The drone flies out of the "gate of return" toward the ocean, as close to the sea as possible. What the camera sees: The Waves of the Atlantic Ocean are raging, lapping heavily at the black reef near the shore, and the white foam of the waves slowly disperses, reflecting the tired rust of the Slave Fort on the coast corner. The castle is also white, especially solid and dignified in the rough seas, writing the bloodstained history of the slave trade of European colonists, and its silent standing place was once called "Gold Coast".
In August 2018, I flew to Accra, the capital of Ghana. Aerial footage documents the city's coastline: a tall building stands abruptly on the shore, the rest of the low houses are crowded, interspersed with uniform dirt roads, and everyone seems to be huddled together to occupy the beach, tacitly maintaining a distance from the tides that can moor a boat. I asked the locals, "Is this a slum?" He said: "No, all classes are mixed here, and they cannot be distinguished." "I think, if you average it, it's a land of civilians."
Overlooking the Arak coastline: a tall building stands on the shore, the rest of the low houses are closely connected, and all the homes are kept just as close to the tides as they can moor a boat.
"Accra" means "ant" in the local Akken language, describing the canoes on which the first sea outsiders rode like ants. At this moment, the "ant swarm" is reborn on this ground, densely packed. Later colonists crudely named the West African coast with expropriations, known as the Gold Coast, ivory coast, Pepper Coast, slave coast, etc. The imaginary "Gold Coast" should be a modern coconut wind, but in front of you is chaotic and decadent, only the burnt yellow color of the surface is close to gold. Ore mining has long been deeply inland, monopolized by the oligarchy of the powerful.
The name "Ghana" originates from the ancient Kingdom of Ghana, which ruled the vast area of South West Africa south of the Sahara Desert from the 3rd to the 12th century AD, and is a particularly prominent vein of ancient Civilization in Africa. The Arabs then referred to Ancient Ghana as the Land of Gold, with deep pockets and prosperous commerce. Today's Ghana is still hundreds of kilometers away from the kingdom of ancient Ghana, just a name, which may also mean that the distant prosperity can "return" to this land.
Sea breeze in Black Star Square
Taking advantage of my free time, I decided to visit Independence Square (also known locally as Black Star Square). Head straight for the black five-pointed star, which resembles a minimalist version of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and is one of Ghana's landmarks. The Black Star Gate bears the words "1957 AD" and the words "Freedom and Fairness" written on ghana. In the center of the Ghanaian flag is a black five-pointed star, with a top-down red, yellow and green color. Adopted by many African flags, this tricolor is a pan-African color (derived from the color scheme of the Solomon dynasty flag in Ethiopia) and a black five-pointed star symbolizing African freedom.
The Black Star Gate bears the words "1957 AD" and the words "Freedom and Fairness" written on ghana. The black five-pointed star symbolizes African freedom.
It took me 10 cedars (about 8.4 yuan) to climb to the top of the Black Star Gate. Standing beneath the giant black five-pointed star, Accra Stadium and Black Star Plaza offer sweeping views. In fact, Black Star Plaza is also very much like a stadium, with a special grandstand for 30,000 people, and the curved independent arch is in the position of the podium. The independence arch is backed by the turquoise Gulf of Guinea and faces the towering Monument to the Unknown Soldier, topped by a statue of a soldier. When Black Star Square was completed in 1961 on the occasion of the visit of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, the world saw ghana's father Nkrumah side by side with the former colonial monarch. Five days earlier, there had been a spate of explosions in Accra, and Nkrumah's opponents had torn down his statue. Elizabeth II, 35, insisted on a visit at this "dangerous time", leaving Ghana with the Commonwealth.
Independence Square has a grandstand with a capacity of 30,000 people, and the curved independent arch is in the podium position.
When I arrived, there were 100 blue Dongfeng trucks neatly parked in the square, where a delivery ceremony of sanitation vehicles donated by Chinese companies to the local government was about to be held. I walked through the queue of Dongfeng trucks, straight through the independent arch, and then through the iron gate of the sea wall into Bora Beach. In fact, several dump trucks, dirt trucks and potholes make the site look more like a construction site, and a herd of goats eating the few grass left at the roots of the wall. Bora Beach, connected to Jamestown, the city's oldest neighborhood, looms with its iconic red and white lighthouse, and is the setting for numerous films, with more than 20 boxing clubs and several world-class boxers. The travel guide reads: "There are deeper secrets of Accra hidden here" and "Boxing is more like a religion for young people here"; At the other end is the white Osu Castle, which the Danes named "Christian Castle" when it was built in the 17th century, and later changed hands several times among Portuguese, Dutch, British and merchants of the Akwamu Kingdom (a kingdom established by the local Akans), and also served as the official residence of the President of Ghana, and is now a military fortress, occasionally receiving foreign guests.
Black Star Plaza is lined with 100 Dongfeng sanitation vehicles donated by Chinese companies to the local government
Locals frolick on The Beach of Bira
Although The beach is littered with garbage, it does not dampen the enthusiasm of the locals for the beach, and women are wearing plastic wrap over their heads and carrying plastic stools back and forth to attract diners.
On the streets of Ghana, it is common for women to carry goods on their heads
Sandwiched between the Jamestown Lighthouse and the Castle of Osu, the long coast became a "paradise on earth", couples walked hand in hand, brothers shared popsicles, children could not wait to change into swimsuits to play in the waves, idle people sat on the ground and sat comfortably watching the sea... A few wooden strips propped up a whole canvas became a cold drink shop by the sea, women covered with plastic wrap on their heads food plates, hand-held plastic stools back and forth to attract diners. If there is no garbage all over the beach, these bustles born of the sea are taken for granted. But this nasty smell can make so many people laugh and laugh, which is really incredible. I said, "This beach is also too dirty!" The driver said: "Dirty, but also for the people, clean beach is for five-star hotels." ”
The rapid expansion of population, industry and urbanization has left Accra plagued by huge garbage. The world's largest e-dumpster is located in the city called Agbogbloshie, which compares this slum with heavy metal pollution to "Sodom and Gomorrah" (two sin cities recorded in the Bible). There is a "rich mine" for the poor, 1 ton of circuit board contains 40 to 60 times the gold contained in 1 ton of gold ore, Ghanaians know too much about the weight of gold, and know that ore does not belong to ordinary people; It is also a "dumping ground" for e-waste in developed countries, as the bulk of untreated e-waste to Africa is lower than the actual recycling cost. Although the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal explicitly states that "the export of hazardous wastes, in particular developing countries, to a Contracting Party or group of Parties, in particular developing countries, that are part of an economic and/or political integration organization and whose import of hazardous wastes or other wastes is prohibited in law" is prohibited," many Western companies glorify illegal acts as "donations" to "bridge the digital divide between developed and developing countries", claiming that e-waste is a "reusable item". Agboroche's criminal gangs learned to recover credit card information and information from discarded electronic products for profit, and even obtained classified U.S. documents worth millions of dollars. The brand-new garbage trucks parked in the square inside the Independence Arch are the new equipment that the local government is determined to "fight" against the city's garbage. President Akufo-Addo campaigned in 2017 vowing to accomplish his goal of "making Accra the cleanest city in Africa" by 2021, but today, that goal is far from being achieved.
Agboros, Ghana, is the world's largest e-waste dump, home to more than 40,000 people, mostly poor people from the north who come to deal with e-waste "donated" from developed countries.
The mausoleum of Ghanaian President Mills, who died in office. Inflation has continued to decline during his three years in power, and in 2011 Ghana became the world's fastest-growing economy and the best place to do business in West Africa.
Commemoration of the Nkrumah Cemetery
"It's an upside-down sword that represents peace for the Akans," the driver said to me about the meaning of the monument in the Nkrumah Memorial Park. After he said this, looking at this gray marble building, it is indeed very similar to the sword whose blade is inserted into the ground and the handle of the sword remains on the ground, which should be similar to the meaning of "stopping the war for the sake of martial arts". I have also seen more exaggerated descriptions: "The upper end resembles the Eiffel Tower, the middle means the pyramid, and the lower square resembles the Taj Mahal", symbolizing that Nkrumah "traveled all over five continents for the sake of the country and the people, and fought all his life". In fact, this is Nkrumah's tombstone, and at the bottom is the coffin of him and his wife.
A bronze statue of Nkrumah stands directly in front of the monument, his fist in his left hand and his right finger forward, his body striding forward, echoing the slogan of the People's Congress Party he formed, "Forward Ever, Backward Never." It is said that he stood here to declare Ghana's independence and shouted "Ghana will always be free". The cemetery was once home to the old British Polo Field, where only Europeans were allowed in and out. The fountain pools on the left and right sides of the monument are devoid of water, leaving seven sculptures of trumpet hands on each side that are half-crouched on the platform. This side-blown, bull-shaped horn is a traditional wooden musical instrument of the local tribe and is mainly used to summon the villagers to make a pilgrimage to the chief. There are also two sculptures of musicians playing African drums and West African kolas, respectively, forming a funeral band as a sign of deep condolences to the country's leaders.
Seven half-crouched trumpet sculptures on each side of the Nkrumah Monument, together with sculptures of musicians playing African drums and West African kola, form a funeral band to show deep condolences to the country's leaders.
Although revered as Ghana's "Father of the Nation", Nkrumah actually led the country for less than 10 years. In his 6th year as president, during his visit to Vietnam, there was a military coup in Ghana, after which he went into exile for a long time, and finally he was taken in by the president of Guinea, who appointed him the country's "honorary joint president". In April 1972, Nkrumah died of illness in Romania, and the coffin was transported back to Ghana and buried in his hometown. After the cemetery was completed in 1992, his body was transferred here.
The Nkrumah's Biography Gallery is a white, semi-underground building with desks, bookcases, pens, glasses, canes, and other objects used during his lifetime, as well as various works illustrating his thoughts, and some precious photographs hang on the walls. Several of them were taken during Nkrumah's visit to China in 1961 and Premier Zhou Enlai, Vice Premier Chen Yi and Foreign Ministers' visit to Ghana in 1964, including precious images of the Beijing airport parade and Chairman Mao's cordial reception, which made tourists stop.
In the 1964 photo, Nkrumah deliberately put on a Zhongshan suit and took a group photo with his wife and Zhou Chen. This is a moment of great historical significance in China-Africa relations, and the friendship of "sharing hardships and hardships" can be seen. From the end of 1963 to the beginning of 1964, Premier Zhou Enlai and his party visited 10 African countries, and nine days before their scheduled arrival in Ghana, Nkrumah was assassinated and slightly injured, and the situation in Ghana suddenly increased. After sending people to investigate the situation, Premier Zhou still visited as planned, regardless of safety, which made Nkrumah very moved. With Vice Premier and Foreign Minister Chen Yi as the referee, Zhou and En also played a table tennis match in a castle.
The Nkrumah Biography Gallery displays precious images of Nkrumah's visit to China in 1961 and Premier Zhou Enlai and Vice Premier Chen Yi's visit to Ghana in 1964.
Walking out of the showroom, I was drawn to two bronze statues. Originally one, they are now separated from their heads and bodies, with their bodies in a forward waving posture, with their heads placed separately on a square pier. The original Nkrumah sculpture stood in front of the Old Parliament Building in the second year of Ghana's independence. After the 1966 military coup, the public "decapitated" him and the sculpture's head was lost. In 2009, the 100th anniversary of Nkrumah's birth, a woman returned the sculpture's head intact.
In 1966, the people "decapitated" Nkrumah's sculpture, and it was not until 2009 that the missing head was completely returned by a woman.
The fallen statue was erected again in the place where Nkrumah rested, but the separated head and body were not put together and restored, which was also a kind of wake-up call and revelation. After several subversions and changes in state power, its status as the "father of the nation" in Ghana was restored, and its merits were reassessed. In the center of the cemetery, a new full-body statue of gold and bronze for people to see and take photos points to the front. Pointing in the direction was a glass house in which the blue Cadillac sedan where Nkrumah had sat, and behind it was an oil painting by Nkrumah, in which he wrote "Africa must be united." As an advocate of Pan-Africanism and the initiator of the African Union, Nkrumah's meritorious significance for the unity and rise of African forces should be noted.
Seeing the flag flying in the cemetery fall to half-mast, I realized that former UN Secretary-General Annan, who died 11 days ago, was a Ghanaian. Ghana lowered its flag to half-mast to mourn the first black leader of the United Nations.
The "return" of the cape coast
Drive west along the coastline from Accra for about 3 hours to Reach Cape Coast Slave Fort. This can be said to be the "root-seeking" place for black African descendants from other continents. "Return" became the theme word for Ghana in 2019.
Overlooking the Slave Fort on cape Cape Ghana. It documents the heinous crimes of the transatlantic slave trade by European colonists.
In August 1619, the first recorded African slaves arrived in the United States, which was still a British colony. For more than three centuries since then, Europeans have exchanged "ship guns" for slaves on the west coast of the African continent, bundling them to the Caribbean and the American coast for heavy labor, and the raw materials, crops, etc. they obtained were then shipped back to Europe by merchants. This infamous "triangular trade" has left more than 15 million black Africans away from home and killed. It was the transatlantic slave trade and the brutal colonial rule of Europe that, at the end of the 16th and 19th centuries, the population growth rate of the whole of Africa was almost zero, and it was the only region in the world that did not have population growth in the past 400 years. It can be said that here is buried the original sin of Western modern civilization. The Ghanaian government has designated 2019, 400 years later, as the "Year of Return", encouraging compatriots of African descent around the world to return to their ancestral lands, with about 500,000 people coming to participate in various root-seeking activities. Among them, a visit to the Slave Fort is an important part.
Cape Coast Castle is the most famous of the nearly 40 "slave castles" built by European colonists that year. Founded in 1653 by the Swedish African Company, it was handed over between the Danes, the Dutch and the Swedes. It was not until 1664 that the British fleet broke in, making it a base for British invasion of the "Gold Coast". Initially only timber and gold were sold, it gradually became an important stronghold of the transatlantic slave trade.
Cape Coast Castle is the most famous of the nearly 40 "slave castles" built by European colonists that year.
In 1979, Cape Coast Castle was inscribed on the World Heritage List as one of the forts and castles in the midwest region of Walter Great accra.
On the narrow lintel of the entrance hangs a poster of the African movie "The Woman's Instinct", through which I enter this impregnable white fortress. The tall bunkers at the four corners are connected by thick walls, isolating the bustling bustle of the outside world; Bunkers and walls are equipped with chòng (old firearms), and several piles of black shells are prepared at the base of the walls; The upper level of the building is the ornate official residence of the colonial rulers, and the lower level is the barracks and deep dungeons, connected to each other by low passages; Above the dungeon where male slaves are held is a church. The narrator said that heaven and hell are separated by this layer.
The coastal corner castle is connected by a thick city wall, isolated from the bustling bustle of the outside world; Bunkers and walls are lined with fire bolts.
Walk into the long black holes in the castle on the cape coast, descend the slope to the potholed mud, and when the eyes adjust to the darkness, they realize that only a tiny ventilation window is shooting a little daylight. Grooves with a diameter and thickness of the mouth of the bowl become sinks shared by drinking water and feces and urine. In the cellar of about 150 square meters, 400 to 600 slaves were imprisoned, and they ate, drank, and slept in this dark dungeon, waiting for ships to escort them to the "New World". Sometimes the wait was three or four months, and the plague could come, and often the slave ship had not yet arrived, and half of the people were dead.
The dungeons of the cape castles generally held 400 to 600 slaves, who ate, drank, and slept in the dark dungeons, often before the slave ships arrived, and half of them had died of disease.
Even more chilling is the completely dark "death row" used to hold slaves who want to rebel. The scratches on the stone walls were still clear and striking, and it was hard to imagine how struggling and desperate they were when they scraped them with their fingers! The black hole is very depressing, and some tourists have been sweating for less than 20 minutes and want to "escape" quickly.
One corner of the cell was filled with old and new wreaths, probably memorials to the slaves, and three white steps were set up as simple altars, illuminated by the light from the windows originally used to monitor the slaves; Beyond the small windows, there are several tombstones embedded in the tiles on the ground, perhaps by slave traders or by British colonists. Lonely graves on one side, accompanied by the roar of the sea.
The Cape Coast Castle Museum details the bloodstained history of the people of Africa, from the gold plunder to the slave trade to colonial rule. A flag reads "Alonzo White auctioned at 2 o'clock today", making the slave trade appear to be on fire; A cross-sectional view of a slave ship shows more than 600 enslaved adult men, women and children shackled side by side, lying huddled huddled, filling every corner of the cabin, each only 10 inches (about 25.4 centimeters) high. In the narrow space, smallpox, measles, dysentery and other diseases disappear one after another, and it is another screening of life.
More than 600 adult men, women and children in the slave ship were shackled side by side, lying on every corner of the cabin, each floor only about 25.4 centimeters high.
The wind and waves on the shore are huge, the ocean-going ships can only wait in the deep sea, and the black slaves have to be transported to the big ships by wooden boats. They walk out of the dungeon, finally feel the sun and the sea that they have not seen for a long time, but they begin a long journey of suffering that is doomed to never return. The door they stepped out of the castle was called the "Gate of No Return."
The returnless slave trade has been abolished, and the long road back is still calling. In 1998, the remains of two black slaves from the United States and Jamaica arrived in Ghana, and the "Gate of No Return" was changed to the "Gate of Return". Many black leaders, including former U.S. President Barack Obama, have returned to visit the castle, adding to the castle's popularity.
In 1998, the remains of two black slaves from the United States and Jamaica arrived in Ghana, and the "Gate of No Return" in the Castle on the Cape Coast was changed to the "Gate of Return".
More and more black people have traveled far and wide to visit, and more people have no way of knowing which African country their ancestors came from, where they were enslaved and left, but "return" is a lifelong wish from the blood, set foot on this continent, for the exact answer: "I am from Africa!" ”
The United Nations designates 25 March as the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and Ghana holds the Pan-African Festival every two years to meet the needs of the African diaspora to rebuild ties with the continent. In 2001 Ghana passed the Residency Law, which allows all persons of African descent in the Americas to remain in Ghana indefinitely.
From Accra, it takes about a 3-hour drive west along the coastline to reach the small town of Cape Coast.
In the museum's exhibition I deliberately wrote this sentence: "No one knows when Africa's moment of redemption will come." It's in the wind, it's coming. That day will come here like a storm. When this day comes, all Africans will stand together.". The person who said this was None other than Marcus Garvey. More than 100 years ago, he founded the Black Star Shipping Company and launched a campaign for blacks to return to Africa, inspiring the pride of his fellow Africans and being regarded as the founder of black nationalism. The black five-pointed star on ghana's flag also pays homage to the Black Star Shipping Company, and the "Organization of African Unity" advocated by Nkrumah is the predecessor of today's African Union. If "return" is a journey to fight against past suffering, "unity" is a new journey in Africa today; "Return" reinforces Africans' identification with their own race, and "solidarity" is the premise of their true mastery of their own destiny.
I looked around at the Slave Fort on the cape, white tourists wandering by the rusty forts, dark-skinned descendants freely entering and exiting the "Gate of No Return", fishermen weaving fishing nets not far outside the door, their wooden boats resting on the seashore, still hanging the flags of the former European colonial powers, and the hustle and bustle of the small town next to it was far from stopping.
Fishermen's wooden boats outside the castle at the cape of the coast rest in groups on the seashore, still bearing the flags of the former colonial powers.
The waves at the corner of the coast are as strong as ever, and whether they come or not, all the ships are destined to rush to the sea.
This article is excerpted from World Knowledge Illustrated, No. 8, 2022