Just got back from our trip to the Cape Coast, a stretch of coastline a couple of hours west of Accra. It was definitely nice to see ocean and beach again. They took us to Kakum Natural Park, Cape Coast Castle, Elmina Castle, the beach, and Takoradi, a market and shipping town even farther west then Cape Coast. We stayed at a place called the Hans Cottage Botel. No, I don’t know what a ‘botel’ is. But it was nice enough, had hot water, and the restaurant and a sitting area were over this manmade moat that had cool birds and crocodiles. And they had the fastest internet I’ve been on since I got here. I finally got to upload some pictures.
Kakum Natural Park is where they have the canopy walk, a network of bridges and platforms built in the trees of the rainforest. The bridges weren’t exactly rickety, and they never really felt like they were going to snap or fall off or something, but every step you took shifted the bridge in some direction and you felt like you were gonna fall. It was kind of cool, actually. On the last bridge, some of the people in my group thought it would be fun to see who could get across the fastest. I got it on (crappy) video and dubbed it the Canopy Cup.
The big part of the Cape Coast trip is visiting Cape Coast and Elmina castles. Present day Ghana encompasses what used to be the Gold Coast colony, and so there are quite a few old forts and buildings dotting the coastline that were used as administrative buildings by the Europeans when they were in power. The two castles we went to still have their slave dungeons intact, which the tours take you through. It was really eerie to stand in the doors of no return. There isn’t much I can say that hasn’t already been said or been said better, but even standing in rooms that still haven’t lost the stench of death or layers of human detritus, it’s almost impossible to fathom that kind of brutality happening to that many people for so long. Tens of millions of people exported over hundreds of years. Sickening. I can’t imagine what walking around the castles must be like for African-Americans who come here searching for their roots.
Aside from the castles, I got to hang out at the beach a little, which was actually a tease because there were some great waves and I didn’t have any swim stuff with me. From what I’ve seen and been told by Africans themselves, they don’t like to swim, which is a shame because there were some gorgeous sets going to waste.We also got to go to Takoradi market, which was another tease because although it has the reputation of being the largest market in West Africa, we went on a Sunday, which meant that 80% of the shops were closed. Even so, it was huge. Between the market and the ride home, I ended up with more fruit than I could ever eat before it goes bad, and got it all for insanely cheap prices. A bag of oranges for C2000, about 20 cents, 5 pineapples for C10000, about a dollar, and some avocados from my program director who bought more than she wanted because you couldn’t buy in less then sets of 5. The two Ghanaian men in the front of the car actually succumbed to the begging worse than either of us did, and the back of the car was loaded with fruit. It’s going to suck going back to the States and having to eat the sad excuses for fruit we have.The fruit here has way more flavor.
Anyways… Tomorrow, in theory, begins class registration. Let’s see how that goes.
