The Evil Trade

After a 3 hour bus ride I have returned to Accra. Thanks to one of my well-connected new-found friends here I was able to escape the city for the weekend to go to Elmina. I had several reasons for wanting to visit this fishermen’s village west of Accra. The first was that Accra is no more Ghana than Amsterdam is the Netherlands or London is England. At least by going to Elmina I was able to see a bit more of the country, if only a tiny bit. The other reason I felt I had to see Elmina is because of what it is and because of what I am.

As a Dutch traveller you sometimes find yourself confronted by something only the British, the Portuguese, the Spanish and to some extent the French and Belgians can probably relate to: the confrontation with the darker side of your nation’s past. The Dutch history in Ghana is one of the darkest chapters in our history. Elmina castle was once the focal point of the most evil of all trades: the slave trade.

Between 1637 and 1872 the Dutch occupied this massive 4 story slave fortress in which at any time over a thousand Africans would be held in dark dungeons, waiting either to die right there or to be shipped to the plantations of the Americas. In the roughly 300 years this destructive trade plagued the African continent over 12 million people were stripped of their humanity and treated as a commodity like any other. A very profitable commodity if they survived the ocean voyage.

Visiting this castle together with descendents of those that passed through the Door of No Return was a humbling and moving experience. You can visit the dungeons as well as the officer quarters. The castle is now a World Heritage Monument, a status it fully deserves and which should hopefully allow it to be maintained in the amazing condition it still is more than 500 years after it was built.

The horrors inflicted here are not forgotten and should never be. Next to the cell for condemned slaves the people of Ghana have fixed a memorial plaque that says it all:

In everlasting memory of the anguish of our ancestors. May those who died rest in peace. May those who return find their roots. May humanity never again perpetrate such injustice against humanity. We the living vow to uphold this.