Where ships used to crate people like cattle, I admire the shore line. -An account of Cape Coast

The irony of Cape Coast, Ghana is it's history.
This is where a massive slave trading "industry" took place. People were sold here due to the color of their skin. Women were kept in chambers, used for sex, had one bucket to 50 people to defecate in. Punishing chambers still hold carvings from men struggling in chains where tourists now pay to walk over, get a glimpse of the other side, they say.
Cape Coast did not seem like the Ghana I know here in the Volta Region. It feels like a vacation town. Because that's what it is. Once a center of absolute moral rape now hosts some of the nicest, and most relaxing things you will find in Ghana.
To get there was a trip. First you get in a tro (a tro is like a van, rickety and packed full of people) for hours and argue with the driver to not cheat you because you are white. Then you arrive in Accra, the capitol city in Ghana, this is the place people have told me I can buy things like ice cream, and chinese food, even milk if I am lucky. I have yet to walk the streets in a slow pace and stop to look while in this city. It makes me nervous. I have gotten so firmiliar to how slow my village can move. America will surley shock me when I come back to it's bright lights and different cars and expensive drip coffee. (i have not had drip coffee since I got here.) *side note on food - i didnt know you could get a cigarette-like craving for it. Id kill a man for a chai, cut off a toe for a salad. (=. but really though.* Anyway. We somehow get to Cape Coast, after about an 8 hour journey, sweating and buying things from vendors with food on their heads to sustain us, listening to a man sell a cure-all vitamin on the bus for 2 hours (apparently if you take this vitamin it can cure anything from diabedes to menstral cramps. best part is some people bought it.) We got in town and ate on a roof restaurant and I drank wine from Argentina to honor my mother and my brother simultaniously. We then went to a club and danced to Ghanaian hip hop.. fun. :) "siiing for me.. Africa lady!" "bump-a-dee-bump-bump!" A group of men from the Ghana including one whos name was Fantastic, and another King David, got us home safely, (dont worry motherly readers, these men were friends of ours.) And I thought to myself, my life is amazing.

The next day I awoke with bowel movements from hell itself and laughed the whole day about it. Then took a frighteningly cold shower screaming and laughing and.. best part, finally saw my whole body in a mirror. There was a mirror in the hotel room. Your naked body is something so bizarre to not see for 2 weeks then suddenly realize what you look like from on onlookers view, instead of just a birds eye one. We then wandered the beach and had amazing westernized food at a restaurant near by. This made me crave california. Then the tour of Cape Coast Castle. This made my heart cry. It took me a while to recover mentally, internally, I had thought often of slavery while in the states, and always knew it was horrid and disgusting, but to see where people had dug in their fingernails in fight made my insides boil.

Afterward Vicky finally found a place that sold smothies. Smothies to Vicky is like salad to me, so you can't imagine how happy she was. We met a group of Rasta men and danced to Bob Dylan and African pop, met volunteers from projects abroad in the area and had a blast.

The trip ended with several details I will save for my journal and talks over coffee but one thing I can say is Ghana will never fail to suprize me. It constanly teaches me, always reminds me what I have learned, what I am thankfull for, and what I have yet to know.

Meloo.