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Ghana

A number of the slave brokers in Africa were of African decent. They were the Africans selling their own people for money. This is the Door of No Return I mentioned earlier. You see is half opened. When they went through that door they would never return to the world then knew in Africa.

Today the beach area is for families and locals. It was not there in the days of the slave trade.

Today is Saturday and a warm day to come down to the beach. This is the area you are seeing in the photo.

Area built up around the Castle.

Today there is a beach and area for small boats. Locals leave from here to go out and fish for the day bringing fish to sell at local markets.

Our group entering into the entrance door of the holding rooms. Dark with no ventilation and of course no bathrooms as we know them today.

The major Atlantic slave trading nations, in order of trade volume, were Portugal, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Spain, the United States, and Denmark. I learned from lecturers, at 4 differnet slave locations , all saying the same information, that the US received only 4% of the total numbers of Slaves sent by ships from Africa. What you see today is what the area looked like in the days when they boarded the ships never to return to Africa.

The colonial South Atlantic and Caribbean economies were particularly dependent on labor for the production of sugarcane and other commodities. Another view of the courtyard and the building.

Next to our bus we found a lady selling snacks, all on her head balanced.

Across the street from the Castle is a church. There was a group ladies and children all dressed up for a wedding ceremony. They looked beautiful. Lots happening on a Saturday.

Exterior of the Cape Coat Castle.

Driving along the coastal area beaches

Driving into a new area

Our Police officer escort

Elmina Caastel or St. George Castle was erected by the Portuguese in 1482. It was the first trading post built on the Gulf of Guinea, and the oldest European building in existence south of the Sahara. By the seventeenth century, most trade in West Africa concentrated on the sale of slaves. São Jorge da Mina played a significant part in the West African slave trade. The castle acted as a depot where enslaved Africans were brought in from different Kingdoms in West Africa. The Africans, often captured in the African interior by the slave-catchers of coastal peoples, were sold to Portuguese, and later to Dutch traders in exchange for goods such as textiles and horses.

On the seaboard side of the castle was the Door of No Return, the infamous portal through which slaves boarded the ships that would take them on the treacherous journey across the Atlantic ocean known as the Middle Passage. At Elmina, the door of no return was a child-size window that slaves squeezed through to board the ship.

Elmina Castle Slave Holding Cell. Elmina, like other West African slave fortresses, housed luxury suites for the Europeans in the upper levels. The slaves were kept in cramped and filthy cells below, each cell often housing as many as 200-600 people at a time, without enough space to even lie down

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