By: Nate Wilson
Originally published in The Finder.
This past weekend, our cohort embarked eastwards along the shoreline to tour both the Elmina and Cape Coast Castles, which, and I’m confident that I can speak for all of us, was one of the most emotionally difficult — albeit necessary — experiences of our lives. With this piece, I hope to offer my perspective on touring these two powerful, loaded buildings and finally digest everything I saw, felt, and imagined. I apologize for the length, but I think I could pretty much speak endlessly on this topic.
We started our Saturday morning off early, at around 6:30 a.m., so we could make it to Elmina Castle by 11:00 a.m. and meet our tour guide Ato. Unfortunately, due to the bumpiness and angst I felt brewing in my stomach, I wasn’t able to get any rest on the ride but I found amusement by looking at the sleeping faces of my friends. When we arrived at the castle, we were surprised that the outskirts were dotted with tents and supplies for celebration, which we learned were for the Bakatue Festival. As I’ll explain later, this only heightened the emotional poignance and turmoil of our experience.
As we got off the bus and approached Elmina Castle for the first time, I was reflecting on what I was bringing to this place and only one thing repeatedly came to mind: a guilty conscience. I thought to myself, “even though I’m disconnected from this place and the atrocities committed within its blinding white walls, my existence as a white person makes me culpable.” Sometime in the past, somewhere along my lineage, it’s likely that my ancestors perpetuated slavery in some way which effectively makes me responsible for all the brutality and injustice that came after. Sobered by this thought and inundated with guilt, we began our tour with Ato and I was wholly unprepared for what was to follow.
Elmina Castle was established in 1482 by the Portuguese (the Dutch later seized the fort in 1637 and remained in control until Ghana’s independence in 1957) and was originally intended to solely be a trading post. Because it was originally built to hold goods, not people, the storage spaces above ground had to be converted to cells once the Portuguese decided to see Africans as less than human. The cells were separated by gender, but they were all equally horrific: the sheer number of bodies that were forced to fit in each was utterly unimaginable and, if that wasn’t bad enough, those captured had to live and sleep in their urine, excrement, and menstrual discharge because they weren’t afforded the luxury of cleanly tending to themselves.
We entered the female cells first and Ato told us one of the more disturbing stories of the weekend. When Elmina Castle was operating, the Governor of the castle would stand on the balcony above their cells, subconsciously asserting his superiority, and would leer downwards at the women until he eventually picked one that excited him. This woman would then be stripped and chained up in the middle of the courtyard for one day so that the Ghanaian sun would weaken her. When evening came around, she was clothed, feed, and escorted up a set of stairs adjacent to the cells and went through a trapdoor that led to the Governor’s quarters. Then, with no willpower left to fight, the Governor raped her. I saw where these women were chained, I walked up those steps and through the trapdoor, and I stood in that horrible bedroom. I can’t even begin to describe how gut-wrenching it was to go through that — those images that I envisioned are seared into my mind — and this feeling only heightened as the weekend continued.
After that, we headed towards the male cells and I was feeling completely disassociated, but Ato quickly brought me back into the space and dismantled whatever emotional stability I had left. As we gradually winded our way through several chambers and small doorways, Ato eventually brought us to the door of no return: the last time in which those captured would ever set foot on African land and the beginning of their coerced life of slavery. I could feel the pain emanating from this room, I could hear the cries for help and mercy that were surely echoing off of the stone walls, and I could only imagine the intense fear of losing your home and your people — everything that makes you feel connected to the world — by with simply passing through a doorway. Then I passed through that doorway and that was it — I broke down. I was overwhelmed with empathy and so confused as to how other humans, even if they were completely void of compassion, could be so heinous.
At that point, we left the cells and walked around the upper parts of the castle. Towards the end of the tour, with most of our faces still wet with tears, we stopped on a cannon-filled platform that overlooked the West side of Elmina and the Gulf of Guinea. Outside the castle, the Bakatue Festival was in full force: we arrived just in time to watch the vibrant, energetic procession of chiefs and admire the horns and drums that filled the air. The juxtaposition was so apparent at this moment. There I was, standing atop a slave castle still trying to understand what I’d just seen and reaffirm that humanity can be moral while simultaneously observing such a beautiful celebration of culture and heritage. To say I felt conflicted would be an understatement. I had never felt such an extreme range of emotions in such a short span of time — from guilt, disgust, confusion, and anguish to appreciation, bewilderment, and fulfillment. Once we finished the remainder of our tour, I was too tired to keep thinking so I mentally checked out until Sunday.
I don’t think anyone in our cohort, myself included, really knew what to expect when we first walked into Elmina Castle, which is partially why it impacted all of us so intensely. Having gone through that all of us knew what we were walking into when we began our tour of Cape Coast Castle around noon on Sunday. However, although there were fewer tears, Cape Coast Castle was equally influential — it was just more of a dry pain.
After Sweden initially established Cape Coast Castle in 1652, it underwent several transfers of power between them, the Danish, and the Dutch until Britain captured it in 1664. Unlike Elmina Castle, the British rebuilt Cape Coast Castle for the sole purpose of slave trading, thus, captives were held in underground dungeons as opposed to above-ground cells. We began our tour of Cape Coast Castle with Ato in male dungeons.
As we plunged into the main tunnel, two things immediately struck me: the smell and the floor. Even though nobody had been trapped in these appalling cages for hundreds of years, the dungeons still had a distinct scent as if their walls had no other choice but to continuously taint the air with the atrocities that had been committed within them. The walls themselves, filled with scratch marks of people desperately trying to escape, were made up of greyish stone slabs but the floor was an entirely different texture and color. They were completely smooth and black with occasional grey and brown speckles. As Ato explained, the floors were originally the same as the walls but what we were standing on was compacted flesh, excrement, and other organic matter that accumulated over time — essentially, we were standing on pieces of the people trapped there. Once I heard that I really thought I was going to break down again, but, instead, I started getting a sharp, shooting pain just below much stomach which stayed with me the rest of the tour.
Similar to Elmina Castle, the dungeons at Cape Coast Castle were inhumanely cramped. The male dungeons were divided into five separate compartments, each of which was about 10 meters long and 6 meters wide and held 200 people a piece. The dungeons also didn’t provide any way for captives to relieve themselves sanitarily, but there were crude trenches dug into the floor to guide liquids if bodies weren’t blocking them.
The starkest difference between the cells at Elmina and Cape Coast was the darkness. Though this doesn’t make them any less despicable, the cells at Elmina Castle had ready access to natural light and ventilation while each dungeon at Cape Coast Castle only had one or two small holes for light and air to enter. In the last of the male dungeons, Ato gathered us together and turned the lights off. Even though I wasn’t crammed into that space with 199 other people, wasn’t standing in sewage, wasn’t desperate for food or water, and knew that I would be leaving in a few short minutes, I couldn’t help but feel fearful. To be indefinitely trapped in such darkness with the worst living conditions possible is nothing less than torturous. Again, I couldn’t help but ask “how could someone subject another person to this?”
Back out into the light of day, we briefly looked at the female dungeon (which only had one compartment but was overall similar to the male dungeons) and walked through the door of no return, which was also a very harrowing experience. After a little more walking around, we departed Cape Coast Castle still feeling overwhelmed — not knowing what to think or how to process it all.
It’s been just over four days since we finished our second tour, and I’ve slowly been unpacking my weekend and my thoughts since then. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fully reconcile what I saw and learned there, and, honestly, I don’t think I should. Something that cruel — a place and system that upended, manipulated, and destroyed countless lives — shouldn’t be something anyone should have to come to terms with. It should make you uncomfortable. It should provide you with the motivation to ensure that something like this never occurs again and that the proper reparations are made. As a journalist, I know I have the responsibility to tell this story and if I can get people to feel even just a sliver of what I felt like walking through these two buildings, I’ll take it as a victory. Although this was one of the most emotionally difficult, visceral experiences of my life — I’ve never been so profoundly impacted by a place and I doubt I ever will again — I’m extremely grateful that I had the opportunity to do so. It will forever serve as a guide for my life and my writing.