With its stunning landscapes, vibrant culture and lively cities,
the African country of Ghana is a great place to visit.
But there's another reason it attracts tourists.
Many in the African diaspora, especially from the US,
come to see the places where their ancestors were forced
into slavery beginning 400 years ago.
Today, the Cape Coast Castle, where millions of Africans were held
against their will before being forced across the Atlantic,
is a tourist attraction.
This particular area of the tourism sector has picked up in recent years.
I came here because I realized
that so many of the stories about enslavement
that I get to see in Hollywood movies are lacking Africanness.
These people were brought from somewhere and they had a culture.
So I wanted to come and absorb that.
Absorb what that is so that I could have an experience of what
my ancestors went through that didn't have the white gaze on it.
It's a connection with history and just how one or my ancestry is in Africa
and kind of getting in touch with the possible route to how my ancestors got to America.
Tours of the Cape Coast Castle which is now
a UNESCO World Heritage Site take around an hour.
The Portuguese first arrived here and built a trading post in 1555.
But it was the Swedes that constructed a timber fort 100 years later.
It was then captured by the Danes and later conquered by the British
who turned it into a castle in 1700.
It is the largest building related to the trans-Atlantic slave trade,
and played a significant role in the gold trade,
the arrival of Christianity, and the establishment
of the first formal education system.
The castle still has remnants of cannons and mortars
used for its defense centuries ago.
Visitors can see the dungeons where slaves were once kept.
Those held there were tortured and had to endure inhumane treatment.
They block the entrance, the captives were in chains,
and walked out the door of no return, by going down this way.
Because this used to be the door.
Today we are not slaves, we all get out to walk out.
This was the point at which enslaved Africans
were taken across the Atlantic, never to return.
Most tours about the routes of slavery also include a visit to Elmina castle,
12 km away from Cape Coast, also a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
It was the first trading post built on the Gulf of Guinea
by the Portuguese in 1482.
It is also the oldest European-constructed building south of the Sahara.
The castle also has dungeons where enslaved people were kept and tortured.
Visiting can be an emotional experience.
People look at me and they see blackness, right?
But I connect on the story in so many ways.
So, yes I am of the African diaspora.
But, you know, I also am a child of the middle passage.
And so I am everything, right? I am African and I am European
And then I'm all these things. And so I am pained, right?
I'm pained especially if I bring my child.
I'm pained at the historical legacy that I'm a part of on all sides.
Thousands of African Americans come here every year.
In 2019, Ghana launched the "Year of Return,"
a campaign to mark 400 years of the arrival
of the first enslaved Africans in Jamestown, Virginia.
Officials said it has been a success and will continue the campaign into 2030.
There is a project called
"Beyond the Return,"
so I think plans were put in place to ensure
that it would not just be an event
and it would fade off.
But there have been activities,
year in year out to ensure that the flow would continue.
Government efforts to make Ghana a key destination for African Americans
and the African Diaspora to learn about the dark history of slavery have been successful.
What's more, an estimated 1,500 African Americans
have even moved to Ghana since 2019.