An increasing number of black Americans are making a pilgrimage to Ghana to set foot on African soil in remembrance of their enslaved ancestors. The country on the West African bulge hosts 133,880 US arrivals each year in contrast to a trickle of about 4,260 South Africans, according to Ghana’s most recent tourism report.
With companies such as Standard Bank (trading as Stanbic Bank), Gold Fields, MTN and Shoprite operating in Ghana, many of the visitors from SA are there for business rather than tourism. There is no need for a visa, so they can sweep through immigration to the warm Twi welcome of akwaaba before braving the tropical heat and heavily indebted economy. In the capital city of Accra, they can engage in business within a relatively safe democracy where English is the official language.
For black Americans, however, ancestral tourism is firmly on the map. Over recent decades the Ghanaian government has marketed initiatives such as the 2019 Year of Return, which commemorated 400 years since the first enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia on the US east coast. At a ceremony in November last year, 524 diasporans were granted Ghanaian citizenship. “Your ancestors left these shores in tragic and inhumane circumstances. Today, we embrace you as part of the Ghanaian family,” said then president Nana Akufo-Addo.
At the Unesco World Heritage Sites of Elmina Castle and Cape Coast Castle in Ghana’s Central Region and Osu Castle in Accra, slave descendants gaze out from the Door of No Return and imagine their shackled ancestors departing from that exact spot to board ships for the transatlantic crossing. Tour groups lay wreaths in the dungeons with dedications such as “Returned to our beloved ancestors. We are because of you” and “We are your wildest dreams”. On the seaward side of the Door of No Return at Cape Coast Castle, a sign now reads “Door of Return” alluding to descendants’ pilgrimage from the US. SA tourists, meanwhile, can learn about a system that shaped global history.
The transatlantic slave trade took about 12-million enslaved Africans from West and Central Africa to the Americas between the 16th and 19th centuries. Indigenous slavery existed in Ghanaian society long before the arrival of Europeans. However, European demand spurred local rulers and merchants to capture and sell Africans into transatlantic chattel slavery.
At Ghana’s European-built fortresses, visitors are confronted by the brutality inflicted within these slave-holding hubs by the Portuguese, Dutch, English and Danes. “The captives could wait in the dungeons for three months for the next ship,” says education officer King Boateng. At Cape Coast Castle, we stand on brick floors containing the residue of captives’ blood, urine, excrement and tears.
We imagine the screams and stench emanating from a spy hole leading from outside the “heavenly” Anglican church down into the “hellish” dungeon built directly below. At Elmina Castle we stand on the balustraded balcony where the governor once looked down to select a female slave from the courtyard as his rape victim. At Osu Castle in Accra we fall silent amid the overpowering heat and claustrophobia at the entrance to a tunnel beside the Door of No Return. This subterranean passage led to the nearby Richter House, a private slave fort owned by wealthy merchants of Danish and local Ga ancestry.
As evening approaches in Accra, the city’s nightlife offers an antidote to a day spent bearing witness to humanity’s painful past. The harmattan trade wind, which blows from December to March, not only brings dust from the Sahara and hazy skies but also dissipates visitors’ sombre mood. Beneath the embrace of a large neem tree, diners at the Zen Garden restaurant in the upmarket Labone district delight to the beat of a palm-wine highlife band and its hypnotically repeating guitar riffs.
At the more modest Osikan Rock Retreat Centre on the coast, a long trestle table is being laid for a shoal of ponytailed Dutch girls on a travel-abroad school trip. The view to the west is of colourful wooden pirogues setting out from the fishing harbour at Jamestown, one of the oldest districts of Accra, under the watchful eye of the landmark lighthouse.
By day tourists head for Accra’s markets, a maelstrom of colour and activity. Take the plunge into the sensory overload of Makola Market, where you will be swept up by the density of bodies constantly on the move amid a cacophony of shouting, hooting and gospel music. Porters, or kayayei, weave through the crowds earning a pittance by carrying heavy loads for wholesalers, traders and shoppers in metal basins balanced on their heads. In the labyrinthine alleyways off the main drag is a wet market selling giant land snails writhing in their shells, trotters and pig’s ears, and smoked fish with their tails looped into their mouths.
Fresh produce ranges from mountains of yams and plantains to baskets of chilli peppers, tamarind pods and garden eggs (teardrop-shaped aubergines). Sellers preside over used car parts, vats of shea butter and towers of plastic containers. Ghana is famous for its Kente cloth and Ankara wax-resist prints, though at Makola Market you are more likely to find stacks of the colourful Chinese-made versions that locals can afford.
Market etiquette requires tourists to ask permission before they take photographs and perhaps make a token payment for the privilege. There is good reason to support the vendors at Makola by purchasing a few items. Ghana’s informal sector employs 80% of the workforce but contributes only 27% to the GDP, according to the Ghana Statistical Service. “I don’t know if I will sell anything today but it’s better than sitting at home,” says a stoic shoe-hawker. Life isn’t easy for Ghanaians in the formal sector either given the national daily minimum wage of 19,97 cedis (about R24).
Accra is a patchwork of high-rises, unfinished buildings, cottages and densely populated informal settlements. Development is complicated by a land tenure system involving ownership by the state, families, clans and the stool, or traditional authority. Due to disputes, it is common to see walled-off properties with wonky handwriting saying “No trespassing. Land under litigation.”
As the first Sub-Saharan African nation to gain independence in 1957, Ghana’s history is reflected in the triumphal architecture of Black Star Square, Jubilee House (the presidential palace) and the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park and Mausoleum. In front of the colonial-era supreme court building is a monument to the “Martyrs of the Rule of Law” commemorating three judges and a retired army officer who were murdered during the military rule of Flight-Lt Jerry Rawlings.
To get to such sites, tourists must navigate a city in which infrastructure development is struggling to keep up with rapid urbanisation. In light of the city’s congested traffic, it seems fitting that the ubiquitous trotros (minibus taxis) sport mottos such as “Grace of God” and “Such is Life”. To get to work on time, some commuters resort to riding pillion and helmetless with the daredevil motorcyclists who dart through the traffic jams for a fee.
Accra’s pedestrians, too, must be nimble, dodging the traffic and the deep gutters alongside the streets. Keeping on your toes becomes even more pressing after a tropical rain shower when the rubbish in the gutters transforms into a pungent urban soup. In addition, at night the streets are sometimes dark due to the country’s unstable electricity supply known locally as dumsor (off and on).
Leaving the city for sightseeing may require some resilience. On an intercity bus to Cape Coast, a long stretch of badly planned roadworks means that fixing your eyes on the Nollywood soapie being screened at the front of the bus is preferable to looking out the window at the bedlam of pantechnicons, ambulances, motorbikes and construction vehicles jostling for space outside. An easier drive is the 40km to the 19th century Aburi Botanical Gardens in the Akwapim hills, where the British left a green legacy of weird and wonderful tropical plant species. To see towering indigenous trees, tackle the canopy walk with its spiderweb of suspension bridges at Kakum National Park.
Decoding Ghana’s cultural and environmental landscape is intriguing. Accra’s neighbourhoods reveal the importance that Ghanaians place on death and funerals. A common sight is banners headlined “Call to Glory” or “Gone too Soon” that feature photographs of the deceased. Mourners also wrap the boundary walls of their homes in zigzags of bunting in the symbolic colours of black, red and white.
Alongside arterial roads, realtors’ billboards vie with those of Pentecostal and charismatic churches. About 71% of the population is Christian, 20% Muslim and 3% belong to African religions. Gay sex is illegal in this religious nation, says Al Jazeera, and discrimination against LGBTQ people is common. However, “no-one has ever been prosecuted under the colonial-era law”.
Tourists expecting a walk along a pristine palm-fringed beach in Accra will be disappointed to find plastic litter and old clothing contaminating the shores. Pollution stems not just from government inefficiency but also from wealthy countries dumping second-hand clothing and e-waste under the guise of recycling. Other environmental challenges include rising sea levels that threaten historic slave forts and illegal small-scale gold mining or galamsey (gather them and sell) that pollutes rivers.
Ghana isn’t a place you go to unwind; it’s a place you go to understand. In its tangle of modern-day challenges you will be confronted by global practices that are shaping the future. At the same time, the country’s slavery past will make you reflect on a system that changed the world.
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