While we were staying at Hans Cottage near Kakum NP we had a trip during the heat of the midday to see Cape Coast Castle. The castle is a World Heritage Site and has been restored as a museum and memorial to the slave trade which once dominated this part of Africa. Cape Coast Castle is reputed to have been the point through which the greatest number of slaves were transported to the Americas. At any time there could have been up to 1500 persons in the slave dungeons waiting to be ferried out to the waiting merchant ships.
Entering the male slave dungeon from the heat and brightness of the courtyard is a chilling and sinister experience. There are three rooms in the dungeon from the lowest of which a tunnel led under the battlements to emerge at a low doorway just before the Door of No Return. The entrance to this tunnel has been symbolically bricked up and a memorial altar and shrine built over it. You can still see into the tunnel at various window openings along the battlements.
In the other corner of the courtyard there is a much smaller dungeon - the original one of the castle. This became the Condemned Cell where troublesome prisoners were simply locked away in suffocating heat and darkness until they died. We stood for a couple of minutes in the pitch dark with the doors closed and were quite relieved to be allowed out again.
US President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle toured Cape Coast Castle on their visit to Ghana in July 2009.