What a week!

So Matt has been here a week and we have been busy exploring and taking in Ghana. We made reservations at Peter's Pizza last Wednesday. It is a small green restaurant that sits on the edge of Aburi town. Peter went to culinary arts school in Italy and can make french fries as long as you give him a days notice, so he can get potatoes from Accra. It was quite a treat. We had hamburgers and fries, listened/watched Ghana music videos and played cards with Maren and Cara. It was a fun night. We have also been to the wood distrust in Aburi, which is 3 blocks of wood carving artist who have individual shops set up. It is like an outdoor shopping market and you can either purchase items off the shelf or have things custom made. Matt, of course has been trying new Ghana foods, and I have encouraged him on the sides. I was content eating my American snacks and being good company while he explored.

This past weekend we took a group trip to Cape Coast. I have had mixed feelings of excitement and anxiousness about visiting the slave castles. We left Friday morning and 20 of us (both the Mampong volunteer team and the Kibi volunteer team) crawled into a trotro and headed down the street for our 6 hour ride to the coast. It was a beautiful and interesting ride. We stayed at an Crocodile hotel. There were crocodiles in the water that surrounded them and the food was pretty good. Saturday, we headed to Kakum National Park. It is a protected area by the Ghana government and is the home to several different types of trees, the Forest Elephant, and various other animals. They also have 7 rope bridges, which allow you to walk from treetop to treetop appreciating the amazing views and looking down at how dense the forest floor is. The rope bridges are pretty narrow and only 4 people can be on them at a time. It was a highlight of our trip.

We then then headed to the Cape Coast Slave castle. More than 2 million slaves can through this castle and were sold into the Transatlantic Slave trade. It was crazy to walk through such a beautiful fort and know and feel the horror that happened there. We walked through the dungeons, the torch rooms, the governors' living corridors, the kitchen, and the trading market area. Our guide was very informative, and I was happy that I had gone to the National Museum in Accra the week before, so I had a better understanding of what he was talking about and could ask more in depth questions. We ended our tour at the "Door of No Return." The door of no return was haunting at the museum and even more so standing next to it. Knowing that hundreds of thousands of slaves from around Africa walked through that door and perhaps my ancestors was overwhelming to say the least. Choked up, but determined to get through that door, I was greeted with what is now the fisherman's community on the other side. Very different than what it would have been for captives being send to various places within the Americas. The guide said that the Cape Coast community had a memorial ceremony at that particular castle several years ago and the other side of the door now read the "Door of Return." The hope is that the African Diaspora (all Africans that live throughout the world) will come home and reconnect with their roots and culture. When you walk back through the door you are greeted with Awaaba which mean Welcome in Twi. We took another 30 minutes to explore the castle on our own. I didn't feel like it was enough time to see and take everything in. I had 30 minutes, only one minute for each year I have been alive, to take in and process a place that many Blacks will never see. I was frustrated by the lack of understanding that I needed more time there. Others were greatly impacted too, but not the same way I was. Many just couldn't understand.

We left the castle and headed to a resort to play on the beach and have dinner. Uneasy with the transition from the slave castle to a privileged private beach resort, I tried to just sit by the ocean side and think. I don't really have words for the day I had. We had dinner and headed back to the crocodile hotel that night. We left Sunday morning and headed back to Mampong. It was quite a weekend.