‘You sold us! Or didn’t you?’

Article

If you ever have the opportunity to visit Ghana you have to visit the slave forts. The many forts at the coast of the country reminds us of four centuries of trade with the West-Europeans. The first trade being in gold which has bearings with the colonial name Gold Coast because there was so much gold in this part of the world. Later the trade was in slaves. The sailors held at this coastline approximately 1,25 million Africans, who were abducted in the interior to be placed on ships and sent to what they called the New World. That is to say, if they survived months of detention and did’t revolt or took their own lives. There are many stories to tell about what happened in and around the forts.

Last year, during my first trip to Ghana, I immediately paid a visit to some places that were involved with the slave trade. I started at the city of Cape Coast, which is a couple of hours drive from Accra.On the hills you have a beautiful city view. Down by the sea is Cape Coast Castle, a historical building that is on the World Heritage List of UNESCO. It was built in the 17th Century and belonged to the English. From the castle I walked a couple of hours on the beach to another big stronghold: the castle of Elmina, built by the Portuguese who lost it in 1637 to the Dutchmen. The sailors of the West Indian Company made it their headquarters. Elmina was, at that time, a fishing place with a smaller population than Cape Coast. The area around the castle is still the heart of the town. Its citizens have become used to the many tourists from far and near. 

In the castle of Elmina I also ran into some local school children. You could recognize them by their colorful school uniforms. Around them you could see the tourist groups doing their own tours. The tour guides, who leads them, explain to me who the visitors are and why they have come. For example, the Asians were very interested in the architecture of the building. The white people from America and Europe, on the other hand, are there to hear the historical facts. They wanted to know which stories of the slave trade were false or true. Then there were the pelgrims, who form a special group for the museum. Those were the vistors from the Caribbean and the Afro-Americans who wanted to reconnect with their roots. From them are the flowers in the slave dungeons. According to this categorization, I believe I am also a roots-tourist. 

Women dungeon at Elmina castle

Pelgrims form a special group

For a couple of years the museum has attracted a bigger group of visitors: the Ghanaians and other Africans from outside Ghana. The attention for the subject of slavery and colonialism is expanding, explain the tour guides. During my visit I met Alex Afful, born and raised in Elmina. He leads three to four groups a day. In the beginning the stories about the miserable life conditions in the forts made him cry. He sees the captives as ‘his own brothers and sisters’. “It could be months that they were lying in their own feces packed in the dungeons, not knowing what would happen to them”, he tells. “Every child in Elmina is told about the history. We have here light skinned people with European blood, who may also carry Portuguese, English and Dutch names like Van Dijk, Van der Poel and Bartels. But we usually don’t know the specific details of the slave trade. When I first came to work here, that is when I learned about those facts.”

I browsed around the castle with Afful. We went past the small stairs through the dark corridors. There is a church on the top floor where you can still see a brick with the bible text: ‘Zion is des Heeren ruste. Dit is syn woonplaes sein eewighey.’ Ironically, right under this chamber are the dungeons where the women were held. In the courtyard there is an iron ball and a waterhole. Afful started to tell: “When the Europeans came they had no women with them, so they took someone from here. On the command of the forts governor the women were brought out of dungeons and he picked out one of them. They would open the waterhole and she was being washed for everybody to see. Then she was lead into the chambers of the governor. If the women became pregnant, the Dutchmen would take the mixed blooded children to work for them. That is also how they got their names.”

Visitors of the castle can respond to these stories with a lot of emotions. “Many times I have been called a liar, especially by the white Europeans. People don’t want to hear it, they want to deny. It has made more and more convinced to tell the facts. I know the facts. I have been doing this work for ten years now.” There are also people who cry during the tour. I, myself, shed some tears when I felt the hard cold floor of the dungeons. At times the anger and pain has been directed to the host country, to the Ghanaians. I told Afful about a heated debate in Amsterdam during the book presentation Het Kasteel van Elmina (from Marcel van Engelen). There were Surinamese who pointed accusing fingers to the Ghanaians ‘who sold their own brothers and sister’. In the discussion they called upon the famous and rich Ashanti kings. “Many times it has been said that the African culture already knew the practice of slavery long before the Europeans came” says Afful with contempt. “That is not entirely true. It is correct that we had a culture with subordinates who had a serving role in the household. But those people could marry and raise a family. They were part of the community and could be rewarded with a better position. There was no hierarchy based on the color of your skin and there was no large scale of trade with people. That was introduced by the Europeans.”

I put the same questions to Stephen Kodjo Korsah, a head of the museum at Cape Coast Castle. He is also known from the documentary Katibo Ye Ye from Clarence Breeveld and Frank Zichem. In this film he goes to the jungle of Surinam, where he has a conversation with a Marroon in his own language. This special moment brings tears to his eyes. “It is too blunt to say that we have sold our own people. It doesn’t clear up what happened. Complete villages were attacked during raids, people were abducted, families split apart. You cannot say that to them, they have lost loved ones”, Korsah defends. “It is correct that Africans supplied slaves, but they were not their own blood. It was a period where tribes attacked and conquered each other. They made prisoners of war and could also  trade them for weapons and textile. A substantial part of the slaves were not from this region, but outside Ghana. So when the Ashanti were powerful rulers, they demanded gold and human capital. That is also why you cannot say that the Creoles in Surinam are Ashanti. However, there could be an Ashanti-ancestor being a war captive among their rivals.”

My conversation with Korsah has stayed on my mind for some time, not because he answered my questions about who is to blame but because of what he said after that. He said that Africans today are fighting the same battle as the captives during slavery. They also fight against poverty, discrimination and exploitation. “The slaves have endured the long walk from the North of Ghana to the coast. For months they were kept in the dungeon. They survived the dangerous passage over the Atlantic and the suffering on the plantations. But not only that, they have reformed their own culture. We here in Ghana could learn something from that strength for the improvement of our own lives.”         

I had entered the forts in Ghana with the taught that we as slave descendants are probably the saddest people on the planet. We had lost so much: our land culture and identity. After my meetings with people in and around the fort I realized that we had an important role to play in the world. It is about that fundamental transformation process when our comfortable life circumstances drastically changed. The outcome of the cruel meeting between the Europeans and the Africans is the emergence of a completely different population. That is when I understood how the Ghanaians were looking at me. I was not only a stranger to them; I was also a new kind of human being.   

This is a translation of my article published in Surinamese magazine Parbode (July 2014).

@culiesbeth