Old Pirates...

"Old Pirates, yes they rob I

Sold I to the merchant ships
minutes after they took I
from the bottomless pit
but my hands were made strong
by the hand of the almighty
We forward in this generation
Triumphantly..."

Bob Marley, "Redemption Song"

Cape Coast Castle





Inside the slave dungeon... the 'bottomless pit'
This is the only light the captive slaves saw for weeks at a time...
Until they stepped outside and onto the ships bound for the New World... Here they stayed on floor boards under which gathered almost a metre high layer of urine, feces, and other waste that was supposed to drain out of the dungeon...






Inside another dungeon for holding slaves... Cape Coast Castle








The Portuguese built castle at Elmina, about 30 minutes from Cape Coast...







This was the "door of no return" through which thousands of men and women left the African continent to never come back... before the proliferation of the slave market, this door was wider and used to load gold, spices, and other goods; after the slave trade, the door was narrowed so only one person could pass through at a time to be loaded into the slave holds of the merchant ships...





Above are just a few of the pictures I took while visiting the former European slave forts of Cape Coast and Elmina, Ghana... The lyrics, and singer were the most pertinent for the moment. Perhaps it is appropriate to spend a few moments in silence in memory of those millions of Africans that survived imprisonment and bondage and crossed the ocean, and those who didn't survive and were thrown into the sea... Those who made it became the ancestors of most Afro-Americans and Afro-Caribbeans who live today. It is difficult to describe the feeling of being in the rooms, feeling the walls, smelling the air, and even imagining what it must have been like for those individuals who were in there...

On a lighter note, more pics to follow from my rainforest canopy tour of Kakum National Park...

Stay tuned,
Chris