In March 2007, Ghana will be celebrating 50 years of independence and the bicentenary of the abolition of slave trade. There’s never been a better time to plan a trip to this colourful country, says Melissa Shales.
 It’s probably a mistake to tell Elijah, my driver and guide in Accra, that I want to see everything. He takes me literally and for the next three days, twelve hours a day, we crawl through the traffic jams that are the heart and soul of Accra, past the God Of Wonders furniture works, the Not By Might photo studio and the Sometimes It’s Hard To Be A Man barber’s shop. Every business and vehicle is labelled with something replete with meaning. I decide I would be uncomfortable in the Blood Of The Lord taxi, but thoroughly approve of the God’s Time is the Best grocer, run by Don’t Rush Enterprises.
A favourite shop, near my hotel, displays a jazzy selection of custom-made and hand-painted coffins. In Ghanaian tradition, funerals are big. Here you can choose from a splendidly snarling lion for a lamented braveheart, a Coca Cola bottle for a fast food victim or a Nikon camera for a gadget king.
If you were to plan carefully, you could do all your weekly shopping on the journey to work without once leaving the car. Tiny children weave their way through the stationary traffic selling popcorn, soft drinks and newspapers to keep you entertained. Stately women carry trays piled high with everything from tins of jam to toilet rolls. A hopeful-looking man stops to show us a collection of women’s dresses on hangers. Behind him, a toothless old lady smiles gummily over a pile of pineapples. Perhaps for the first time in my life, I give up on the idea of getting anywhere fast and start looking forward to what the next traffic jam will bring.
We visit Independence Square, where Dr Kwame Nkrumah, now regarded as the grandfather of African nationalism, took control of black Africa’s first independent nation on 6 March 1957. The stately Nkrumah Mausoleum stands near the grandly named National Arts Centre, actually a vast crafts market where tailors will make you brightly embroidered clothes and you can have a drumming lesson while you wait. You can even design your own drum using traditional adinkra symbols to tell the story of your life. We take in the National Museum, the ghastly little zoo, old colonial James Town and the three local forts, Osu (the seat of government since 1876), James (British, now a prison) and Ussher (Danish, also a prison). We even take an exhaustive tour of the Parliament Building, meeting all the secretaries and trying out the MPs’ seats. Then my three days are up and it’s time to move on from the capital.
A triangular route leading from Accra northwest to Kumasi and down to the Cape Coast neatly encapsulates the four main pillars behind the Ghanaian psyche – religion, traditional culture, European colonialism and the slave trade.
Ghana is a relatively small country, but its cultural heritage stretches far beyond its borders, thanks to the lasting effects of colonialism and the bitter, sugar-coated pill of slavery. Many of the millions of slaves transported from West Africa to the New World started their journey in the Gold Coast, as Ghana was then known. In 2007, Ghanaians will not only be celebrating 50 years of independence, they will also be joining the international community in marking the bicentenary of the Slave Trade Act, which abolished slave-trafficking within the British Empire and was a precursor to the total ban on ownership of slaves, made law in 1832.
Slavery existed in West Africa long before the arrival of the Europeans, but from the 17th century onwards its monstrous efficiency grew. European traders imported guns, alcohol, and drugs to West Africa, using them to buy slaves, ivory and gold from African and Arab traders. European ships carried the slaves over to the Americas, where they picked up their final cargo of sugar.
As my driver and I leave Accra behind, the traffic finally moves faster. We drive through villages of corrugated iron roofed houses among cocoa plantations, fruit trees and thick forest.
Local drivers screech to a halt whenever someone springs from the bushes to wave a rat at them. Grasscutters, rodents which look like supersized guinea pigs, may be a protected species, but they’re also a Ghanaian delicacy. Poachers offer them freshly killed or splayed open and smoked, on a stick. To go with your smoked rat, you buy glutinous fermented maize meal porridge wrapped in a banana leaf parcel, from a stand. Or you stop at a local restaurant for what has become my favourite meal, purely for the sound of it – fufu with fanti fanti and Fanta (gooey mashed plantain, cassava or yam with meat stew, washed down with fizzy orange).
Kumasi is the centre of the old Asante (or Ashanti) kingdom, a powerful local empire that traded its way to independence from European control right up to 1902, in spite of ongoing territorial wars with both the coastal Fante people and the British. In this decidedly modern city, the Manhyia Palace is still an official royal residence. The present-day King of the Ashanti, His Majesty Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, is second only to the President within the Ghanaian political hierarchy. His palace is also a museum which, together with the Prempeh II Jubilee Museum, named after one of his predecessors, offers a fantastic glimpse into local royal tradition. Ghana’s very own Sword in the Stone, the Okomfo Anokye Sword, stands in the grounds of the local hospital. It’s been here for at least 300 years, is impossible to dislodge, and marks the spot where the Golden Stool that confers kingship descended from the sky.
Famed in the past for their fabulous gold, the Ashanti are still a hugely creative people, with goldsmiths in Kumasi, potters in Pankrony and beadmakers in Asuofia and Amasang. Most remarkable of all, perhaps, is the village of Bonwire, entirely devoted to weaving complex and colourful Kente cloth.
We drive back down to the coast. It was here that Ghana’s long-running European connections were cemented by the Portuguese, who built Elmina Castle in 1482. The Dutch, Swedes, Danes, Prussians and British all followed, building 42 castles, together now classed as UNESCO World Heritage Monuments.
I am not squeamish and have faced up to horrible history in many parts of the world, but in the Cape Castle, a fort founded by the Swedish and expanded by the British, the atmosphere finally gets to me. I manage most of the tour, led by archaeology and history students from the local university. I survive the tour leaders shutting out the air and the light in the punishment room where unruly slaves were left to die. But I simply cannot make myself enter the women’s dungeons. Instead, I end up sitting on the steps, shivering and sweating under the baking sun, my head bursting with horror. Never has a castle felt so haunted.
But for the locals, life goes on. A football match starts up in the courtyard. The fishing pirogues head back into port. Thanks to its beaches, this stretch of coast is the hub of the country’s fledgling tourist trade. Entrepreneurs are setting up classes to teach foreigners to fish, drum, dance and cook Ghanaian style.
For me, that afternoon, it’s a massive relief to head for the beach. The coconut palms rock to blasting dance music and everyone – from a vanload of nuns to a jolly party of women stripped to their underwear and shower caps – cavorts in the sea. It’s an image that still makes me smile.
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