First Weekend Excursion

Wow! What a weekend we had! It was our first weekend away from Accra, and it was packed with amazing things to do! We traveled by bus for about 4 hours to Cape Cost to go on a Canopy Walk through the rain forest, to see a crocodile reserve, and to visit the Elmina Slave Castles. The Canopy walk was our first stop. It was beautiful! We walked through the rain forest across about 8 bridges hanging in mid air, high above the trees. It was raining the whole time, which just added to the ambience. It was absolutely unbelievable. I loved it. The forest was so green, and the trees were amazing. The bridges were made clear back in the late 1800s or early 1900s by 2 Canadians, and 6 Ghanaians. I don't know how they did it, but somehow they managed to get clear up in the trees to build these amazing bridges. It was so cool to be above the trees, or most of them, and to be looking down from a hanging bridge. It was a little unnerving at first, but it was really cool.

Everywhere we go, people want to have their pictures taken with us. We are practically celebrities!

The view from one of the bridges - AMAZING!

The sign says: You Survived The Walk Way Hand Over Your Badge Here...

After we were all soaking wet, we headed over to the crocodile reserve. It was so cool, but mostly scary. There was a pond, and the whole pond was full of crocodiles. The people working there lured out the crocodiles with raw chicken, and they fed it to them right in front of us. I was standing probably 3 feet from the croc. CRAZY!
Then on to our next adventure - the Elmina Slave Castle. It was so sad. The whole town was there for some kind of fishing festival. As soon as we entered the castel, a distinct dark feeling came over me. It was so sad. As I was walking through the crowd to get to the castle, I even felt a little guilty, being white, and feeling like I was some how to blame for the slavery that took place.

This is where they would put people who misbehaved. They were left in here until they died.

The castle was amazing, so much history is there - so many lives lost, so many untold stories. Slavery is such a sad thing. I wondered as I was walking through how it all started. What gave somebody the idea that they were better than these people, just because of the color of their skin? Why does that constitute that they had "the right" to take away their freedoms and treat them so inhumanely? I wonder what the world would be like today if slavery had never existed. Would racism still exist? Just some thoughts I had today.

These are the balls that they would chain the women to if they resisted rape

The prisons and dungeons we walked through were awful, no light and usually just one tiny window for ventilation. 12 million slaves were kept at this one castle. Only 4 million made it to their destination alive. I can't even begin to imagine the fear, but I did get a good feel for how awful it must have felt being there. The spirit there is still so wrong - so dark. It is very sad and very eye opening. If the female slaves resisted rape, they were forced to stand in the courtyard with ball and chain with no food or water for days, sometimes even till they died. I can't imagine how horrifying that would be.


We then made it to our hotel; a quaint little resort right on the beach. It is one of the nicest resorts in Ghana, and would equate to about a 2 star hotel in America. President Obama is staying there tomorrow night, and the secret service was there scouting it out making sure everything was ok. It was actually pretty cool. They all had huge German Shepherds with them. They were pretty normal, a little weird, but what do you expect from secret service? One of them actually told us that the reason they were there was because of Obama, of course in less words, as I am sure he was not actually allowed to say that. It was pretty cool - probably a once in a life time experience - how ironic that it happens to be in Africa. I guess it just goes to show just how small the world really is.

Anne Marie and I on the beach swings

And before I go, I just wanted to say to all of you, but especially to Dan:

AND