What I really liked about Ghana and Senegal is that no one gave a toss that I was white – it is an entirely different experience from southern Africa. At the end of a busy work week in Accra, I arranged to travel to Cape Coast with a South African friend who happened to be conferencing in Ghana. We were to meet at Kaneshi station, Accra’s biggest transport hub and the ‘spare parts capital’ of west Africa, where it’s totally normal to eg. carry a car door down the road on one’s head.
We didn’t have a meeting landmark in advance, and given other experiences of third-world transport hubs, I had a feeling this was going to be an issue. We settled on meeting at ‘the’ bus stop for Cape Coast. Tom was held up in traffic and I waited in the sweltering lunchtime heat for about an hour, trying to squeeze under vendor umbrellas where possible, before being gently shooed away for obstructing trade. What I loved about this particularly hot hour is that no one cared that I was the only whitey around. Nor did anyone care that I was a tourist. Everyone just got on with their own business and left me to my own devices. Marvellous.
Needless to say, Tom and I both found ourselves at stops for Cape Coast…they just happened to be different ones. We eventually located each other among a sea of traders, stalls, produce, taxis, minivans etc, and boarded a relatively luxurious bus which was fully equipped with plastic seat covers (to save the seats from sweaty passengers), a video screen, and a preacher. As the driver revved the engine, the preacher shared with us a loud prayer, which I thought was quite a good idea, until it became obvious that he, like the bus, was just warming up. And, he announced, he would preach not only in Fanti but also in English (‘for the benefit of the whites’). The passengers joined in, increasingly heartily, with regular ‘amens’ and ‘thanks be’s, and I resigned myself to the fact to the three-and-a-half hour journey ahead.
Thankfully the preacher disembarked after about thirty minutes, not before taking a collection. We arrived in Cape Coast in the dark, and were met by the scent of slum, and a generous stranger who was an acquaintance of acquaintances of Tom’s. I’m not sure if ‘guesthouse’ would be quite the word to describe the first electricity-less accommodation stop we made - clearly getting bourgeois in my old age - but I was more inclined towards the rustic-backpacker-beach-cottage that we ended up in instead.
Our tour of the Cape Coast Castle, a slave-trading fortress built by the Swedish and later captured by the Danes and the English, was overwhelming. Visitors still lay wreaths in memory of the 2 million people who left the shores of Africa from this particular set of dungeons where, with 200 people packed into each 40 sq. metre cell, they were kept in the most inhumane circumstances imaginable. Meanwhile, a few metres above their heads, administrators worshipped in the fortress chapel, and the governor enjoyed an airy high-ceiling set of rooms overlooking the harbour. It is an extraordinary and shocking piece of history to witness. Obama visited here, and in addition to the more serious plaque at the castle, his face and name is inscribed on all things ranging from Tshirts to biscuit packaging to fishing boats.
On a lighter note, having felt race-less at Kaneshi, it was a bit different at the backpackers' lodge. My favourite ‘white’ moment in Cape Coast went as follows:
Bartender: So, where are you from?
Me: Zimbabwe.
Bartender: No!…you’re African?...no!
Me: Well, my mother’s family went to South Africa in 1820.
Bartender: And you’re STILL white?!
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