I have long enjoyed the study of culture; of people, why they are who they are, why they do what they do. However, it's this very thing I seem to find people struggling with when discovering new cultures and histories. As an educator, and a life long learner, I try my best to always ask “why”. To call something strange, weird, or wrong simply because it differs from your own perspective is what causes much of the division in this world.
Before coming to Ghana it was suggested that we read the book Lose your Mother by Saidiya Hartman. Being the nerd I am I think I ordered the book as soon as it was suggested. Knowing I was coming to Ghana it was important to admit that I only had a surface understanding of Africa in the modern world and I felt it was important to educate myself on some of Ghana’s history as well as with their understanding and thoughts on the slave trade.
Hartman's book was eye- opening and full of different perspectives on slavery in Ghana. At one point she shares a discussion she had with some Ghanaian friends. She writes, “In Ghana, they joked that if a slave ship bound for America docked off the coast today so many Ghanaians would stampede one another trying to get on board”, but she goes on to say, “what [Ghanaians] didn't discern were the… decades of political setbacks and economic decline that had inspired these trips to the dungeons; what they didn't understand was that many [African Americans] also lived in poverty” (Hartman, pp. 170-171). It often feels like human nature to assume someone else has it better, but this thinking shows why it is so important to learn from new people and new experiences.
Over the past two days I had the opportunity to visit two slave forts, Cape Coast Castle and Fort Williams. They were two very different experiences for a few different reasons. Our trip to Cape Coast Castle was with our entire group; our diverse group of American educators, as well as our cohort of Ghanaian teachers. It is impossible to describe how different this experience was for each of us. Part of understanding is giving each person the chance to live their own experience, the space and time to reflect, and any support needed. Even if that support is understanding through silence. My trip to Fort Williams was with only one other member of our cohort. As both of us were white Americans I felt the tour guide discussed the history of the fort very differently. For one, he refused to call what happened slavery and insisted it should be called human trafficking. He also felt comfortable making light of the experiences of the slaves and shared the preferential treatment given to the “mistresses” of the British officers at the fort.
This experience reminded me of another quote from Hartman’s book.
“In the 1990s, Ghana discovered that remembering the suffering of slaves might not be such a bad thing… If for no other reason than it was profitable… Every town or village had an atrocity to promote - a mass grave, an auction block, a slave river, a massacre… They only hoped that slavery would help make them prosperous” (Hartman, pp. 162-163).
I do not think our tour guide at Fort Williams thought of slavery as just a way to make money, but he definitely saw it as a way to increase tourism and improve the lives of those in his town.
The pictures I chose to accompany this blog show that if you look through these portals, built for a horrifying and ugly history, you can see the beauty of Ghana today, where we have all found our present together.
By Kristen Boone, History/English teacher, grades 9-12 Pennsylvania