It goes without saying that visiting slave dungeons is an extraordinarily emotionally charged experience. To enter a room where 1,000 men would be shackled and crammed for 2-3 months at a time waiting for boats- one meal a day, standing in 15 inches of their own urine, feces, and corpses. To see the canon balls women were shackled to as they were taken from the dungeons to the soldiers and governor quarters to be raped. It's a feeling I can't accurately describe in words.
The darkness of the cell where rebellious captives, freedom fighters, would stand, 60 at a time, condemned to death with no air, light or food. Corpses not to be removed until all 60 were dead, and touch the tooth and nail marks still on the walls of that cell, of those in unimaginable agony that were the last to die, suffocating in a room with no oxygen and full of rotting corpses. I simply cannot give it justice in words.
To then see the sight of the first church in Ghana, later to become the first school, standing literally directly above those dungeons. A cringing feeling that I will take with me forever.
But believe it or not, that was not the most poignant part of the experience.
While standing in one of the female dungeons, hearing the explanation of the systematic rape of hundreds of women, one of our own female staff members nonchalantly made a joke about rape, and continue to laugh with some of the other local women in the tour.
We were warned about this kind of situation by Dr. Yemi prior to our visit. There is a reason for that insensitivity of Ghanaians towards the slave trade.
Slavery like most other aspects of Ghanaian history and culture is not taught in schools. People have no idea that it ever existed.
Let me repeat that.
Ghana has 52 of the 68 slave trading forts still standing today, and it's the leading example of African education and development. Yet its people have have no idea, none, zero, nada, that 12-25 million of their own anscestral brothers and sisters were enslaved and shipped across the world for over 450 years. With the oral tradition dying out at an astonishing rate, the little history of slave raids is now reduced to some type of folktale or myth among elders in rural areas.
Our tour guide was a 23 year old university graduate is a member of the National Service Scheme. All graduates of a Ghanaian college or university are required to give one year of service to the country as part of the National Service Scheme. He admitted to us he had no idea, none whatsoever, that the transatlantic slave trade ever existed until six months prior when he took that job. A university graduate. In 2011.
Like almost all Ghanaians, he simply thought African-Americans were Americans of a darker color. That the Caribbean and South America were just always land of Black people. Not even an inkling that they may be the descendants of their own enslaved brothers and sister. For the very few that may have some knowledge of the slave trade they have a complete ignorance of what happened on the other side of the ocean. They share sentiments like ' I wish my ancestral family was captured and taken, today I would be Colin Powell" Absolutely no awareness of the hundreds of years of torture, struggle, segregation laws (which by the way the United States is the only country in the world to have instituted such a thing, despite having been the recipient of the least number of enslaved Africans).
This is not about race or blame. The dozens of chiefs that sold their own people to Europeans- 1 gun for a woman, 3 for a man. The own Ghanaians to mercilessly shackle their brothers and sisters, force them to walk for weeks from the Northern/Central regions to those coastal dungeons, they are just as guilty as the European buyers and owners to torture, ship and trade human beings like cargo.
This is about a 450 year institution, arguably one of the worst atrocities of humanity, the exploitation of millions of people, completely and utterly unknown to its own victims. Like the Holocaust, the Rwanda genocide, the Trail of Tears, history that should not, cannot, ever be forgotten.
I know what you're wondering. How? How could that be possible?? How could that have ever been completely erased from modern history books?
The entire educational system of Ghana (of Africa for that matter), was founded by, and continues to be controlled by European churches and missionaries. There is no separation of church and state when it comes to education in Ghana, there are national standards that all schools no matter their denomination must adhere to and teach, but Christian schools are in fact public schools. Many of these Christian denominations that control schools today historically advocated slavery.
If you dehumanize a people-remove them from their God, their family, their history, their values, their language, their land, and only allow them one tiny smidgen of their humanity in the form of Christianity, they will embrace it dearly, and with a fervor unknown to Europeans. This is sadly, the mentality behind the spread of Christianity, and consequently formal education, across the African continent.
I will argue that that is the reason why Africans and African-Americans all over the North and South continent are the most deeply attached to their Christian faith. Why the social, economic, and cultural developments of Black communities revolve around the church. (If you've ever lived in a Black neighborhood in any part of North and South America you know exactly what I'm talking about. From the favelas outside Rio, to the South/West Side neighborhoods of Chicago, even certain neighborhoods in my hometown Barranquilla, a Black church is a phenomenon far beyond a matter of faith and Jesus ).
Very little educational reform has ever occurred in Ghana since the founding of the colonial educational system. Schools are breeding grounds for good workers and servants, and removed from all culture and history around. The first and only culturally visionary president of Ghana (and of Africa), Kwame Nkruma, was ousted (in a coup our CIA now admits to have planned -it was the 60's and he was a bit of a communist.... ). Two harsh military regimes following, and today a 'modernizing' nation, Ghanaian educational reform is about test scores and producing better competitors in the global market (not unlike US educational reform, but that's another story).
There is no official plan for history and culture to make it back into school curriculums, but there are people fiercely fighting for it.* There are many standing up for this history to never be forgotten. Although former presidents Clinton and Bush each visited Ghana twice in their terms, never did they vist one of the slave castles (oxymoronic term isn't it?). However, President Obama did- not visiting Kenya, South Africa or any other African nation, and leaving the politically central places of Accra to visit the dungeons and meet local chiefs, it was an incredibly defying move. (I owe you all a post on African Obamamania, from Obama hotels, cars, shirts, billboards and even cookies, Obama is all the rage here ). Although I will say in the former presidents' defense they did send $11 million in 1994 for the renovations and upkeep of these castles, more than the Ghanaian, British, Dutch, or Portuguese government ever have, and probably ever will.
I've always felt extremely lucky with all the opportunities I have been blessed with. However, I never thought I would ever come to realize how amazing my basic education was. If you approach any 6 or 7 year old in Barranquilla and ask them to show you our traditional dances, they can, it is something we are taught since we're in preschool, we learn the history and culture that gives us our Colombian identity, and take every weekend an yearly Carnaval to celebrate it. But even after moving to the States, education has been a word that means so much more than reading and writing. I've been blessed with incredible inspiring teachers, coaches and mentors that inspired me to be creative and inquisitive beyond words. A few of those teachers I know are following this blog, so to you all, and all those that work to shape children and teenagers into knowledgeable, passionate adults: thank you so much. You do not hear that enough.
Living here in the face of such educational poverty, I can only be in awe, and become even more fervent to fight for our educational issues back home. Art, music, community service, field trips, extracurriculars, these are the incredible things that shape a holistic education and they are being cut everyday out of our schools. While I don't think we will ever get to the point that we cut slavery out of the curriculum (except maybe in Texas...google if you're not aware of their recent history curriculum "reform"), it is still a battle. So wherever you are in your educational career, go back and support those that have shaped you and are fighting for the ones coming. They could use all the help they can get.
*One of those is an incredibly passionate scholar, Rabbi Kohain Nathanya Halevi. A Black Jewish man, born and raised in America, became a rabbi, and moved to Ghana as a scholar and activist. A man that has slept in those dungeons in protest, fervently fights for educational reform on both sides of the ocean, and has done extraordinary things to preserve African culture and history. Google him, if you can find a video of him speaking I recommend watching it, he's very inspiring.
On that note, did you now modern Judaism is actually a deeply African tradition? The 'Israelis' immigrated south from Palestine to West Africa and today the ceremonies, religious restrictions of the Akan, the Gaa, Ewe and other Ghanaian ethnic groups are not only extremely similar, but in cases exactly the same of those listed in the Torah?
PS: My apologies for any spelling/grammar mistakes. I had to type this one with no spell check!
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