Day Seven - Gold Coast, Slave Coast

Early again (4:30), road trip, west. Gold Coast was the British term for these shores, Slave Coast, Pepper Coast by some. We head to Cape Coast, the main city and the putative education capital of the nation, University of.

Jay and I spent our first full day together on this route, 2005, 193 km/120 miles, Accra to CCoast, crammed in a van with kids, drums, gear, headed to the area chief’s semi-annual jubilee where our youth would get to do their thing as part of the larger thing, advocate for the Universal Declaration, knowledge and application thereof.

That drive was seven stuffed, stuffy hours most at a crawl’s pace, finished roadway a vague notion only, the way mostly a scarred scraping in the sometimes-African style.

That long day was my first taste of a new normal, with

populations pushing to and over the road, some head-baskets full of snails the size of small dogs and hawkers gripping by tail fat foot-long rat-looking bush critters. No, this isn’t science fiction and it ain’t no documentary. It’s right there.

2005, Jay pointed right side to Buduburam passing by, U.N.-shepherded home for up to 45,000 Liberian escapees from the civil war less than two years passed. If one were to call them refugees, then for the fair share of ex-fighters in that mega-camp, refuge was from the retribution they feared from those they failed to kill. A few times in years to come, we were to go within that carved-out semi-city, tight mazes, tiny concrete and clay shelters, stores and churches. At least free from the war, yet imprisoned by nowhere else to go.

Now, the drive takes but three hours, good road most all the way.

While Cape Coast Castle was infamously among the most prominent slave embarkation sites, Richmond takes us by two lesser fortifications on the way. Fort Patience (at Apam) is hard by the beach, the fishing fleet flourishing alongside. Fort Amsterdam (at Abandze) sits on hill above the surf. 16th and 17th Century Dutch, German, British, Portuguese all clamoring for the “less-than-human” bodies brought to sea by inland raids, commodities in the unspeakable

Middle Passage now manifest in these silent stones.

Saltpond is the center of Richmond’s home Mfansteman District. Ghana’s independence movement, including Kwame Nkrumah’s non-violent “Positive Action” campaign, began here in the late 1940s. In 1957, Ghana became the first African country to throw off its European overlords, a landmark step in the pan-African independence movement.

“[Positive Action” is] the adoption of all legitimate and constitutional means by which we could attack the forces of imperialism in the country. The weapons were legitimate political agitation, newspaper and educational campaigns and as a last resort, the constitutional application of strikes, boycotts and non-co-operation based on the principle of absolute non-violence as used by Mahatma Gandhi in India.” Nkrumah, K, Ghana: The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah (1957).

Our University of Cape Coast meeting is with Prof. Christine Adu-Yeboah, Director of Institute of Education, and a bunch of her colleagues. We gather in the institute’s lecture hall, proceeding African one-at-a-time style. Christine and her offices are over teacher training and initial certification nationwide.

The group takes a healthy interest in Study Tech as a method of learning, complementing rather than replacing or challenging curriculum content. The conversation also features bureaucratic concern over mechanics: which of the (alphabet soup) agencies should be green-lighting any pilot before action? That’s a chicken or egg proposition. We will deliver and, whether it takes forgiveness and/or permission, can organize from there.

We pass by the blindingly white Cape Coast castle. Time prevents delving within but the last pass, in 2009, would suffice. The main dungeon's bitter air, 250 years lingering, never fades.

We move back to Saltpond, our meeting with Fred Badu-Mensah and Edwina Thompson-Donkor, program managers for the Ghana Education Service (GES), Mfansteman District, Central Region. These are key contacts as the GES is “decentralized,” with each district autonomous to develop its continuing teacher training content and delivery.

With perhaps some understatement, these two are over-the-moon with the prospect of a Study Tech trial.

It also happens – no coincidence since Richmond is running the show over our visits and contacts – that Saltpond is the site of the region’s

major training center.

There is indeed a three-day cycle of training ongoing there as we speak. We visit. There are actually two sites, the “old” one, fitting as many as 400 teachers at a time, and the “new,” an extensive facility capable of boarding participants overnight for multi-day programs.

The program is going full flood at the old site, first floor crowded with instructors in session. Laughter emits from the room. That I don’t recall in any other gathering of educators in 17 years here.

Back to the Big City, we look up that Indian restaurant – Heritage House – that was my haunt every previous trip. The food of the Gods: pass, approved, coming again.

Seems unreal, but 48 hours remain. Arrive, get around, depart; we are packing it in man.

Tim Bowles
Thu., July 28, 2022
Accra, Ghana