The Raiders of the Temple of the Last Crusade for the Crystal Skull….

08/24/2009

The next day we left Accra and headed for Cape Coast. We are staying in a town called Anomabo and are nestled right between Ft. Amsterdam and Elmina Castle. Cape Coast Castle (the site of Obama’s visit) is nearby in Cape Coast proper. These are the sites of the Trans Atlantic Slave trade. It takes a strong man to walk the very spaces where slaves were stored, abused, raped, sold, and shipped off to a foreign land. More than anything the thought of the countless tens of thousands that died and were tossed into the sea is so palpable…visceral really. Not one of them received a decent burial…merely a stone around their waist to keep their bodies at the murky depths of the ocean floor. Each of us has taken our turn feeling the pain and suffering that seem inextricably bound to the very stones that make the structures in which we have spent these past few days.

One of the female dungeons in particular has a sour stench and the guide informed us that women from age 6 and up were locked there…no baths, no toilets, and you can imagine the rest. We learned that women weren’t bathed unless they were about to have the company of the Governor…if you catch my drift. Oddly enough, the chapel at the fort lay just meters from these dungeons and it was from a balcony above that the Governor of the day would select the slave that he would rape later that same evening. All in the name of God and Country, right? The advent of the entire Mulatto race is a direct byproduct of the abuses of countless African slave women in institutions such as these. Manifest destiny indeed….

I’d like to say that these tours have put me in touch with the fact that I am really here, in Africa. Quite a reality check. If you had told me 6 or 7 years ago that I’d be standing in those castles and furthermore that I’d be capable of processing my emotions and feeling anything like sympathy for those that had suffered there….well….I’d have laughed you right out of the room. Yet, here I am and all the better for it. What an atrocity that man has participated in. Interestingly, the guides are all very clear about the fact that slavery was a well developed institution prior to the arrival of any European nation. Prisoners of war and captives generated by the advent of inter tribal warfare were often taken from their homelands and made to be slaves. However, this was more of an indentured servitude and the slaves had rights, could marry, buy their freedom, etc. The instance of the European arrival and the transformation to what we think of as slavery was to come later. For this, many of the people that we have met express their singular (and collective) sorrow at the notion of Africa’s own contribution to the convention that was the Trans Atlantic slave trade.









Can you say archaeology?

Finally, we have been visiting the village of Kormantse. Many slaves that ended up in Jamaica were processed here on the way to the forts. In fact, the village is of particular interest to our Professor and is the focus of his current work here. In so, we have all become archaeologists over the past few days. We have drawn grids, mapped out units, turned soil 20 cm. at a time….and most of all, found artifacts!!! Indiana Jones look out….I love this stuff! The site is rich with pottery, metal slag for smelting, beads, shell, and today we found HUMAN BONES! The forensic anthropologist inside me is peeing in his shorts…but just a little!!! The jaw and teeth are small and definitely from a child. I held them in my hand and found rib fragments, more teeth, and a long bone. One of the chief archaeologists said it is most likely a composite site, containing many bodies, and not a full on burial site. He even went on to postulate that they may have been moved within the past couple of hundred years as the people that own the land have done some rearranging for their farming efforts.

The sun was very hot on our backs as we were hunched over our screens, rummaging through the rust-red clay. It was an invigorating experience, and discerning the rocks from pottery and learning basic archaeology in a hands-on manner was something that I’ll never forget. In addition to the field work, we took a long hike into the bush and saw an old site that the locals refer to as the Mango Shrine. It is suspected that this was an old ritual site and that continued efforts to clear and excavate here would be productive.

There is an interesting phenomenon at Kormantse. Two years ago when Kofi was just beginning his work at the site he arrived to find bulldozers clearing land for a cell phone tower. Immediately he and his team tried to stop them from continuing ass their actions were disturbing the stratification of the soil…and thus, the scientific merit and integrity of the artifacts. Fast forward two years and there is a huge cell phone tower atop the hill that the village occupies and a furrow cut into the earth that is almost ½ a mile long. As a result there are pipe stems, pottery shards, and most of all human bones littering the surface and scattered all about. Moreover, almost no one knows about it because the village is so isolated…and even fewer people care.

Walking along I had collected a small collection of long bones…femurs and ulnas mostly, a myriad of finger/feet bones, and a tooth. In addition, I had collected several stems from 200 year old pipes brought over from Britain, and a black ceramic bead. The villagers consider the items to be garbage…literally garbage. They have no interest in or draw/claim to them. The scientists don’t care about them as they have no scientific value without the context provided by their location in the strata of the layers of soils and clay. I found myself standing there wondering if I was the only person that actually cared about these pieces of history…and that was the thing…I was holding history in my hands!!! No plexi-glass barrier or red velvet rope was keeping me from feeling the past with my very own hands…no LCD screen creating a fairly accurate likeness of what these things might look like…and I was enraptured. It took me two days worth of thinking and searching my moral center to decide as to whether or not to keep some of the artifacts…and I guess if you really want to know, you’ll have to come over and ask me upon my return.

Zane…if you are reading, this whole part of my adventure has had me thinking of you the entire time. It was so amazing to be out there in the bush walking around and seeing undisturbed tropical forests and digging in the dirt with pick axes and hand trowels….I know that you would have loved it so very much. I miss you so much, Bear, and I can’t wait to bring you back here some day…to see you see the world, and watch you grow up with a global vision. I know that your kind heart and beautiful smile would be so well received here. I love you.