Ghana

Sorry it's taken me a little while to update my blog.  I've gotten to go to Ghana and South Africa.  They are very different parts of Africa, and it was interesting to see what each of them was like.  I had never been to Africa before, and I didn't really know what to expect before I arrived.  We were there during the dry season, so everything was very dusty.  

Ghana is a West African country that was a British colony that was called the Gold Coast until 1957 when it got it's independence. It was one of the first African colonies to gain independence, and served as a model for may other colonies to rebel.  Even before it was colonized by the British, Ghana was one of the major exporting centers for the trans-Atlantic slave trade.  The Portuguese built a fort that became one of the slave castles where Africans brought from farther inland were held while they waited for the boats to come and take them on the middle passage from Africa to the New World.  I got to visit two of these slave castles, Cape Coast Castle, and Elmina Caste.  Elmina Castle was built by the Portuguese soon after they discovered Ghana.  It was later taken over by the Dutch.  Cape Coast Castle was built by the British, and also used to house slaves awaiting the middle passage.  The slaves that were shipped to the Caribbean, Brazil, and places in the American South like Virginia were usually prisoners of war who were captured by African tribes and sold to European traders.  I got to see the big rooms where the slaves were all forced to wait, they were terrible conditions, and the slaves were chained together, and were crowded into the dungeons with very little room. I could only imagine how horrible it must have been when it was filled with people.

In Ghana I also got to see a village built entirely on stilts on a lake.  The villagers moved there hundreds of years ago, and built their houses on the water for protection.  They have walkways between the houses made of bamboo rods, which they use to get around.  To get to the village we had to go in wooden canoes for almost an hour because it's in really remote part of Ghana.

I also got to visit one of Charlottesville's sister-cities, Winneba, which is farther down the coast from where our ship docked in Takoradi.  Winneba is our sister city because it is about the same size as Charlottesville, and also has a college, called the University of Education, where teachers are trained.  It was interesting getting to see a town that had a connection with Charlottesville all the way in Ghana, and to get to talk to the students at the university about what it is like to go to school in Ghana.

There are lots of very poor people in Ghana, but it is also a very beautiful country.  I got to go to Kakum National Park, which has a canopy walkway through the rainforest.  There is a series of ropes and wooden planks running from tree top to tree top that we could use as bridges.  It was a little scary being so high up, but we also go really good views of the surrounding forest.

I really enjoyed getting to see Ghana, it is very different from the United States, but it is a very interesting country with a long history.  I hope that someday I can go back there and learn even more about it.

I'll try to write about South Africa soon!