Another Photo Post

A lot has happened since our last post. Here are some photos from the past couple of weeks:

This is a shot of the local men working on a community project. They were digging a ditch to redirect the flow of rainwater and prevent erosion of the road. All of the men from the area came out to help. The young men use the shovels and pick axes and the old men sit in the shade and supervise, to show their support.
















Here is a photo from a visit to our friend Ayu's place, where we had a plain old pasta dinner that tasted fantastic. After dinner, Ayu san a Japanese song for us on her ukulele. I also got to try palm wine during our visit to her village, which left me sick to the stomach throughout the next day.
















To celebrate the birth of a child, the local women gathered at one of the churches. Monetary donations are made to the church and they spend the day there singing and dancing. They dragged Marina out to join them. I hid behind the camera.
















Our host father, Seth, was offered the position of village chief of a little village on the coast where his grandmother was born. He passed the position onto his younger brother, who we went to visit last weekend in his village.
















There was a festival on in the village to honour past chiefs and town elders. They called out the names of these people and poured libation, then did some more singing and dancing.





















Many of the villagers sleep on the beach, where they can enjoy the cool ocean breeze which also serves to keep the mosquitoes away. One night, we decided to do the same, but were woken up at midnight by rain and escaped to our rooms.
















In the morning we woke up to the sound of drums and singing voices. A group of the local youth were going on a run together throughout the local villages. We're still not sure exactly why, but we were persuaded to join them, and ran along singing words we didn't understand and clapping along with the drums.
















We also got to spend some time on the beach, swimming and playing soccer in the sand.

















-Davis

A Lighter Side to the Weekend

The weekend wasn't all such a sombre affair. At our hotel in Cape Coast, we met a Canadian lady and her small boy, Om. We went with them to see the Kakum Rainforest, where you walk on suspension bridges way above the forest canopy. We had the good fortune to join a school group on the tour. Since some of the bridges were closed for repairs (gulp), we had to wait as each group went out and then returned, before the next group could begin.
















Supposedly there's lots of elephants and jaguars down below. The ladies insisted that they heard a jaguar roar, but I think it might have been Om. He later confided in me that he saw a lion named "Rawwr-Om" while we were out walking in the bush.
















Leaving the forest, we traveled to a crocodile pond to check out a few of these fellahs:
















Here's Om taunting one:
















Here's Marina's reflection, swimming with one:
















And here's a lizard, imitating one:
















Om's parents are filmmakers from Vancouver, and his father is in Ghana to make a film about HIV/Aids on contract. As often happens when you meet other travelers on the road, Marina and I's plans for the weekend took a sudden turn when Om's mom mentioned a surf beach and Ghana's only surf shop that were only a few hours by tro-tro from Cape Coast. Blessed with a future wife who is ever-accommodating to my obsession with surfing, I was on my way that very afternoon.

Busua beach is a beautiful spot.
















I'd tried renting a surfboard once near Accra. I found one board that was so cracked and water logged that I could have molded it into different shapes. I wasn't willing to be the poor sucker who loaded the last straw (or stringbean) on its back, so I took a pass. In Busua, there were a variety of boards to choose from, and many were in good shape.

I picked one out, and paddled out into lonely surf, enjoying these waves all to myself.
















Oh, except for the company of these naked dudes:
















We enjoyed our time in Busua so much that we extended the trip and stayed a couple of extra days. Our host family and friends from Achiase started calling, wondering if we were ever going to return. It was great to receive such a warm welcome when we eventually did.

-Davis

Ghanaian Slave Castles

Marina and I took a trip this weekend to visit the castles at Cape Coast and Elmina, where slaves were held captive in the 1800's, prior to being shipped out to the Americas.
















They were held in dungeons like this one, at Cape Coast Castle:
















This dungeon was built specifically for the containment of humans. It was one of several rooms built in the bowels of the castle, with spy holes through which guards could observe the captives. The gutters in the floor served to carry away human waste. A room this size (with the camera against the back wall) held over 100 men, some of them for up to two months.

If any of the slaves rebelled or were difficult to handle, they would be locked in one of the cells:
















In the cells they'd be denied food and water until they wasted away.

When a ship was ready to take them across the Atlantic, the captives would be filed down a tunnel. At Cape Coast the tunnel runs beneath these canons:
















At the end of the tunnel, they'd go through a doorway, be loaded onto canoes and paddled out to the waiting ship. This is the narrow doorway at Elmina Castle, called the "gate of no return":
















Once aboard the ships, they'd be packed tightly in the hold, in conditions more horrendous than those of the castle dungeons. The trip across the Atlantic took two months. Survivors were sold off upon arrival.

At Cape Coast Castle, the doorway through which the slaves passed is similarly called the "door of no return". However, on the other side of the door, another placard has been mounted which reads "the door of return". A few years ago, the remains of some slaves who were shipped out from Cape Coast were returned to Ghana and brought back through the doorway to be put to rest in their homeland, some 150 years after they left.

-Davis