And so it begins...Elmina Slave Castle

Elmina Castle

We started our trip off in Accra, spending two nights in the New Haven resort, trying to get our bearings on the heat and dousing ourselves in bug spray which inevitably slid off of our skin due to so much sweat. Accra is an extremely busy, hot, and loud city, with so many sights, colours, and smells. Then we made our way down to Cape Coast, taking a bus with intermittent periods of AC (when none of us could handle the heat any longer). We did our first group road pee and laughed as people passed us in their vehicles, honking their horns. As we rounded a corner, the shoreline of the coast caught our eyes as the turquoise waters of the Atlantic crashed into the beaches which were lined with hand made canoes. Then, a beautiful large white building standing alone on a point took my breath away. I knew what it was, and so many emotions flooded over me, sadness, anger, fear. This is Elmina Castle, once a haven for cultural segregation, torture, and unspeakable atrocities, now a heritage site, the oldest and largest standing building connected to the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.

For those of you who don't know why this particular castle has anything to do with Global Health, let me attempt to paint you a small picture. In the early 1400's Prince Henry of the Portuguese heard rumours of the Ghanaian people trading in precious goods such as gold and ivory. Because of this, the Portuguese decided to explore West Africa by boat and land and found what would be later called "the Gold Coast". In 1482, Elmina Castle was constructed and used as a trading post by the Portuguese, though not without resistance from the local chief at the time, Nana Kwamena Ansa. For the chief knew that "friends were to be better friends if they were not to live together but would see each other occasionally." Most of the items that the Portuguese brought to trade were guns, gunpowder, liquor, iron bars, etc. Later however, the walls that contained such items, would hold something much more sinister and cruel. The castle itself passed through many hands (Portuguese to Dutch to British), yet all of those hands played a large role in the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade which started with the Portuguese using local tribes to capture their enemies (other local tribes at war with one another) and bring them to the castle by force to be sold and shipped off over the Atlantic for slavery. During the next 400+ years, people were brought into this "castle", chained to it's floors, tortured, raped and starved.

Slave Dungeons

 We had a tour of the majority of the castle, where we walked into the hauntingly dark and eerie chambers of both the male and female slaves. All of these chambers were on the bottom floor of the castle, and most had very little light with very little ventilation. Here they were held until a ship arrived to take them away to a distant and foreign land. That is, if they made it out of the castle alive. The day we toured, it was 39 degrees Celsius, with roughly 80% humidity. The moment we stepped inside these haunting chambers, every single one of us had sweat dripping over every inch of our bodies. This is not an exaggeration. I felt beads of sweat dripping down my legs as if I was peeing my pants. Now imagine being in this stagnant heat with no food or water, and then imagine being cramped in there with hundreds of people, all of which are urinating, defecating, and vomiting on that very floor you are meant to exist on, because they are too weak and sick to drag their bodies to the corners of the room where buckets were placed for them.

Room of the Condemed

Then to add insult to injury, imagine as a woman, the blood from menstruation added to those floors, or being chosen by the governor to be "prepped" and washed to come to his bedroom. And what if you refused or put up a fight? Prepare yourself to be tethered to a cannon ball in the middle of the exposed courtyard for the rest of the females to see. You are now an example of what will happen to you if commands are disobeyed; death by heat with hundreds of eyes peering sorrowfully at you, helpless. For those males who resisted, you are marched to a room painted with a skull over the doorway. Ominous, yet accurate, no person who stepped into that room, stepped out again. A room with absolutely no airflow, was an incubator for death. The walls are etched with claw marks, made by those who would eventually succumb to their fate.
 

The View

 Now these are only some of the injustices that occurred within the walls, not to mention what happened outside of these walls. But for now, I will remain with Elmina Castle only. To the second and third floors of the castle was an extreme juxtaposition, where every room was airy with multiple windows from all directions giving way to the most beautiful breeze that would curl and wrap its coolness around your body like a welcomed hug. Looking out of the windows was like a dream, where you could see miles of white beach and rock being shaped and molded by turquoise waters, crashing here and there. It was as if we had stepped into another world, a resort even.

Door of No Return

If it weren't for the horrors occurring below my feet, I would have liked to stay here. These floors of course, belonged to the soldiers, and the governor who ran this castle; treated as kings while they performed heinous acts against humanity. The clincher for me was the fact that the church where they worshiped, danced and prayed, located on the second floor, sat directly over top the slave chambers where people were in extremely poor health, sick, and dying, waiting to be led to the "door of no return", the single door which millions of slaves have passed through over the years, the door which was literally the one and only exit for these people, the door that sealed their fate; off to the ships they go.

You may ask why I think all of this information is important if not relative to global health? We need to know our history. No matter the colour of your skin, no matter where you come from, this is the world's history, and to not acknowledge it is an extreme disservice to yourself and those around you. This plaque was erected at Elmina Castle which serves as a reminder to never again treat people in such a way, as if they are not human.


Now I bring this back to Global Health. This treatment is still going on today, whether we want to admit it or not. It may be in a different context, but regardless, it is still happening. If you can't think of where people are being mistreated, shipped off to unfamiliar lands, fleeing their homes to seek refuge, or living in squalor because of oppression (specifically high powered oppressors), then please pick up a newspaper, or research on the internet, or watch the news (but please choose a reliable source). This is happening all over the world in plain sight. Because of this, our global health is suffering. People are starving and do not have adequate access to things for basic needs. They are being abused in more ways than one, some of the abuse as subtle as a taunt whispered over the wind, reaching it's intended target. Some is outwardly shown as physical violence, bombing in streets, destruction of neighborhoods, lives, and cultures. Global health involves all of us, we are citizens of this earth! This blog was a minute synapse of what has happened in the past, but the effects are still widely felt, on a global level. So please, do the world a favour, do your part, and be kind to your brothers and sisters. Offer a helping hand when you see someone is struggling, lend an ear to someone who needs it, find compassion in something you would never have seen before. Open your eyes, ears, and heart.


Blog post by Hailey Hunter, 4th year BScN


Most of this information was based on my memory of the tour, however the dates and facts were retrieved from Ashun, A. (2017). Elmina, The Castles and The Slave Trade. Elmina, Ghana: Nyakod Printing & Publishing Co. Ltd.