Even today, it towers above its surroundings like a white beacon of hope. The scenery is beautiful, peaceful and serene with the huge structure framed by the surging ocean on one side and ringed by rows of tall coconut trees on the other.
This cool ambience, though is deceptive, for in its heyday, this majestic building, the Elmina Castle, Elmina, Ghana, was the location of one of the most horrendous, horrible and brutal acts ever committed by man against his fellow human being. It was in this place that thousands of African slaves were kept in subhuman conditions, brutalized and eventually shipped to America, the Carribean and other far-flung parts of the world to work as slave labourers.
“It is difficult for us today to imagine what these captives or slaves went through both while they were kept in this place and even before they arrived,” said Phillip, a guide at the castle.
On this bright and sunny afternoon, he was taking a small group of foreign tourists, including this reporter, round the huge castle. He is very knowledgeable about its history, often giving graphic descriptions of life within its walls both for the captive slaves and the slave masters.
It’s a tale of immense misery, pain and suffering beyond belief. Indeed, the contrast between the beautiful castle and the horrors that took place within its thick walls is just too hard to contemplate.
A hellish life
The castle was like a transit point for captives before they were to be transported to foreign lands. They were brought from all over the west coast, trekking barefoot all the way, sometimes about 300 miles from the places where they were captured to the coast.
“The slaves walked from all over West Africa- from the present day Nigeria, Togo, Benin Republic, Ivory Coast, other parts of Ghana and other places. The journey could take months,” he explained.
He noted that the captives, who were in chains, were given very little food and water and never bathed. Those who became very weak and sick, he added, were left in the forest to die or to be at the mercy of wild animals.
“By the time they arrived the castle, they would have grown very weak, sick and exhausted. Many died in the process. Those that survived were kept in the dungeons inside the castle,” disclosed Phillip.
There are several dungeons for male as well as female slaves in the castle. The main female dungeon is a long, narrow room. Apart from a little opening at the upper side of the wall, there are no windows. In this stuffy, airless enclosure were kept about 400 women slaves.
Life in the dungeons was hellish. The captives were held in there for a maximum of one or two months, depending on the availability of ships to take them away. Given enough food and water to keep them barely alive, they were rarely brought out for exercise and sunlight, nor allowed to bathe.
“In the case of the women who had their menstrual period, they were not given clothes or pads for the flow. So, they just did it there on the floor. Those who were too weak to ease themselves in the containers placed at corners of the dungeons as toilets were forced to do it on the floor,” said Phillip. Thus, the floor on which the captives slept was often filled with human waste, blood, urine and vomit. All this stench, coupled with the heat, made life harrowing and unbearable in the dungeons. “It’s no surprise that many of the captives died before they were transported abroad,” Phillip stated.
As if the dehumanising conditions under which the captives lived was not bad enough, they had to contend with all forms of harassment from their captors. The female captors, for instance, were sexually abused by the slave masters.
Hear Phillip: “Whenever the governor of the castle wanted a woman, he went about it this way. He would stand on the balcony overlooking the female dungeons and order the women to be brought out and assembled. He would then pick the woman he wanted.”
The chosen female would be by this time, filthy looking and unkempt as she might have been in the dungeon for a month or so without a bath or other forms of personal hygiene.
“Since she could not meet the governor in her condition, she was usually cleaned by the soldiers, dressed, fed and taken up a flight of stairs and through a trap door off the inner courtyard known as the private entrance to the governor’s bedroom,” said the guide.
These regular sexual assaults by the captors resulted in pregnancies among some of the captives. Those who became pregnant were freed, but it was a bittersweet freedom as many could not make their way back to their places of origin.
“Since the captives came not only from present-day Ghana, but also from Togo, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Benin and a host of other places, when these women were freed, they could not return to the villages where they originally came from,” Phillip explained.
Some of the captors who had impregnated the women subsequently built houses in the village where some of them were kept to deliver their babies.
Door of no return
When the ships that would take the captives away arrived, those sold were taken to a room now known as the “room of no return”. A very low door leads to this room. Unless you are a dwarf, you will need to bend to enter. The captives, all in chains, were led to this room and made to exit through another door. From this door (known as the door of no return), they were taken down a ladder to canoes and finally the ships that would take them to unknown places in the world. This journey called the “middle passage” saw the captives being shipped across the mighty Atlantic Ocean to Europe, the Caribbean, the Americas and other places. It was a long tortuous journey in which many of the slaves died from hunger, disease and brutality and horrible conditions in which they were kept. Those who perished were thrown into the sea.
“Over 60 million Africans were captured during the three centuries or so the evil trade in humans lasted. Only 20 million survived and ended up in foreign lands to work as slaves under terrible conditions,” stated Phillip.
From one power to the other
The castle, which was at the epicentre of the evil trade, began life innocently enough. Built by the Portuguese in1482, it was originally used as a trading post for goods. The Portuguese first arrived Elmina in 1471 and began to trade with the Africans. Back then, the system of trade was by barter, that is the exchange of goods for goods. The Portuguese exchanged items like guns, hard liquor, gunpowder, enamel bowls, tobacco, iron bars for such items like gold, ivory, spices and artifacts from the Africans. The locals had a lot of gold to exchange with the foreigners. This gave them the impression that the village was full of gold. Thus they called the place, “El Mina” (the mine). This name was corrupted to today’s Elmina.
This mutual trade in goods continued till the early 16th century when the trans-Atlantic slave trade began. In 1637, the castle was taken over by the Dutch after a fierce battle. They held fort there, using it as a transit for shipment of slaves to the West until the British gained possession in 1872. By this time, the trade in slaves had mercifully been abolished.
Today, the castle, with its different sections such as the courtyards, dungeons, cells, official quarters for the slavers, church, mess, kitchens and others, stands empty of both slave masters and ill-treated captives. All that remain within its thick walls are echoes of a past that saw the worst form of man’s inhumanity to man. Well- maintained by the Ghanaian government, it’s a magnet for tourists from all over the world. Briana Wilson, an African-American from Atlanta, Georgia, is one of them.
“I had heard so much about this place that I just had to come here. This is my first visit to Africa. Seeing the place where my ancestors stayed before being taken away to other parts of the world gives one goose pimples. There are no words to describe the feeling. You can read all you want and watch all the documentaries you like about slavery. But they don’t give you the same experience as being there and seeing and feeling how those people must have suffered. It’s an unforgettable experience,” the 56 year old school teacher stated.
