Cape Coast: Visiting the Cape Coast and Elmina Forts – by Brian Plaia

For over three hundred years the colonial forts in Cape Coast have stood, their presence a solemn reminder of the horrors of history that had taken place in a time that will never and should never be forgotten.

Fortresses like these were romanticized in movies like Pirates of the Caribbean where Johnny Depp is swinging about joyously trying to escape British arrest. The stark reality however, is that many a soul had been led to forts of similar fashion on the Gold Coast never to return outside the walls, let alone the dungeons.

Enslaved Africans were kept in cramped conditions, often where three hundred men would be thrown into a room no bigger than the size of a typical classroom and locked in with little to no air circulation, and at most one small window for light. There were no restrooms, beds, or even mats. Enslaved Africans stood and slept in their own urine, feces, and blood, among the dead and the dying.

For those who resisted, they were taken to the cell of the condemned, where was no circulation or light. The condemned were locked inside this cell with no light and no food. The condemned stayed in the cell until they died of starvation, when their bodies would be brought out and thrown into the sea. This process was intended to strike fear in the hearts of the enslaved.

Even the Door of No Return, the final point in the dungeon where the enslaved would be taken to awaiting ships for transport to the Americas and Europe, was purposely constructed to keep Africans under duress and strict control. Not wider than a foot across, one had to turn sideways to fit, and then duck his or her head simply to make it through the doorway.

Standing in the dungeons, the tour guide points out the fact that you cannot see the brick making up the floor underneath your feet. This is because a foot of compacted, and now dried, human waste comprises the floor.

Possibly the most hypocritical and sickening part of the fort was the church that was used by the colonial soldiers. Situated directly above the male dungeons, the church stands as a reminder of the travesties against humanity that was committed in these buildings.

The emotional effect of standing in these dungeons, having the lights turned off, and touching the steel doors that kept people captive in this fort is overwhelming. One cannot help but quietly and solemnly listen as the tour guide offers history on a particular part of the castle, only to have your mind flooded with images of what it actually could have been like standing in that very spot four to five hundred years prior. Everything here is as real as it gets. History books can only give you so much information but to see it up close and in color is a feeling that could never be replicated. We learn from history, and no matter how painful, these castles are a part of history that should never be removed. The experience of visiting Cape Coast and Elmina forts will last a lifetime.