Jamestown and Usshertown are the oldest districts of Accra, the capital city of Ghana. According to Emmanuel, our tour guide slash driver during our visit in Accra in 2023, these towns were the origin of the Accranian people, the fishing people called Ga. Once upon a time, Accra was known as A-ga-ra.

These districts in the Greater Accra Region possess a certain charm that I thought comparable with Melaka, Georgetown, and Ipoh in Malaysia and Little India in Singapore. Just like these Southeast Asian cities, Jamestown and Usher Town were once British colonies. And all of them are strategically located along the coast of the cities – for trade. Today, these cities are vibrant and lively. However, Jamestown and Usshertown possess some stories that continue to haunt the history of humankind: 400 years of inhuman conditions brought upon by the European imperial rules onto the entire continent of Africa.

My knowledge about the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade is mainly based on popular culture, particularly Hollywood films. Visiting the forts at Jamestown and Usshertown and listening to the stories of Ussher Fort from the perspective of the people whose forefathers were either survived, tortured, or killed by the colonizers were tremendous as much as they were also eye-opening.

Jamestown Fort was not open for tourists at the time of our visit, but its imposing structure is terrifying. Emmanuel told us that the infamous lighthouse was used by the Dutch and the British to properly dock their ships that took Africans en route to the Americas (then the New World) via Europe. As the Ghanaians say, “for every entrance to the ship, there is no exit.” The Africans were marked using a hot rod – piercing and burning their skins- and were sold to Europeans in the New World as slaves.

We were able to enter Ussher Fort. We were welcomed by our female guide, who, even though her descriptions of the place are too “marked,” had non-scripted remarks that were more intense and more horrifying. For instance, recalling her grandmother's story about her grandmother’s grandmother’s mother who was once captured and was brought to the fort for the slave trade. She was one of the few who never stepped onto the shores of the Atlantic Ocean because her frail body could not survive the tenacious demand of being a “resident” of the fort. This is why our guide was motivated to volunteer at the Fort. In my view, I thought she felt the need to continue the story of her great great great grandmother because, as she commented, the history of slavery continues to affect our present. 

This history haunts the present: racism and the construction of “other” are still dominant everywhere.

What also struck me – these people behind the human trade were very religious. They were Christians. Our guide told us that the Christian Church backed the Dutch and the British back then. It was common for friars to reside with the top leaders of the colonizers in the forts and in castles back then. Our guide informed us that the priests were there to “pray for the souls of those who died.” In my mind, this dark period of the Christian Church is also very much in effect in the present. I am reminded how the Christian Church, whose mission is to teach the congregations about kindness, love, and compassion, is also the very reason why there is an ambient fear against LGBTQi + people all over the world.

Another unforgettable story that we learned from our guide is the desecration of the bodies of those who died in the forts. The guide brought us to what is believed to be a condemnation room. In the middle of the room is a rectangular pit – about 4 feet deep, 4 feet wide, and about 10 feet long. On one end of this rectangular pit is a chamber, which, according to our guide, was leading to the ocean. Dead bodies were dropped to the pit and they were flushed out of the room via the chamber and were thrown to the Atlantic Ocean.

When we were looking across the waters, I could not help but think of the dead and the thousands of bodies thrown there. Flowers are everywhere. They were offered by high school students who also remember the story as a significant history that must not be forgotten.

One question in my head: have we really learned from this dark history of mankind?

For more of forts and castles in Accra and Gold Coast, please visit Tanghal-Kultura.