The minute I looked at Cape Coast Castle two things happened simultaneously: Weight and noise. I felt the same heaviness I felt at Elmina. Like someone. Some people sat on me. Not on my external body but on my insides. Like a cannonball was placed inside of my rib cage. And there was a noise. Not audible though, but I heard it. It was like when you watch a scary movie and the camera turns to something that is suppose to incite fear in the viewer and there is a loud “boom” to accompany the jolt your body is suppose to perform. I watched the castle as we traveled the road towards it. It feels so weird that it is right in the middle of the city. When I stepped in the castle the heaviness got heavier. Not unbearable but noticeable. I got used to it. Somebody was trying to get my attention. Make me pay attention.
Cape Coast Castle feel more like a dungeon. It was made to be a slave dungeon where Elmina wasn’t. The men’s dungeon was so scary. Huge. Six or more of my apartments could fit in there. Dark. Even in the middle of the day with the couple of light bulbs in the dungeon it felt like night. The Cape Coast builders felt the need to make the space more accommodating but creating corners in the rooms so that the body fluids had a designated area. For the fluids that didn’t get in the corners areas for when they over-flooded the builders created a crevasse in the floor so that the fluids would flow down through the rooms and collect at the room at the end of the slight slope. I asked where the fluids went after it went into the room because there wasn’t a hole or opening that went outside. Apparently the fluids traveled through the now closed off tunnel that led to the women’s dungeon. That means the women had their own fecal matter, urine, blood, and vomit to sleep in as well as the men’s. The tour guide really looked over the living conditions. He didn’t really try to paint a picture for us. I didn’t care for him too much.
The women’s dungeon was significantly smaller. They had a little more ventilation but it was still very dark. Were the children scared? Yes, but did they eventually lose their fear of the dark with such limited chances to be in the day light? How did the lack of sunlight affect the captives? Black people must get their vitamin D from the sun. How did that affect living conditions? Lack of sunlight also means lack of serotonin. Serotonin combats depression. How many slaves committed suicide in the dark? How many died and others didn’t know because they could see? I know more slaves die in the coffles and in the dungeons than during the middle passage, but did less die in the coffles and more in the dungeons because of the mental effects of being held captive? How many babies were born here? How many women killed their babies in here? Did they hold the babies until a solider grabbed it from them and threw it in the ocean? How did she feel afterwards? Happy that the child wouldn’t have her same fate? Sad because the child that she was once happy to carry now meant something else? What did she say to herself?
They won’t make any money off of my son! The only way I can prevent my child from dying a mental death I must send him home, to ancestors, to Nyame. Nyame knows I have to do this. He has to know.
Did the other women try to convince her not to? Did they watch, turn their heads? Pray? Help? Was it easier because it was dark? Could watch your son die as you convince yourself it is in his best interest. Did she regret it after she had to hold his lifeless body for days?
I became emotion at the door of no return. The doors were huge. Not small like the one at Elmina. With the female dungeon to my right I could imagine standing there in a line with other women awaiting our fate. Wondering where our husbands, father, uncles, and nephews were.
We can’t see them enter or exit the death chamber because it was too far away from the female dungeon. Could only hear screams of those going in. They all began to sound the same. Didn’t know who they were. After a days, we could hear the door open again. Silence this time. Bodies being removed. Maybe, if I listened closely I could hear bodies being thrown into the ocean, but the crying children, mourning women, and the sounds of my own thoughts and fears drowned out most of those sounds. Sounds I didn’t want to hear anyway.
The tour guide began to open the “door of no return” where the captives would be led onto a slave ship. I started to breath heavy. Needing to cry but not wanting to. Holding it in. Heaviness still there.
He opened the door.
I was snapped back into the present. I saw little children playing on the beach and people fishing. Anti-climatically. Not sure what I expected since I knew this was going to happen. Caught up in the moment. In the heaviness. Or whoever put the heaviness there.
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Women had to carry these large and very heavy balls as punishment. Usually if you refused to sleep with the governor (pictures with and without a flash).
This is where slaves were openly examined and bids where placed.
Inside the female slave dungeon.
Parts of the dungeon has been turned into shops and a night club. It really speaks to how many Ghanaian feel about the dungeon.
Inside of the governor's quarters
The view from the governor's quarters
The death cell where slaves were put to die
Inside of the male dungeon.
Inside the female dungeon
The crevase in the floor where urine, fecal matter, vomit and other bodily fluids flowed in the middle of the male dungeon.
A hole I found in the dungeon. I wonder what it was therefore? Who dug it? Were they trying to get out?
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