i am here

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well it has now been one week since i began my journey and it feels like two minutes ago and a life time ago all at once. It was the most sureal moment of of my life when we stepped off of the airplane in Acca. When I stepped off the first thing I saw in front of me was a huge sign that said Gemini. I was standing witha fellow gemini and we both agreed it was a personal hello to us. The next sign we saw read "AKWAABA" that is welcome in Fanti, one of the local languages. We spent the night in Accra and then took a three hour bus ride to Cape Coast in the morning. During the bus ride we passed many happy faces who could spot our white skin from a mile away. We passed many small villages on our way. There were women and children carrying things on their heads and babies on their backs. The thing that stuck out the most about that drive was how instantly each person's face brightened when they noticed us driving by. After a few hours in the bus we finaly spotted the ocean, and then we knew we were home, we had arrived in Cape Coast.
We spent a few nights in a hostel before moving to our homes. While in the hostle we had the honor of meeting a the traditional Queen Mother. She is the queen for the traditional people here in Cape Coast. While she met with us she gave me my Fanti name, it is Efua. Effie for short. It is the name given to every girl born on Fridays. The other highlight while staying in the hostel was an outing for one of our group memebers 21st birthday. We ended up at a gas station which had a bar. Not exaclty the night life we are used to but it was fun anyways.
Yesterday we went to the Elmina Castle. It was a castle built by the Portuguese and then taken over by the Dutch. The tour guide was trained to tell us it was built for a trading post for gold and ivory and only later was used for selling slaves, but this seems extremely unlikely due to the architecture. The dungeons had extremely thick walls as to keep all of the noise away from the government people who lived on the upper levels of the castle. I do not think that gold and ivory would require such thick walls. Standing where such horrible crimes to humanity were commited was difficult to say the least. The door of no return was horrifying. This was the last room where the slaves were kept before being taken away on boats. The tour also including showing us the trap door that female slaves were taken up when it was their time to be raped by the goverment officials. As the guide explained the Europeans never brought their wifes to Africa because they feared maleria. And since they were grown adults they had to rape. This is literally what the guide said. i I have come to find out that the guides are trained by a European commission.
I have so much more to say but my time is about to run out. more later

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