my fourth entry... who are we?

dear family and friends:

how are you all doing??? i think the school year had started for some of you and i wish the transition will be smooth and stressless. i went to the Cape Coast Castle and the Elmina Castle last week with my travel mates from Calvin. it was truly an eye opening and heart twisting experience. Those are not castle of the king or queen, prince and princess but of the slave master and slaves, of brutality and pain. i wrote a little reflection on it... i will post it here to share with you all:

There i was, being overwhelmed by the waves of the ocean. I felt free. But it did not last and suddenly i felt out of place and a bit embarrassed as i realized the irony between my feeling of freedom, vast possibilities and the very structure that was under my feet. i was standing on the South wall of the Cape Coast Castle, a slave castle of the Swedish, the Danish and finally the British.
i remember clearly that during the tour, i overheard a conversation between a tour guide and an African family. The tour guide was asking the family to join us with our tour. “FOLLOW THOSE PEOPLE!” the father of the family said. He did not sounded as he was please with the decision of his tour guide. why was he sounded displease? was it because he did not want to tour a slave castle with a group of people that have the same skin color as the founders of the very castle? i guess i will never know what is his true reason behind his displease but if it is what i thought so, can i blame him for feeling uneasy about sharing this time of reflection, reflection on a painful past, with us...
it was not as pretty as i thought of a castle. there were no magic or fairies, no beautiful princess or red carpet. its plain white wall and dark dungeon was its features. fair tales did not took place here, but the bloody tales of men and their silly little greed and lust. the scars and the blood stains of the past still reserve its place in so many aspects of Africa: from the international images of African countries to a child’s last name; form the map of Africa to a teenager’s self identity. The combination of slavery and colonization era had badly wounded Africa and destroyed part of its identity. The pain past had broken and separated many families and tribes; it had turned a sharing culture, socialistic approach to economic and local ruling system to a centralized hierarchical form of govern body which increased conflict within Africa and between Africans; it had lure and give temptations to Africans to deny one’s self and to help captured and enslaved their own people which caused distrust within it own land and between its own people. all these changes for the worst had successfully destroyed African’s identity.
the losing of one’s identity is painful and that its journey to regain it is long and hard. Through my time touring the castle, i could not help but felt disgusted and troublesome. how could a human being able to do such animals like act to follow human being? how could a uman being able to harden his heart as steel that he is able to use another humans as tools and excise brutal punishment as pleased? how could a human being able to lower one’s self so low as the level of an animal to commit such act of raping? how could a human being could be so arrogant that make one think that one can have a saying on how much another one’s life is worth? i just don’t know how can we, as human, small in the whole scheme of the university is able to inflict such a pain to one and other. suddenly, i felt vulnerable.
As history pointed out, the relationship between the European and Africans was initially a fair and peaceful economic relationship. but as time passed, the European needed more raw material to fuel its Industrial Revolution and more man powers to develop their newly found paradise, the “New World”. The lust for power and the greed for wealth had turned a handful of powerful elite into senseless animals.
there are many heated arguments about whether slavery and colonization in any way benefited Africa. some had argued that with the European’s ruling over Africa, it had brought with them: education, Christianity, modernity, technology and democracy. I would not argue that with the European’s interaction with Africa had pushed Africa into the global stage where the spot light is on them and they have to come fact to face with itself and realize that they are behind. but i disagree and disgust by the way how Africa was brought under the spot light. They were bleeding and lost.
this trip had made met think deep abut who we are as a human being. we are vulnerable and easy to be tempt. we are sinful. we are the living history of this time. some of our actions had already became inks on the scrolls of human history, permanently stained. we are rational being that had received the gift of free will and free choices. we are the hands that turn ink into pictures and paragraph. as a rational being i wish that such act of brutality and inhumane will never happen again although i know fully well that at this very moment, such act of inhuman is happening. i don’t know what else i can do but continue to farther understand myself as a limited being, a sinful being capable of doing the same evil deed, and at the mean time, continue to hope, wish and dream; continue to chase for a peaceful tomorrow.

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Part of trip: Calvin College Off Campus Program In GHANA

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