Elmina slave forts

We enjoyed a pretty luxurious buffet breakfast this morning at the African Village (“luxurious” in terms of what I had been expecting in Africa) with sweet white pineapple, red pepper and onion omelets, beans, and biscuits. Driving into town, we passed by huts of wooden panels and mud, displaying rack after rack of silver fish outside, glistening in the mid-morning sun.

My favorite was this giraffe building, which I luckily snapped a photo of through the window of our speeding bus!


We arrived in town in time to participate in Sunday service at Bethel Methodist Chapel,

where the joyously dancing members were clothed in garb of various styles, all created from the same fabric – the print read “Bethel Methodist Church, 170 years”. Amazing. I love that worship in Ghana involves a full-body experience, after which members sit and dab sweat from their foreheads with their handkerchiefs as the sermon commences.


The pastor delivered the message in Fante, and worn leather hymnals were thrust into our hands as the choir welcomed us to join them in worship. Those of us who believed in Jesus Christ as our savior were invited to take communion with the members of the church, which was an awakening experience.


It’s so different when it’s done in a language you don’t understand, and yet the motions and significance of it all remain the same. It makes me wonder how service and communion will be in Beijing, in a language I do understand, but not for the Christian vocabulary.


We did not stay for the entire service, as African church services can last as long as six hours. (Can you imagine? I love Jesus and all, but I think six continuous hours of sermons, worship and prayer would give my noggin quite the workout!)


We headed to the slave castle at El Mina, built by the Dutch in 1471 and later occupied by the Portuguese. The name “El Mina” is actually an African distortion of Portuguese "al mina" -- "to the mine".


As with the slave fort at Cape Coast yesterday, being present in a place where so much brutality and dehumanization had taken place merely 200 years previously was… I don’t know. There aren’t any words. It’s as if gravity is gradually altered, pulling your heart lower and lower in your body, until it feels as if it weighs a hundred pounds. Tears simply don’t come, because you’re feeling so much that you can’t feel any more.


What’s even more atrocious than the conditions is the fact that the governor would reside in luxury in the quarters directly above the slave dungeons. Church services would be held in the chapel on site, also directly above the dungeons where humans suffered, standing six inches deep in their own urine and feces, without an inch to move, without food or ventilation. Inconceivable.


At both slave forts, a marble plaque is inlaid, reading:

In everlasting memory of the anguish of our ancestors.
May those who died rest in peace.
May those who return find their roots.
May humanity never again perpetrate
such injustice against humanity.
We, the living, vow to uphold this.

In light of it all, we chose to celebrate African culture this evening with a performance by African drummers and dancers. It was quite the experience, not unlike Polynesian dancing, with war faces and isolated muscle movements in every part of the body.


I must say that all of us from Columbia could now effectively and believably put on an African drumming and dancing performance ourselves, after an evening of rigorous instruction from the Ghanaian performers that evening. ;) Who needs a gym?