The Greatest Comeback of All-Time
Last week I traveled to Elmina Castle, which is the oldest slave castle in West Africa. The structure’s tarnished walls stand as a reminder of Ghana’s long and dark history with the foreign world. While the history books say Ghana was not colonized until the 1800’s, its ties to Europe go back nearly 400 years earlier when the Portuguese first arrived in 1471. As an american who was educated about slavery in the United States, the atrocities that occurred were instilled into my mind at an early age. My understanding of a lost identity, however, was forever changed when I walked through Elmina.
For centuries, Europeans (Portuguese, Dutch, Danes, etc.) turned a civilization against each other for the false promise of riches. Slowly, a dominant Ashanti empire became a band of tribes faithful to a foreign power who traded luxury goods for lives; a transaction that was more forced than negotiated. Over the years, millions were forcibly taken from their home and thrown into a dungeon where their concept of morality was so altered that they would eventually do as they were told in exchange for another day alive. So while history may say Ghana was not colonized until the 1800’s, the degrading system was ingrained into the region much earlier.
Ghana has been independent for over 50 years now, but it is clear the effects of its past still linger. These people, like many others whose homeland was stripped of its culture, hold a colonial mentality. The countless skin-lightening billboards, perm haircuts, and western soap-operas point to a society that values a foreign culture over their own. An endless game of catch-up that suggests prosperity comes with being white.
Coming from a place that views Africa as one place riddled with poverty and caused by internal violence, I immediately saw the hypocrisy of this misconception. How can you expect people to prosper independently after their infrastructure is transformed to produce mass quantities of chocolate? How can a political body govern a country whose artificial borders group together hundreds of different ethnic groups? These are just two of the countless obstacles Ghana and many other developing countries face in the wake of today’s industrialized world.
Ghana is blessed as one of the only African countries that has not been set back by violence since its independence, yet the disparity in development between them and their neighbors is minute. Stability will pay dividends for this small democratic nation down the line but recovery from a 500 year setback requires much more than just peace. Hope is strong among the Ghanaian people and religion plays a large part in reassuring that better days are on the horizon. Nevertheless, it will take a long time before the evils of colonialism loosens its grip along the gold coast.
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