Ghana Part III — Witchcraft & Castles
In which serious suspicions that I’m practising witchcraft arise
“They say you are using witchcraft sir.”
I begin to laugh, but then I realize everyone is looking at me very seriously.
“In the village this morning they were saying the same thing. It can be very serious actually, people can be chased out of the village for witchcraft.” Fortunately, they don’t look that serious, but I’m not laughing any more.
“In fact, there are special villages where people accused of witchcraft move to because they can’t live anywhere else.”
Things had begun well enough earlier that morning.
We had driven about two hours, about half on an asphalted main road (between Tamale and Yendi for those following along at home), and then on a dirt road through more remote villages. We on this occasion consisted of two landcruisers and one bus, 50ish trainee beekeepers, and the half dozen support staff of the training program.
First, on arrival in the village, we had to visit the chief. As is usual the “chief’s palace” is a bigger version of the traditional family compound, a small circular enclosure encompassing one small rectangular house and with several thatched huts integrated into the wall.
We kicked off our shoes and all filed into the large concrete hut that is the chief’s audience chamber, the hut opposite his house on his compound, with a door to the outside and the inside. Some short speeches were made by him welcoming us and we for his hospitality, pictures were taken, and then we were on our way. We walked amongst a labyrinth of thatched huts and compounds to the outskirts of the village, across some yam fields and into the thick teak forest. Teak trees are surprisingly small for a commercial timber tree, have the most impressively large leaves, and tufts of yellow flowers that produce a good crop of nectar when they flower.
By this point we had become a bit strung out and I feared losing sight among the trees of the person ahead of me but by and by I arrived where the group was bunching up to suit up. Everyone put their bee suits on, we lit the smokers, and proceeded another 50 meters to where some beehives were situated amongst the teak trees.
As we worked the bees, I found that they remained very calm and I was able to take my gloves off. I like to do this both because I always prefer to work without gloves if I can, but also to show the trainees that bees aren’t something to be feared and that their local bees aren’t as dangerous as they’re sometimes led to believe.
“How do you do that without the bees beating you?” one of the trainees asked wide-eyed as I gently scooped up some bees with my bare hands (I’m not sure if they are saying “biting” when the locals refer to what to my ears sounds like being “beaten” by bees but interpreting it as “beaten” is amusing to me.)
“Magic!” I said with a grin, there was some laughter, but in retrospect also some gasps and mumbling. I imagine that through some kind of actual magic, word of this reached the village chiefs immediately.
I was probably lucky that I happened to have over fifty people with me who rather liked me. As it happens, later that afternoon when we were seated lecture-hall style under the thatched awning at the training hall, when it was made clear to me that they literally thought I had practised witchcraft, and was perhaps a “juju man,” I carefully explained that no in fact, if you’ve used smoke and carefully worked the bees avoiding anything that could disturb them and are attentive to any signs they’re becoming upset, you can work without gloves, no witchcraft involved.
A related thing was mentioned to me later that same afternoon. In the very middle of the property on which the training hall is located, there’s a circular space of about an acre enclosed in a high wall, filled with tall trees. There’s a big padlocked gate with no walkway leading up to it. I had been wondering about this strangely out-of-place forest reserve. Peering inside I had seen beehives. Why are we ignoring the beehives literally in our midst and driving two hours to see some other beehives?
“There are fetishes there,” someone explained to me, “belonging to local traditional shamans. So they couldn’t build there, they had to build around it. There’s one even that’s a shaman of the bees, he can work with the bees without any protective clothing at all.”
I was very curious about this, but figured perhaps I shouldn’t show toooo much interest or I’d be back in the soup for witchcraft all over again.
The next day we were joined by numerous local notables in our training hall, including half a dozen chiefs, for an inauguration ceremony for the Northern Ghana Beekeeping Association which we had helped organize during the training last year till now.
There were about two hours of speeches, including myself being added to the agenda about a few minutes before I was to speak. Fortunately, I had done Model United Nations for years in high school and college and am adept at starting a speech without even knowing what I’m going to say yet.
There were two local traditional dance troupes that performed. The first one (pictured above), one of them scampered up to the dias and pulled me down to dance with them. Sorry I have no pictures of this, it’s probably best it be forgotten (already there is a video of me dancing at the closing ceremonies last year that my local colleague Williams likes to play for the group as we’re wrapping up and I good-naturedly hate it, god I can’t dance). The second dance troupe tried the same trick but my friend and colleague, our coordinator from the funding organization in Germany, was sitting right beside me and I threw him under the bus gesturing to the dancer to take him, which he did.
Later that afternoon we had another field visit to some beehives and on this occasion in fact several of the trainees took off their gloves to handle the bees, which gratified my witchy juju heart.
At the end of the week, I flew back to Accra. Local colleague Williams and I made plans to go to Elmina Castle and some “canopy walk” he was mentioning.
I’d been hearing all along about “Elmina Castle” and “Cape Coast Castle,” at the slave sites and the Ghanaian history books I’ve been reading, but it was only when we began to plan this trip that I realized both those castles are in Cape Coast four hours west of Accra. The Accra castle itself, “Osu Castle,” I was astounded to learn was founded in the 1650s by Swedish West Africa and then spent most of the next 200 years as the capital of Danish-Norwegian West Africa, two polities I had no idea existed. Osu Castle was the modern Ghanaian presidential palace until 2013, but this isn’t about Osu Castle, which I haven’t been to yet.
Now you might not think of “castles” when you think of West Africa, but Wikipedia informs me there were once over 40 “slave castles” in West Africa. As you can guess by that name, they have a sinister history, having been built by European powers and primarily used as coastal staging points for the slave trade. Many did actually get founded before the slave trade as general trade hubs and continued in use after the slave trade was outlawed and stamped out, but the slave trade’s long shadow certainly overshadows any other usages.
It took us about four hours to drive to Cape Coast. I’m used to third-world driving where there are no road rules except that you must and are expected to drive aggressively, but with his sudden jerky lane changes, often jerkily aborted after realizing there’s a truck there after already initiating the lane change, our driver actually had me afraid. But hey, he only cost half what the driver the hotel would have arranged would have cost ($88.50 vs $220 USD, driver and car all day).
The most striking difference between the Gold Coast Castles and classic European castles is all the surviving castles here I’ve seen have brilliant white plaster — but I would imagine historically they didn’t leave newly built castles with the plain stone look we associate with them today — so these ones might actually look more authentic.
We joined a tour group of about a dozen Ghanaians. The first place we visited was the female slave dungeons, where 600 women were kept in four large cells around a courtyard behind the castle keep. There was a balcony above, from which we were told the governor would look down at the prettiest female slaves lined up down below and select one to be sent up to him to be raped that night.
We then saw the larger male slave dungeons and were led down a narrow passage to “the room of no return” from whence, through a very narrow door (specifically, only wide enough to admit one person at a time, to discourage escaping), slaves were loaded onto ships to be taken away forever.
In this room, a number of flower wreaths had been left. One, possibly from Mother’s Day a week prior, had a note on it that said: “for the mothers of the new world.”
From there the tour led up to the upper floors, where the garrison, visiting merchants, castle staff and governor lived. With the pleasant breeze blowing in the windows looking out on a nice view, it seemed almost like a nice place, though it’s hard to imagine how anyone could live with themselves being there with hundreds of slaves languishing in the dungeons below.
After this, not to rapidly change pace, but we drove an hour inland to Kakum National Park. Immediately outside we saw a sign for the International Stingless Bee Center which I really wished we could have gone to but it had closed already at 4.
Kakum National Park is a rainforest occupying some steep valleys and lush river systems. It has a very nice entry area with nice new buildings and a restaurant. As with everywhere we go, Williams had to argue with them about not having to pay a large extra fee to bring his DSLR camera in (“I’m not making a documentary I swear to you!”) and he argued we should get free admission for our driver and I’m not sure if he was successful or not.
By far the highlight of the park is the “canopy walk” which consists of hanging bridges strung from the tallest trees. It starts from the valley ridge goes out and back 700 meters, at an eventual height of 40 meters above the forest floor.
As it happens I absolutely love this kind of thing, as long as I have something to hold on to I have no fear of heights (though as noted in a previous post, if there’s no hand holds I won’t go within tripping distance of a cliff face, perhaps becoming even more cautious than average).
I noted it’s also interesting the effect of adrenalin on a group of strangers. After an hour of touring Elmina Castle our tour group broke up just as much strangers as we began. But after half an hour of shrieking along the swinging bridges, our Kakum tour group were all taking group pictures together and feeling like friends. (Related: why I like to get my training groups out to bee hives as soon as possible ;) stinging = teambuilding).
From there we of course still had a four-hour return drive, which coupled with darkness and our driver’s already scary driving, and did I mention his car was a bit rickety and questionable? Then at one point three hours in, the car suddenly began making an angry whirring noise, all the lights cut out, it began decelerating rapidly, and the truck behind us blared its horn. Oh great, I thought, here we go. Anticipating the rest of my evening was about to get extremely tedious.
He was able to successfully pull off on the shoulder. The car didn’t immediately restart and I was starting to wonder what my moral responsibilities to the driver might be considered to be — I wouldn’t think I’d be financially liable to help him out of this fix but he might disagree — when after apparently tying something back together in the engine he got the car to successfully start.
Finally arrived back at the hotel just after 10 pm, whereupon I learned while many restaurants in Accra offer delivery, exactly none of them offer it after 10 pm. Had a Clif bar and went to bed.
