| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"stoney" |
| Date: |
17 Mar 2007 03:04:35 PM |
| Object: |
Group haunted by history of slave dungeons |
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/193074
Group haunted by history of slave dungeons
In Ghana, 21 black Canadians confront the agony of their ancestors, by
Royson James
Mar 17, 2007 04:30 AM
Royson James
CAPE COAST, Ghana–Dusk settles on the ghostly slave castle here, and the
shadowy figures walking, weeping in a daze are trying, and failing, to
deal with their past.
The 21 Canadians confronting their history last night have returned to
Africa from the Caribbean, via Toronto, as free men and women,
descendants of slaves. They've just emerged through the Door of No
Return – survivors all. And the experience is shattering.
At the last stop on this disturbing tour of the Slave Dungeon, one of
the female visitors loses it. She gags, wails and vomits on the floor
where her ancestors did the same 300, 400 years ago.
Just outside the door labelled "Cell," her travelling companions sit in
the castle's courtyard, in a stupor. Grown men are reduced to sobs. One
is being comforted by a crying child.
They have come to reconnect with their roots, a past severed by one of
the most brutal and destructive institutions in history, which saw 12
million or more Africans captured, enslaved and shipped to the Americas.
It's known in some circles as the maafa, the African holocaust. And this
year the world is marking the 200th anniversary of the end of the
British trade in African flesh across the Atlantic.
The Canadians, members of the Yensomu Youth and Development Project,
have journeyed to Ghana to visit development projects they're sponsoring
in the motherland, to soak up African culture and visit the hellhole
that is the slave dungeons.
They've had incredible experiences living in local communities, sharing
time with AIDS orphans, finding themselves. And now they approach the
castle with open apprehension.
It is a despicable place. Some 60 like it were built along Ghana's coast
by European powers, back to the 15th century.
But the visitors say this is an odyssey they must complete. They want to
see where their ancestors were warehoused in horrible conditions before
they were spirited on slave ships across the Atlantic to the New World.
"There is a lot of pain, and some anger," explains Sherwin Modeste, a
community housing manager in Toronto. "It's like a funeral procession.
People ask why you go, if you know it is painful. But you still have to
go."
On this day, the courtyards, ringed by cannons that once protected the
slaveholders from attacks by rival European powers, are abuzz with
school children. There is virtual chaos, akin to the hullabaloo created
by the howling, screaming, groaning mass of slaves that once occupied
the abyss below.
We enter the male slave dungeon, on a steep descent. The plaque reads:
"May those who died, rest in peace. May those who return find their
roots."
In the bowels, our guide, Kwesi Essel-Blankson, stoops to gather up a
few grains of sand at the side of the compacted ground.
"This sand is composed of feces, blood, sweat, vomit, urine and
decomposed bodies of the African slaves," he says. We walk over and on
those bodies.
"Haunting," says Violet Dennison, at 61, the oldest of the visitors.
In the next room are plastic wreaths, about 13 or 14, supposedly
honouring the dead. It is not appreciated. Why, upstairs in the
courtyard, three slaveholders have been given prominent graves, almost
memorialized.
"Why are they here?" asks Modeste. "Has anyone considered digging them
up and taking them back?"
The guide offers that the tomb-like markers are clear evidence Europeans
perpetrated the slave trade. A hundred years from now, with no such
markers, white people may deny they had anything to do with the slave
trade, he says.
Modeste and others aren't convinced.
Back on the surface, we look to the hills behind the castle. Church
steeples reach for the sky. There is the Church of England, and Catholic
and Methodist places of worship. The guide tells the group the first
slave ship that arrived on African soil was named Jesus. It's not a fine
moment for Christianity.
We walk over the tunnels that led straight from the dungeon to the coast
– dark passageways used to convey the slaves, lest they revolt.
We approach the terrible door. Above it, the sign reads: Door of No
Return.
Outside it are some local fishermen, a reminder of the many canoeists
employed, from the 1600s onward, to ferry slaves to waiting ships.
Beyond the fishermen is the roaring Atlantic.
"You are going on a journey from the known to the unknown," the guide
says. "It's called the Door of No Return because when you enter this,
you never come back."
Through the door we go, onto the viewing deck where the slavers and
merchants surveyed their wretched merchandise, animate and inanimate,
before ascending 34 steps to conduct their bloody bartering – humans for
gunpowder and ivory and trinkets – in the palaver room.
The beach, hundreds of years later, is still called European Beach. The
Canadian party takes offence again. The guide wonders if the Africans
should abolish King St. and Victoria Park? The answer fails to mollify.
We go back through the door. We look up. The sign reads: Door of Return.
The survivors of slaves have returned. Damaged, but not defeated.
Battered but resolute.
The guide detours to the female slave dungeon, where 500 women and
children were somehow kept in a room smaller than the bedrooms of some
Rosedale mansions.
He shows the door through which the soldiers would come at night to get
their "belly warmers." He tells of how pregnant slave women were taken
to the inside quarters (the slaves were often warehoused for months
until the next slave ship arrived) and the children taken from them
before they were tossed back among the other creatures.
He tells of the horrible journey enslaved Africans endured crossing the
Atlantic. How if a pregnancy was discovered during the crossing the
woman was often tossed overboard to the sharks that followed in the
ship's wake.
Groans and gasps.
One last stop at the Cell. This room, barely 10 feet by 12 feet, is
oppressively hot. Here is where they kept the slaves who couldn't be
tamed – the ones who loved freedom more than life. And this is where
they died.
And it's here the sister loses it and pours out her soul to her creator.
She howls. She shakes. She throws up her breakfast. And it is a good
while before she is comforted.
Brave men died here, the first abolitionists – victims of a cruelty that
must be exposed and fought and even vomited on. The dungeons are empty,
closed for another day. The Cell is closed, for good.
Is slavery over? the guide asks, and without waiting for an answer,
says:
"It's moved from physical to mental. Ending that may be very, very
difficult."
Late last night, the group of Canadians planned a cleansing ceremony.
Today and tomorrow, some will get new names, African names.
Beating the odds that killed millions of their ancestors – on the
months-long journey from the continent's interior to the coast, or in
the dungeons, or in the Atlantic, or in the shackles of slavery – they
have survived.
Lilia Shillingford says her journey started with a question: "Who am I?"
She found her answer on a miserable, rainy day in a most miserable
place.
--
Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a plethora of splinters.
.
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| User: "Al Klein" |
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| Title: Re: Group haunted by history of slave dungeons |
17 Mar 2007 08:06:32 PM |
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On Sat, 17 Mar 2007 12:04:35 -0800, stoney <stoney@the.net> wrote:
Is slavery over? the guide asks, and without waiting for an answer,
says:
"It's moved from physical to mental. Ending that may be very, very
difficult."
How true, and how sad.
<http://www.newsday.com/community/news/brookhaven/ny-limill155131096mar15,0,1731672.story>
And this is what's considered a "good" school district. I hope the
parents win their suit, even though it means that my taxes will go up.
Maybe the residents of the district can sue the teacher and the
members of the board and make them compensate the district. But it's
reprehensible, regardless of the outcome. To make a black victim sit
in the back of the classroom?
It's not over, not by a long shot (slavery, I mean).
.
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| User: "stoney" |
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| Title: Re: Group haunted by history of slave dungeons |
30 Mar 2007 12:16:49 PM |
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On Sat, 17 Mar 2007 21:06:32 -0400, Al Klein <rukbat@pern.invalid> wrote
in alt.atheism
On Sat, 17 Mar 2007 12:04:35 -0800, stoney <stoney@the.net> wrote:
Is slavery over? the guide asks, and without waiting for an answer,
says:
"It's moved from physical to mental. Ending that may be very, very
difficult."
How true, and how sad.
<http://www.newsday.com/community/news/brookhaven/ny-limill155131096mar15,0,1731672.story>
And this is what's considered a "good" school district.
The educational system can't educate if the teachers and administrators
aren't. Stuff like this is sheer stupidity and wouldn't occur where the
teachers and administrators could think.
I hope the
parents win their suit, even though it means that my taxes will go up.
Maybe the residents of the district can sue the teacher and the
members of the board and make them compensate the district.
Agreed.
But it's reprehensible, regardless of the outcome. To make a black victim sit
in the back of the classroom?
Exactly.
It's not over, not by a long shot (slavery, I mean).
I understood, and sadly it isn't.
Quoting article:
Ire over black teen–s seating
BY JOHN MORENO GONZALES
john.gonzales@newsday.com
March 15, 2007
Even though the Miller Place school district was aware of claims of
racial abuse involving two high school boys, the family of the black
student said yesterday the district dragged its feet in separating the
boys in a classroom - then ultimately did so callously.
The family, which has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the
Miller Place schools, expressed dismay yesterday over the district's
decision to keep their son and a boy who they believe scrawled the
N-word on his locker sitting within arm's length of each other, even
after their claim of racial abuse was filed.
The district ultimately heeded their appeals and separated the freshmen
Thursday, 10 days after the claim was received in U.S. District Court,
the family said. But the family said their son, Brian Orr, 15, was moved
to the back of the class, while the white student they believe led the
racial abuse against him remained in his second-row seat.
"I'm trying hard to look for positives. But it's hard not to think of
the fact that putting someone in the back of anything says you're really
not important, you really don't matter. It's Rosa Parks," said Wanda
Orr, referring to the civil rights pioneer who refused to give up her
Alabama bus seat to a white man and move to the back.
"They just don't get it," she said of the district. "Not only is he
moved, but he's moved to the back of the class. "
In a written statement yesterday, Miller Place Union Free School
District interim Superintendent Grace Brindley said the new seating
assignments in the global history class were fair and carried out
promptly.
"Miller Place High School received a request on March 7th by the
student's parents for a seat change in class. That request was honored
the very next morning, on March 8th," Brindley said in the statement.
"The implication that the seat change represented any form of racism on
the part of the school is without merit. "
Still, the Orr family continued yesterday to express frustration with
the district. They said they asked Principal Seth Lipche as far back as
Nov. 8 to move Brian and the other boy to avoid conflict. "One could
reach out and touch the other," Wanda Orr said.
They said that yesterday they told the class teacher that the new
arrangement appeared to "penalize" Brian. He remained in the back of the
class as of yesterday, the Orrs said.
Brian, an honors student with grades in the 90s, said he always chooses
to sit near the front of the class.
The family of the other student, whom Newsday is not identifying because
he is a minor whose parents have not spoken out in the case, did not
return a call for comment yesterday.
The $5-million suit claims that Brian Orr is being denied his right to
an equal education because administrators haven't addressed a pattern of
racial abuse that began in middle school and continued in high school.
--
Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a plethora of splinters.
.
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