Africa 2006

After ten days or so of fluctuating health and visiting orphanages, it was a nice change to do some purely touristy things in Cape Coast.
One was my first visit to a National Park on this trip. Kakum National Park is one of Ghana’s smallest, but is only 35 kilometres north of Cape Coast. It’s not home to lions or tigers or bears – but I did see lots of ants! There are also monkeys, antelope, and hundreds of bird species, but many are scared away by the presence of humans. What most people, including myself, visit Kakum for is the Canopy Walk (one of only four of its kind in the world – and constructed by Canadians!).
 The Canopy Walk is a series of seven small suspension rope walkways constructed 30 metres above the ground, above the tops of the trees, affording an unorthodox view of the rainforest.
Unless you’re like me, and really scared of heights.
It’s pretty clear from the solid rope construction (and the nationality of the builders! J ) that the canopy walk is safe. But that didn’t stop me from being very very nervous as I stepped onto the first walkway and heard it creak and crack as I inched forward (only one person is allowed on each walkway at a time, because it sways so much). The walkway was too narrow even for my two feet to be next to each other at one.
Once you start, you can’t stop, so I continued along all seven, focusing just on the bit of walkway in front of me and never glancing around to see the (apparently spectacular) view.
But I did it. And it’s the bravest thing I think I’ve done on this trip.
**
Cape Coast is most famous for its UNESCO-listed castle of the same name. The part of the coast has more forts and castles from the slave trade than any other region in Africa and it is estimated that between 12 – 25 MILLION people passed through the continent as slaves over a four hundred year period (OK, don’t quote me on all the stats; I don’t have my book here to confirm everything).
Cape Coast Castle was one of the major posts for the slave trade, operated primarily by the British, but also at other times (again, don’t quote this!) by the Portuguese, the Dutch and the Danes.
The tour of the castle included the dungeons where thousands of slaves were kept chained together until they were shipped like tinned sardines off to the Americas. They are dark, dank, sweaty, stuffy, and incredibly small for the number of prisoners they contained at once (150-200, although I didn’t get the exact dimensions of the cells).
There was also a special room for those who were convicted of trying to escape – they were chained together in groups of 50, without fresh air, food or water, and left in the room until everyone was dead, at which point the corpses were thrown into the sea. Above the rooms was the chapel – as our guide said, a sort of perverted version of heaven above and hell below.
Our guide also talked about the education system – the oldest schools in Cape Coast (and Ghana in general has a reputation for having one of the best educational systems in the region) were originally opened for mulatto children – the offspring of female slaves who were raped by the European captors. Pregnant women were not sent to the Americas and their children were generally looked after by the Europeans. Surnames like Johnson and Van Dijk still exist in this region.
Outside the castle, the waves crashed against the rocky shore and fisherman plied the waters in long narrow boats with long narrow flag poles atop them. (Except on Tuesdays, when they take the day off to allow the fish to rest).
I also visited the castle at Elmina, a smaller village 10 kilomtres from Cape Coast, where little boys played with kites they had fashioned from discarded black plastic bags.
It’s been a sobering, and a fascinating, past few days.
COMING UP: I head back to Accra, the Top 10 for Benin, Togo and Ghana and – the big finish!!