate yourself from the legacy of the slave trade. But I definitely found his remarks troubling, and they got me thinking…
…To some people, history is a grainy black and white photograph, sped-up footage from a silent film, an obsolete artifact covered in dust- an inanimate representation of a specific time period that exists in a vacuum. Even for me, it wasn’t until I reached college that I was able to fully internalize and understand the fact that millions of individuals (ACTUAL people) were subjected these atrocities. That means that the rooms we walked in were actually filled beyond capacity with sweaty, frightened, huddled bodies of people as real as you and me who were destined for slavery or death. When you’re in the moment, it’s a little more difficult to ignore the cold, hard facts. If you’re in a high school classroom, you can tune out your teacher and close your textbook. Even if you’re watching the History Channel, you can change the channel or run to the kitchen to grab a soda. Somehow, even though most people don’t deny the painful aspects of history, it’s difficult for them to fully realize them as reality. With that in mind, I understand what the man in my tour group was expressing. Not only did the events occur in another time and place from his current home, but he personally felt unaffected by the specific events of centuries ago. Maybe he’s right. Maybe it wasn’t until colonialism that his ancestors were subjugated and dominated by Western oppressors. Then again, maybe he hasn’t thought through any of this at all. (Like most parents today, maybe he’s just the cliché apathetic adult and simply “has a mortgage to pay…” By the way, is the process of paying off loans, bills, and taxes really a valid excuse for not thinking?? But I digress…)
I guess my point is that too many Americans (white and black) view pro-colonial Africa, slavery, reconstruction, Jim Crow, and even the Civil Rights Era as freeze frames of the past with no bearing on our collective destiny. In way too many instances, I’ve had peers in high school and college tell me racism doesn’t exist, black people should stop digging in old wounds of the past, or that slavery occurred too long ago to affect anyone today (read Dr. Joy Leary’s writings on “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome” and try having that conversation with me again). How can anyone walk through a slave castle where human beings were raped, beaten, starved, killed, and shipped off like cattle and not be moved, regardless of your heritage? Perhaps I’m too much of a sentimentalist, or overly ethnocentric. Personally, I’d just like to think that I have a brain, and I use it.
Without any full appreciation of the importance of the past, how can anyone expect to have the foggiest idea of where they’re going? And this leads me to the underlying theme of my entire trip: Sankofa. It’s important, people. Think about it.
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