Assin Manso and the Last Bath

Assin Manso and the Last Bath

Before the coast, there was the walk.

People taken in the interior — in war, in raids, in debt, by sale — were marched south, sometimes for weeks, and the routes converged. Assin Manso was one of the largest inland slave markets in the Gold Coast, the last major holding point before the final forty miles to Cape Coast.

There is a river there. It is called Nnonkonsuo — Donkor Nsuo, the slaves' river. Captives were held at Assin Manso for days or weeks and washed in that river, and the washing was not mercy: they were being cleaned and fattened for inspection, so they would fetch more at the coast. For most of them it was the last time they touched the fresh water of their own country.

The site is quiet. It is trees and a path down to a small brown river, and it is the least architecturally impressive place in this section and, for many people, the hardest.

Two graves are there: Samuel Carson, whose remains were brought from New York, and Crystal, brought from Jamaica, reinterred in 1998 after being carried back through the Door of Return at Cape Coast. Wreaths are laid on them every year on 1 August, Emancipation Day, and the ceremony draws the diaspora.

There is a Wall of Return where returning descendants write their names.

Visitors bring soil from the Americas and leave it at the river. Others take a little water away.

If you visit Ghana. At Assin Manso, visit the Slave River memorial site on the Cape Coast–Kumasi road.