touring the cape coast and el mina castles

on tuesday, we first visited the elmina castle. elmina, in butchered portugese, means 'the mine' because when the portugese landed there in the 1400s they assumed it was a mine because of the abundance of gold of the fante people they encountered. the castle build changed hands numerous times between the dutch, british and portugese, as well as the local people. the castle was a formidable structure. i don't think i've ever been in an such impressive structure. the tour of the castle was sad, because of its envolvement in the atlantic slave trade. our tour guides made sure to emphasize the fact that the castle (and the cape coast castle) was an incredibly important point for all trade, not just that of human beings. and that elmina as a trade center, was established long before the atlantic slave trade reached its peak. the sad role the castles had in the slave trade are only a part of their histories.

that being said, it was very powerful to enter the dungeons where millions of slaves passed through. the slaves were separated into male and female, and crammed into the dungeons. the worst were the dungeons reserved for those who tried to escape or start rebillions. they were locked in rooms that the refuse from the greater dungeons emptied into before draining out of the castle completely. i saw the line on the wall where the typical height of the filth of the room was. it was above my knee, probably half way up my thigh. those unfortunate slaves were kept chained to the wall, soaking in their own and others filth, given no food and no water until they wasted away into nothing. then their bodies were thrown into the ocean. the renovators of the castle left parts of the floor of the punishment dungeon with the muck still caked on the stones, just so we could see a little piece of what those people encountered.

el mina castle had an interesting courtyard. the women's slave dungeons surrounded the open air courtyard. above the courtyard, the governor of the castle would stand on a balcony that overlooked the area. he would order all the women slaves (about four hundred) to stand in the courtyard, and from his balcony he would choose whichever poor women looked best for him. the woman would be forced up a staircase to his bedroom chamber where she was kept for his disposal. if any women refused, they were chained to the floor of the courtyard and forced to stand through rain and shine, day and night, until their will broke and they allowed themselves to be used by the governor. we toured his bedroom and i was almost physically sick with the thought of all the great number of women abused in that room.

it was interesting to see the castle's beauty superimposed with its, at times, brutal role in history. i'm not giving it enough credit to say that the caste was BEAUTIFUL and set against an incredibly gorgeous backdrop.

the cape coast castle was very similar to the one in elmina, in both purpose and design. it was bigger and more developed because it was a more popular center in a bigger town, but essentially the stories and role it had in global trading was the same. an important part of difference was the door of no return. slaves were brought through this famous door and loaded onto slave ships to never return to their land or their people, but either die on ship or be forced to work on a plantation in a completely new place. we walked out the door to a booming fish market. it was so cool to see an example of those same african people excelling in a market activity, when hundreds of years ago through the same door, they were the market item.

i took over 250 pictures of both castles (extreme?). it was an incredible experience.