Saturday

Saturday we all had to be up super early because we were leaving for Cape Coast at 5am. The bus arrived right on time and we were on our way. We arrived to Cape Coast at like 8am at our hotel. Our rooms weren’t ready yet but they had breakfast waiting for us : ) As soon as breakfast was over we left for the first castle of the day- Cape Coast Castle. It was build by the Europeans as a place to trade but ended up being used as a place to hold slaves before they left for the Americas. We went into the dungeons where they held the slaves, its one thing to see the pictures in a history book and hear/read all of the horrible things that happened- but its totally different to feel the walls where the slaves tried to dig through the stone walls with their shackles and smell the horrible stench (it still smells after all the cleaning they did and after all these years) of death and human waste. When they were restoring the castle they did an archeological exhibition and found that the actual floor in the dungeons was 2 feet under the floor they were standing on. It was years of human waste/dead bodies and left over shackles that had all mashed together and kept decomposing over the years. We took a tour of that whole castle and saw the door of no return where the slaves passed right before they got onto the ships to never see Africa again. It was a really eerie place with a terrible history- but very interesting to learn about and very grounding. After that castle we had lunch at a crocodile restaurant where you could pet live crocodiles and we ate on this boat-ish thing that was anchored in the ground and watched the crocs swim while we ate it was amazing. After that we went to the second castle Elmina. It was a place for trading that also played a major role in the slave trade- very similar to the first castle but more intense. The catholic church where the people that ran the fort prayed every morning was right on top of the slave dungeons where too many people starved, were raped, got sick, lived in their own sewage, and even died. It was shocking to say the least. We toured the whole castle as well. They both took about an hour each to tour. After that tour we went to the Cape Coast festival which is nationally recognized. They have a parade where the chiefs and their wives are marched through the town with TONS of people and really awesome drums and horns. We were swept into the mass as soon as we arrived and tried to keep up with the guy who brought us there. It was so energetic and fun- totally amazing. One of the guys was pickpocketed and had his wallet stolen which was really sad : ( The parade ended at the parade grounds and we all stood and waited for the big ceremony where the chiefs, people in government, the churchs, and the president of Ghana all have a ceremony where they thank God for the previous season and pray for the new season. The ceremony was insane. I didn’t really know what was going on most of the time because they didn’t really speak much English. What was really surprising to me was the total lack of security. The president of Ghana arrived in a ford explorer with a couple of police escorts who were doing tricks on their motorcycles to entertain the crowd. There were a few police there but there we thousands of people so definitely not security like we are used to seeing. For example… Sonny (the guy from the Aya center that brought us to Cape Coast) took one of our cameras and pretended that he was from the press and went to the media section in the middle of the ceremony and took really close up pictures of everything that was happening. Unreal unreal unreal. The ceremony got pretty boring after a while but we stayed to see the drumming and dancing at the end which was really fun! Then we followed the parade back to the bus and went back to the hotel. We ate dinner and went swimming in the pool which was beautiful : ). Then we took hot showers (first one since we have all been here) and a couple of us went out for a night on the town since it’s the biggest party of the year in all of Ghana. We went to a gas station that was throwing a party (I know right) and danced to some really great music. Sonny ended up getting us into the front row of a concert that was going on and we all danced for hours. At one point a girl and I got pulled up on stage for a contest (they weren’t speaking English so I still don’t even know what the contest was for lol!!) but Sonny told me that the artist that was on stage was one of the most famous in Ghana and that I would probably be on national TV lol! The crown started getting rough and the guys were being typical guys so we decided to finish our night in a more calm environment and went to a random parking lot (the entire town was a party) and danced the night away. We went back to the hotel and went swimming and passed out from our incredibly exhausting day.