...and then GHANA

National pride is high: Ghana won the World Cup in soccer!

Traditional Kinte cloth is hand woven in specific patterns such as "The End of Knowledge" and is used by the Ghanaians for holidays and festivities. The pieces of cloth are bestowed at specific ceremonies of passage and are subsequently passed from generation to generation.

Ghana is a country of positive energy and broad smiles. The streets and roadways are bustling with market life and daily life. Ghanaians eagerly describe their tribal and regional customs and naming traditions. Everyone, but especially women, bare heavy burdens on their heads. At the same time a woman may have a baby bound to their backs. The markets are noisy, smelly, aromatic, curious, and intense.

At Kakum National Park in Ghana among the forest elephants and monkeys (though we did not see any) the Ghanaians have constructed a thrilling tourist attraction in the Canopy Walk. Frankly, I felt the experience was toocompressed because of the pouring down rain and the urge to hurry along the walkway because others were following, and admittedly, because of nervousness about both the height above the treetops and the wiggle-wobble of the rope walkway. Anyway, drenchednd dripping, we emerged too soon at the end of the 7-section treetop suspended walkway.

Along the beautiful coast of Ghana were 63 castles and forts where 12 to 20 million Africans were held in terrible cells and dungeons for weeks before they were transported to the Americas as slaves. After 1492, the slave trade was taken over from the Arabs successively by the Portuguese, the British, and the Dutch who built these castles and forts - which were later also operated by the Swedes and the Danes. The slave trade prospered for several hundred years ending after 1807 when the British first outlawed the slave trade. Viewing the dank and dark dungeons with the 'doors of no return' is sobering, emotional, and difficult. So many millions of people were forcefully migrated to the Americas through these dark and musty walls.

Melvin left the beauty and the smiles and the smells and the noise and the strangeness and the friendliness of Ghana for a ..l.o.n.g.. trip home to Virginia.