The History Tour

After three weeks of watching highly paid youngsters run around kicking a ball, I've gone all scholastic.

Went round Cape Coast Castle to see how they used to process people. The atrocities of the slave trade are well documented. And I thought that it wasn't really necessary to go and see where they started their voyage.

Well I was wrong. We went into the male slave dungeon and as we descended into the space, the guide, Morgan, turned the light off. Of course some of us lost our footing.

But he'd done it to lend authenticity to our fleeting experience. There was a small hole in the rock which allowed a fraction of light into the dungeon.

He explained the sanitary arrangements. They didn't involve power showers.

Once back outside in the blaring sunshine, we got a few anecdotes about the colonial executives who were overseeing the deal.

The relatively sad story of Letaetia Maclean who came out to Cape Coast to join her husband the governor but who died after a few months.

Was she poisoned by the African woman who'd become the conduit for Gordon's loins in her absence?

Did she kill herself because of raging jealousy?

Or did she die of yellow fever or malaria?

Well apparently it's one of those and not total guilt over what was happening to thousands of people around her.

The govenor's bedroom and hall were joyously bright; a stark contrast to what was transpiring just a couple of hundred metres away.

The cell where they sent recalcitrant slaves was especially grim. No light, no food, no water until they died. The cell was there pour encourager les autres.

Last days on earth in suffocating darkness.

It was back to the Castle for lunch. I could see the sea this time. Heat, darkness, light. The contrasts are powerful.

You know what you're going to get and you get it.