Surfing with Slavery's Ghosts

You might not expect a surfer's paradise to be steeped in the history of slavery, but that's the combination that awaits you on Ghana's Gold Coast.

I pulled up to Busua Beach on the afternoon of March 10th and promptly fell in love. The beach is a long ribbon of clean golden sand protected by Abokwa Island, a small atoll covered in palm trees. The people are a mix of eccentric ex-pats and friendly locals. Little hotels dot the beachfront, seeming to grow naturally from the sand. The intimate scale of tourism in Busua brings locals and obrunis (white people) together with an ease I have not experienced since leaving my friends in Burkina. The sound of crashing surf welcomed me and I felt the deep peace that only the ocean can evoke. After sweaty, grabby, frenetic Accra, Busua was heaven.

It was the work of a moment to rip through my backpack, clothes flying everywhere, and find my swimsuit. I was on my way to the ocean when some very happy Rastas called me over to join their table. This proved to be the first of many memorable and wonderful encounters I would have with the motley crew that populated Busua.

Our table was soon joined by an intriguing bearded man on a motorbike. He was really cool and promised me a ride on his bike. He fishes in the area and he told me that he once caught an eighty pound stingray off the promontory, and he frequently catches sharks. They all lit up and I went for my swim, not at all convinced that I would come out with the full complement of limbs.

The next day I went to Black Star Surf Shop and signed myself up for two hours of surfing. I'm not too sure why I thought I was capable of two hours, especially given that I neglected to wear board shorts and ended up with an extraordinarily painful rash on my thigh. I admit here and now that I never used the second hour.

Some of the moments and memories that stand out from my week in Busua are swimming in the ocean under the full moon, discussing the finer points of Nayabingi philosophy with a hard core Rasta who addressed me as "Empress" (I think all men should address me as Empress), and getting hammered (sorry mom) on 20p gin shots with the most diverse group I've ever drunk with. There was Will, the Kiwi P.E. teacher turned anthropologist who is studying private military companies, aka modern day mercenaries. There was Ekke, the strapping German farmer who's lived all over North and West Africa working for an NGO that teaches sustainable farming techniques. There was Ben, the spindly, hard-drinking 19 year old British gap-year backpacker. There was Clement, the Ghanaian surf instructor who got sucked into this and was too polite to leave even though he was bored out of his mind. And finally there was Abby, the brash 20 year old American whose verbal jousting was just barely on the right side of the line between amusement and shocked outrage. So we drank a lot of cheap gin and talked politics. Just try explaining the difference between human security and national security when your slurring your esses.

Busua's idyllic present contrasts sharply with the region's tragic past. From the late 1400s to the mid 1800s, Ghana was the port of passage for an estimated 32 000 000 slaves sent to work the cotton and sugar plantaioms of the New World. Busua is unsuitable for harbour, but its two neighbours - Dixcove to the west and Butre to the east - are overshadowed by the remains of European slave forts. In their lifetimes they sent thousands of Africans to a life of slavery.

These forts were relatively small, sending approximately 1000 slaves a year to the Americas. The three big forts were in Elmina, Cape Coast, and Accra, which are further east. Each of them shipped between 3000 and 4000 slaves to the colonies every year. Most of the slaves came from Ghana; many were prisoners from intertribal wars whose captors sold them to the slavers. There were also organized slave raids as far north as Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso.

This is one reason why Ghana's coastal inhabitants have such a diversity of family names and skin tones. The other is that European slavers stationed in the forts raped their captives at will. If slaves became pregnant they were freed (to give birth and raise a child without any support, yay!) and the child took the father's last name. One of my tour guides in Cape Coast Castle was 100% Ghanaian and named John Morgan.

Sometimes the Europeans would take slaves or local women as mistresses. The genesis of Ghana's formal education system was the need to educate the children born of these unions without sending them back to Europe where the wife and legitimate children lived.

Of the four forts I visited, Elmina Castle is the one I most recommend. Built by the Portugese between 1471 and 1482, it is the oldest European structure in sub-Saharan Africa. It strikes the right balance between giving you the facts and chilling you to the bone. The last time I was so powerfully moved by a tour was in the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. After Elmina, I found Butre's fort to be the most poignant. It is the only one of the four not to have been restored, and the jungle is taking it back. It overlooks the dirt poor fishing village, the uncared for remains of an unwanted history.

It was hard to leave Busua, but I eventually made my way to Cape Coast on the 18th. From there I visited Cape Coast Castle and Elmina Castle, and I also took day trips to the canopy walk in Kakum National Park and Monkey Forest primate rescue shelter. Monkey Forest was awesome! The owners are a middle-aged Dutch couple with quirky senses of humour. Their monkeys were named things like Spok and Captain Kirk, and one of the cats was named Hannibal the Cannibal. They have civet cats and other abused wild animals as well as monkeys.

Today I travelled to Kumasi and tomorrow I'll continue to Mole National Park. I'll also see the hippo sanctuary in the extreme north-west before going back to Burkina for Easter. Also, one of my host sisters is getting married and I'll be there for that, no question!