Tuesday, August 13
The resort had a restaurant on stilts where we had our meals. They had a wide variety of things on the menu, and was fairly good. They even had a separate menu for Ghanaians with things like Fufu, and Kenki (a fermented corn bread). Most of us had egg omelets for breakfast at the resort.
We all headed to tour the Cape Coast castle. A moving experience. It was a trading castle, with slaves being one of their main exports. We toured the dungeons were people where kept for months, waiting for their journey to the Caribbean, Brazil or America.
In recent history the castles along the coast have been turned into schools for children. This has been a very successful program, and while we were there, many children were sitting in former officer's quarters having their lessons. There were just a few children in the small rooms. Their library was directly over the entrance to the mens dungeon.
After the tour, we headed over to the restaurant just West of the castle, sort of attached to it. I love the wood their. The rough cut elements of the restaurant were all quite heavy dark African wood. The table tops are slices of large trees.
George, Emmanuel and I ended up walking up and down some of the streets, which were quite busy. People everywhere.
After we got back to the resort, I decided to take a long walk on the beach. Something I've done many times when I lived in Santa Monica. I came up to a row of sizable fishing boats that had just been pulled from the water it seemed. There is a small castle just beyond the boats I was thinking of walking to, but the fishermen were pulling out another boat with big ropes around palm trees, and I didn't want to get in their way. Their village goes right up to the sand. On my way back, a bunch of children saw me and came running. They pretty much would like money, but they're not pushy. As I walked for a while, it seemed I had a kid holding on to each of my fingers :-) I kept walking, and soon they turned around and headed back.