Earlier this week we visited two of the slave “castles” on the coast of Ghana. Before arriving I did not think much of it. I had been to old prisons before and I felt aware of the ramifications of slavery, having grown up in the south. However, this trip, especially the visit to Elimina Castle has shown me how insufficient my understanding was.
When I first walked through the bright white gates of the Elimina Castle I was not thinking about the slave trade or how many people had suffered in the dungeons just below my feet, instead I was worried about my glitching iPhone and how I wasn’t going to be able to listen to music on the way home.
As we gathered in the main courtyard, our tour guide, Ato, started off the tour with a quote about if we do not learn from our past, history is doomed to repeat itself. At the time, I considered these to be words of wisdom rather than a warning.
I was still checking on my phone when we soon moved on to the first of the female dungeons. The space was fairly small but Ato informed us that 200 women and children would be held here for up to 3 months. It was hard to resist the urge to cover my nose; centuries later and the stench of vomit, blood, shit and urine were still overwhelming.
My head was hanging a little lower and all thoughts of my phone evaporated as we walked into a smaller courtyard with a balcony far overhead. We peaked our heads into different cells and it was hard not to imagine all of the women in chains who spent the worst months of their lives, probably the worst months of any human life, in these very rooms.
Ato pointed to the looming balcony, it was connected to the governor’s quarters, he said. The governor would routinely have all of the captured women, covered in their own filth, dragged out here so that he could loom over them and choose which woman he would rape. After being stripped of anything that ever mattered to them, these women stood there praying that they would not be picked and that the last thing that truly belonged to them – their bodies – wouldn’t be taken, too.
As a woman, I imagined myself here at the will of a foreign predator and tried to comprehend the fear, despair, and anger that millions of women felt here every day for 400 hundred years. It was easier for me to try and sympathize with these women than face the fact that, on the rare occasion that a white woman were to enter this castle, that they would not be standing down here in the courtyard, but up above.
We continued through the castle, each room darker than the last. At the lowest level of the castle, Ato informed us that we were at the “The Room of No Return.” To enter you had to bend so far down that it seemed easier just to crawl through. The room was completely dark except for the piercing light coming through a small opening, barely wide enough for a narrow pair of shoulders to squeeze through before being taken out to the waiting slave ship below.
We each took our turn to peer out at the sea and imagine facing the middle passage, the cotton fields, and the hundreds of years of racism that stood on the other side of this door. When my turn came, I saw some kids aimlessly playing in the patch of grass below. I still don’t know if their carefree enjoyment, in the shade of a slave dungeon, is beautiful or sickening.
In our group debrief later that evening we tentatively started to delve into what we were all feeling. Several of us shared how going to the castle gave us a new perspective on the slave trade or how indescribably sad our visit made us, but then the one African American girl on the trip spoke up. She shared how she couldn’t help but see herself there, see the women in her life standing hopeless and in chains. She remarked on how strong they must have been to withstand the horror of castles like this. She opened up about the struggle of being one of only two African American students on a trip to Africa and how sharing this experience was also isolating.
Her story unstitched the group. Almost everyone let down their walls and let the pain of the day seep in. People let their tears fall as they started to speak in a more genuine way. The conversation was hard and heavy. It was also one of the more impactful experiences in my life. Never before had I been a part of such an honest and gripping conversation on race and pain. Still I also feel very grateful to have been in that room with the people brave enough to have conversations like this.
The day of our trip to Elmina was uncomfortable. Not just because of the heat or the stench, but because I was forced to face my privilege in a way that I never had before. I have not only white privilege, which has a whole new meaning to me now, but the privilege to visit this castle and experience this myself, and the privilege that no one who ever lived here did: knowing that it ends. However, Ato’s words still ring in my ears. “Never again,” he warned and pleaded. Slavery might not exist in my country any more but there are still people in cages. And all of this pain and growth means nothing if we do not act to make sure that history does not repeat itself.