Notes on Elmina Castle

If you're going to read any of my posts, it should be this one.

I had planned on blogging about my week experience in northern Ghana; however, this past weekend we went to Cape Coast where we visited two castles formerly used to hold Africans before they were transported to America as slaves via the Middle Passage. In light of this, there is nothing more I can write about than this experience. These are the notes out of my journal that I took after visiting Elmina Castle, the oldest slave fort in Ghana. This is not a continuous story; each paragraph is an individual observation.

Elmina Castle was built in 1482 by the Portuguese who retained control of it for about 150 years. The primary purpose of the fort, at this time, was for trade in commodities--natural resources, gold, etc. In the early 1600s, the Dutch took control. It was about this time that the "evil trade" started--trade in human beings.

When the Portuguese built Elmina Castle, they built a church for themselves. When the Dutch took over, this church remained within the walls of the fort, though it was soon converted into a room used for the auctioning of slaves.

For African Americans, this is returning to their roots, a part of their history. But it is just as much a part of my history as it is theirs. I feel as if I am often told that I, as a European, will never understand the suffering of those taken as salves to the New World. But to say that is to ignore half of the story, because there is not way for someone like me, someone who feels responsible for the actions of my ancestors, to go into a place like this and NOT feel a deep, intense sense of guilt. This is not something I can never understand. This is something that we share.

Places like this make me intensely aware of God's grace, because sometimes I wonder how He will ever forgive us.

We crouch through the doorway of the "room of no return". Our guide makes a joke, "Be careful! You aren't coming back!" I find it hard to laugh.

A black gate with iron bars is the last threshold in this place. Through this door, slaves were forced to turn their backs on their homes and board ships bringing them to a new life of suffering. The gate was once padlocked shut but, now broken off its hinges, merely rests against the doorway. Still the padlock hangs there, the word "VICTORY" impressed on its side.

When the Dutch took over the castle, they converted one of the rooms into a Dutch Reformed church. Above the doorway to this room is inscribed a verse from Psalms: "This is my resting place forever" (132:14). But God doesn't live here. The church overlooks a courtyard where female slaves would be displayed for the governor who would choose one to sleep with. It was required that the windows that faced the courtyard were locked during this...so God couldn't see.

From the roof of the castle, I look down on a place that looks like an advertisements for honeymooners. The white sand of the palm-lined beach meets the rhythmic crash of the ocean's deep blue waves on its shore. I look down from my window at the top of the castle. I am a part of this evil that obstructs paradise.

Beyond the outer wall of the castle, the busy fishing village is bustling. Fishermen untangle nets and scrub down the sides of their canoes, decorated with colorful paint and bright European flags--another reminder of the history of this place. The castle looms somberly in the background of the lives of these people who seem not to notice it anymore. Something that brings tourists. It's remarkable--this formidable presence of evil constantly in the background. The constant reminder of a history almost too difficult to understand. And the lives outside its walls carry on as if to say, "We must move forward. Life goes on. We will not be defeated."