Alright, I’m finally getting caught up with what’s going on here, mostly by skipping a lot of stuff. This weekend was the Projects Abroad volunteer party, when all the volunteers get together and be merry. It was held at Cape Coast, a beautiful sea side town west of Accra. We took the lorry there, and then sat on the roof of the hotel and ate lunch. Rather, everyone else did that while I went off exploring. Cape Coast is full of old Colonial buildings, but what is most remarkable is not there age or there beauty, but the mere fact that there are buildings at all. It is odd to walk down streets lined by two and three story structures and not just corrugated-iron roofed wooden shacks.
I climbed up a hill through the courtyard of a school, and then past some children picking through the rubbish at a dumping ground. When I emerged from the brush at the top, I was at a little tower ringed by a high wall and four old English cannons. I climbed the ladder over the wall and looked inside the tower, and there was a man sleeping on some mats! And this small fort, known as the light house, was listed as a tourist attraction in the guidebook. Not like tourist attractions in America!
Later we took a guided tour of the big Cape Coast Castle. A huge and beautiful fort, its white walls and black cannons overlook the sea as it churns around the rocks below. Beneath the battlements, women lay out thousands of shining silver fishies to dry and, where the beach begins, there are many colorful sailed fishing boats. In both directions, palm-fringed sand meets shining sea as far as far as the eye can see. All very nice, yes?
But I could not help being moved as the guide brought us down to the dungeons, and showed us the dark rooms, maybe the size of my living room at home, where the slaves were held until the ships came to take them away to America. One hundred fifty slaves would be squished in to a room, with no light but that which wandered through two narrow slits high up in the wall, and no bathroom but a shallow trench that ran through the middle of the floor and in to a hall in the wall. Our guide also showed us the pitch black room where ill-behaved slaves were locked in without food or water. The double gates were not opened until the prisoner was dead.
Later we had a party! All the volunteers were there, plus I invited my girlfriend and her friend. There was free food and alcohol, and I was soon in a very gay mood. I took my shirt off and me and a Ghanaian guy there would go crazy dancing. We would find people who were not having fun, the kind of people who refuse to have fun as if it was beneath their dignity, and tease them relentlessly. Later, I unplugged the speaker system by accident, and then went and hid while people bickered about who’s fault it was.
The next day, I called up Francis, the drumming and dance instructor who lived in Cape Coast. He brought me to a village festival. They were celebrating the return of their Sudanese ancestors or something, but mostly, they were just trying to get money out of everyone. They had all sorts of money gathering activities; First, they had the men who gave the most money stand in a line; I was one of them, even though I gave less then the others. Then, they auctioned us off, which was a pretty embarrassing moment for me. As a white, I am fawned over and given special treatment all the time. But this time, nobody would pay the money necessary to allow me to sit down again! After that, they auctioned some bread and fabric; it all went on for a long time.
But the festival itself was very fun. I was the only white person there, and was treated as a guest of honor. I paid my respects to the chief and queen mother, and then was given a stool so I could sit between them. The chief gave me a heavy gilded necklace to wear, and then I got up to dance a whole bunch of times. Everybody was arranged around a clearing, and in the clearing different groups got up to dance, first some men in fancy dress, then a lot of women, then some local youth dressed in baggy hip hop clothing, then a bunch of kids, then all the chiefs and important people. The dancing consisted mostly of people forming a sort of African conga line, first the right foot forward, one two, then the left foot, one two, and I was encouraged to join all the different groups. It was very fun, and everybody laughed to see the white man dance.
That night, I was back in Cape Coast, and the next day in Accra.