Cape Coast Castle was the headquarters of the British administration on the Gold Coast, and for a long period the seat of the trade.
From 1653 (Swedish), rebuilt and expanded by the British
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Cape Coast Castle and the Door of No Return
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Cape Coast Castle and the Door of No Return
Cape Coast Castle was the headquarters of the British administration on the Gold Coast, and for a long period the seat of the trade.
The route through it is what visitors describe afterwards. You go down into the male dungeon: a series of low stone chambers where as many as a thousand men were held. There is a single opening high in the wall. Guides turn the lights off for a moment so that people understand what dark means. On the floor there is a raised layer of compacted material — the accumulated waste of centuries, left deliberately unexcavated in part, because the record of it is the point.
In the women's dungeon there is a courtyard beneath the governor's window, where women were brought up to be looked at.
Above the dungeons is the chapel.
And then, at the end, a narrow passage to a low doorway in the seaward wall — so low that a person has to stoop. Beyond it is the rock and the surf and, once, the boats to the ships. It was the last of Africa for perhaps millions of people, and it was called the Door of No Return.
On the other side of that same doorway, facing back inland, someone has painted words: DOOR OF RETURN.
In 1998 the remains of two people of African descent — one from the United States, one from Jamaica — were brought back through it, carried inward, in the opposite direction, and taken to Assin Manso for reburial. Since then it has become the practice: visitors from the diaspora walk out through the Door of No Return, turn around, and walk back in through the Door of Return.
People fall apart at that threshold. Guides are used to it. There is no correct way to do it.
If you visit Ghana. At Cape Coast Castle, ask your guide about the Door of No Return and the people who passed through it.
Cape Coast Castle was the headquarters of the British administration on the Gold Coast, and for a long period the seat of the trade.
The route through it is what visitors describe afterwards. You go down into the male dungeon: a series of low stone chambers where as many as a thousand men were held. There is a single opening high in the wall. Guides turn the lights off for a moment so that people understand what dark means. On the floor there is a raised layer of compacted material — the accumulated waste of centuries, left deliberately unexcavated in part, because the record of it is the point.
In the women's dungeon there is a courtyard beneath the governor's window, where women were brought up to be looked at.
Above the dungeons is the chapel.
And then, at the end, a narrow passage to a low doorway in the seaward wall — so low that a person has to stoop. Beyond it is the rock and the surf and, once, the boats to the ships. It was the last of Africa for perhaps millions of people, and it was called the Door of No Return.
On the other side of that same doorway, facing back inland, someone has painted words: DOOR OF RETURN.
In 1998 the remains of two people of African descent — one from the United States, one from Jamaica — were brought back through it, carried inward, in the opposite direction, and taken to Assin Manso for reburial. Since then it has become the practice: visitors from the diaspora walk out through the Door of No Return, turn around, and walk back in through the Door of Return.
People fall apart at that threshold. Guides are used to it. There is no correct way to do it.