The Castle of No Return

The story of the center of slave trade on the West-African Coast

Hey,

I hope you had a good week and you’re taking some time to rest.

I’m spending an increasing amount of time nowadays learning about the mind and how to understand it better. We’re constantly moving through life in the quest for fulfilment, success, happiness and more.

For most of us though, we never get to understand ourselves, our minds and the world we live in. Like truly understand it from our own perspective. As my nomadic journey continues, I hope to spend more time focusing on this and combine sharing my learnings on this topic and my travels in these letters.

As always, stay curious. Stay open-minded. Live in the moment. Do things you want to do. Question society. Stay Jiggy. Stay Positive.

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The year is 1621.

A man is in chains as he walks into a dark room. He is walking in a single file alongside 100+ other men. The room is dark and the stench of bodies that have not been washed for months is heavy.

The door to the room is only 4 feet tall, so he has to bend for a few steps as he walks in. The past 6 months have been the most gruelling experience of his life.

(Modern-day look of the darkroom)

Inside this small room that’ll usually only fit 30 people, he is sandwiched together with 100 other men and women start to come in as well. He looks to his top left and he sees a hatch with a slope where women who had been captured were being passed through a slider that led into the room.

He sees his sister who he was captured with 6 months ago. In tears, they lock eyes with each other and cry.

(The slider through which the women were passed into the dark room)

The only source of light in the room is to his far right. It’s a small hole through which only one person can pass at a time. The hole leads directly to the beach where boats await.

In chains, he would get onto the boat alongside others where they would be taken to the ship. The people on the boats that make it to the ship look back at the castle and their homeland one last time. Most of them will never set foot back on these shores ever again.

(The door of no return. Boats waited outside this door)

This was the story of the slaves that were shipped from the Castle of no return: El Mina Castle, Cape Coast Ghana for several centuries.

It was a different story two centuries before these times. The Gold Coast as it came to be called was made up of several kingdoms of the Fante people in the 15th century. There were several kingdoms and this small town that would eventually be known as “El Mina” was between two other Fante kingdoms, Fetu and Eguafo.

The West Africans were experienced traders who had ancient connections to other parts of the world. Common metals trade, ivory, peppers and other forms of trade were common with Asia, Northern Africa and other regions.

This all changed when the Portuguese set out to explore the Guinea coast in 1418 to validate rumours that fertile African lands were rich in gold and ivory. They also wanted a southern route to India, so they could circumvent Arab traders and establish direct trade with Asia. For several decades, Portuguese merchants explored various regions across the coast without much luck.

In 1471, they finally discovered the gold coast and found a thriving established gold trade activity between the locals, Arabs & Berber traders. Over the next decade, the Portuguese built a prosperous trade relationship with the locals.

“At the height of the gold trade in the early sixteenth century, 24,000 ounces of gold were exported annually from the Gold Coast, accounting for one-tenth of the world's supply.”

In 1481, the recently crowned King Joao II of Portugal decided that the booming trade was precious and in order to protect the trade, he instructed a fort to be built on the coast they called “A Mina” (‘A Mine’ in connection with the mining of gold).

He sent materials needed to build the fort on ten caravels and two transport ships. All the materials needed to build it and six hundred people were aboard the ships.

The Chief of the town at this time was Chief Kwamin Ansah. As the friendly people that locals were, he had accepted the Portuguese a decade before but with their new plans, he was weary of permanent settlement. However, with 600 plus people and the materials for the fort already there, you can imagine what would have happened if the locals had opposed the building of the fort.

And so, the first pre-fabricated building of European origin to be built in Sub-Saharan Africa was completed in 1482. The fort consisted mostly of warehouses for all the goods that were traded and business boomed for the next couple of decades.

(Outside The El Mina Castle)

Things changed in the late 16th century when slave trade became the dominant trade in Western Africa. According to some accounts, the Portuguese were initially sceptical about conducting slave trade in El Mina in order to protect their gold trade. However, with slave trade being more profitable, the conversion of El Mina Castle into one of the centers of slave trade began.

I was in the castle last week and I’ll walk you through some of the places I visited. This can only share but a fraction of what my ancestors experienced in those dark days.

The Dungeons

After people were captured, the women were kept separately from the men.

(The dungeon for women)

This is what the dungeon for women looked like. Our tour guide mentions that a conservative estimate of 150 women were in here per time.

There were three doors that had steel bars that led to the yard. There were no toilets and no other form of ventilation. You can imagine the women having to go through menstruation and every other thing in here. There was no option of getting any convenience whatsoever.

People spent an average of 3 to 6 months in this dungeon while awaiting the ships. Sometimes it extended to 9 months or over a year. Many didn’t make it.

The dungeon for men was on the other side of the yard.

Here, we see iron bars installed into the ground where the chains must have been tied to ensure there was no room for escape. The conditions were similar to the dungeon for women. Eating, defecating and more happened in here.

The yard/Balcony

The yard is where water was fetched. I imagine punishment and other activities took place in the yard as well. The saddest thing about this part of the castle was the balcony. Back in the day, the governor would stand at the top of this balcony and request for some women to be brought out on display in the yard.

He would select his choice woman and she would be ordered to have her bath and spend the night in his chambers upstairs. The women would often get pregnant and if that happened, they would be taken to the town where they would give birth to the kid.

After 5 to 6 years, they would be violently separated from the child and brought back to the castle where they were then sold.

The church/Market

This building used to be the church where the Portuguese worshipped in the days of the gold trade. When the slave trade began, it was converted into a market where the merchants bargained and purchased people.

There was a veil in between the wall that separated both parties. This way, the merchants could look through a hole in selecting their preferred slaves without having to confront them face to face.

After selection and payment, the new owner would request that the slave be branded to distinguish them from others. This often meant using a hot iron to brandish a logo/number on the flesh, usually on the chest. The thought of this is unbearable.

Solitary Confinement

There were two solitary confinement cells. The first one I entered was for soldiers or administrators who have committed an offence. The second one was for people who had tried to escape from their cells. The small black room had only one small hole at the top and the slaves sentenced here were starved to death.

The room of no return/exit

We come back to the beginning of this story. It is in this room that the hypothetical young man was paraded into. This was the room that led to the boats from which they were taken to the ships.

Our guide mentioned that because most families and friends had been separated at the point of capture, this was the room where many of them saw themselves again one last time.

The small room had only one outlet towards the beach. Five centuries later, the ocean is much further away now. Back in the day, however, it used to be right outside the walls.

At the height of the slave trade in the 18th century, an estimated 68,400 slaves were exported from Africa each year and 41,000 came from West Africa according to published accounts. Of those people, 10,000 left from Elmina’s shores when it was operating at full capacity.

On my tour, there were probably two hundred people in total within the castle. I couldn’t bring myself to imagine what the conditions were liked when thousands of our ancestors were in these walls per time. Living in chains. In darkness. In unimaginable conditions.

The Dutch seized the fort from the Portuguese in 1637, after an unsuccessful attempt forty years prior in 1596 and they took over all of the Portuguese Gold Coast in 1642, renaming it "The Dutch Gold Coast".

(The Dutch installed Canons that they used to protect the castle. The canons overlooked the ocean)

They were in charge of most of the slave trade that occurred until 1814 when they abolished the slave trade pursuant to the Anglo-Dutch Slave Trade Treaty. Elmina Castle was the African headquarters of the Dutch West Indies Company whose business was supplying people to the New World’s great plantations.

In 1872, the Dutch Gold Coast, including the fort, became a possession of Great Britain.

(Overlooking the Atlantic Ocean from the walls of the castle)

Walking through the halls of the castle gave me chills all through. Words can hardly describe the feeling you get when you’re in here. Centuries have passed but the stench remains. The marks in the walls carved in with fingers remain. The memories of our ancestors who lived here are forever immortalized.

A thought that keeps recurring in my mind is how important it is for us as Africans and black people to place continuous innovation at the forefront of everything. Regardless of our history and the current political predicament we find ourselves in across most of the continent, we must continue to strive for innovation.

Innovation in all areas of life. Indigenous innovation that gives us the ability to create economic wealth for ourselves. Innovation that allows us to gather resources to defend ourselves.

Innovation that puts the power in our hands. So that history does not repeat itself someday. So that we may thrive in our own lands. So that we can build an Africa that our ancestors deserve and that our future generations will be proud of.

So that we may transcend from castles of no return. To lands that no one wants to depart.

May the souls of all our ancestors who were victims of the slave trade rest in peace.

This letter was written while listening to a Bob Marley playlist.

Additional Resources

1. Wikipedia: Elmina Castle

2. The NewYorker: The Slave Fortresses of Ghana

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Don’t worry about a thing. Cos every little thing is gonna be alright. - Bob Marley.

My favourite souvenir from the trip was this shell given to me by my friend Mensah. He’s lived in El Mina all his life and was very friendly. Here’s a selfie with Mensah below. Be kind always.

Love always,

Francis.