Surfacin9: Exploring West Africa: Takoradi & Sekondi, Ghana (Part 5)

Exploring West Africa with Silversea's Silver Explorer, starting in Accra, Ghana on 10 April 2013 and ending in Dakkar, Senegal on 26 April 2013.

April 15^th, 2013

Population of Ghana (2014 estimate): 27.00 million

Population of Sekondi-Takoradi, the capital city (2012): 445,205

Currency: GHS 4.00 (Ghanaian Cedi) ~ US$1 1KD ~ 13.28GHS

Demonym (people from Ghana are called): Ghanaian

GDP (PPP) per capita (2015 estimate) = US$ 5,124 (in Kuwait it’s $71,020)

HDI (2013): 0.579, i.e. 140th in the rank of all countries

I had a fever when we docked in Takoradi’s port. How we got to the Elmina castle was a bit of a blur to me. I just remember passing through a crowded market, we had to cross a bridge where I almost lost the tourists I was supposed to be following, but then caught up with them again when I saw them approaching the castle. The weather was very hot and humid, the sun was shining high, sometimes blocked by clouds, but not to anyone’s relief. Tourists were sweating and red in the face. I was wearing a sweatshirt and shivering. The lasting impression I got from the castle was as gloomy as I felt that day. For the most part of history it was a slave castle.

Elmina castle was built by the Portuguese in 1482. The Dutch seized the fort from the Portuguese in 1637. The slave trade continued with the Dutch until 1814 when it became British. Britain granted the Gold Coast (Ghana) independence in 1957.

At the entrance there was a plaque denoting that president Obama and Michelle visited the place. I thought it was unnecessary to place that plaque there. So what Obama and Michelle visited the site? It’s the oldest European building in existence below the Sahara and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, one that has had such a depressing history. I don’t know, is the plaque there to gain recognition for the site from the West? Is it for tourists to marvel at the fact that the president of the US visited? It’s a distraction. For some reason I don’t think it should be there.

The rooms in the castle were tiny and claustrophobic. Men, women, and children who were brought into the castle as slaves were later to be transported by ship to the west. Sometimes they waited for months for a ship to arrive. Many of them did not survive the wait. What a cruel part of our history. And to think that human trafficking still exists in many forms today is abhorrent.

Here are a few more pictures from Takoradi…

The chief industries in Sekondi-Takoradi are timber, plywood, shipbuilding, harbor and railway repair, and recently, sweet crude oil and crude oil.

Does the discovery of oil in Takoradi improve the economic conditions of the people?

Fertility rate in Ghana is 4.2 births per woman (World Bank 2014)

“Loss is a notion. No more than a thought. Which one forms or one doesn’t. With words. Such that one cannot lose, nor ever say he has lost, what he does not permit to exist in his mind.”

~ Taiye Selasi, Ghana Must Go: A Novel