At sea.

 We left Tenerife last night and spent the day at sea.

And boy wasn't the Atlantic Ocean in a bad mood!

And like most European food, the MSC's food has been quite bad so far.

So with rough seas and greasy food, no wonder some of our party had a terrible day.

I am getting ahead of myself though, for they never got sick immediately after breakfast. For Sonja and I had a very good half hour yoga session led by our personal yoga guru/fitness trainer Michelle, followed by strength training at the gym.

(Pics contributed by Sonja).

I never knew how weak my upper body was until our personal trainer showed me how to use the machine to build up those muscles!

I am determined that I will be able to do pushups by the end of this cruise.

It was after those fitness sessions that two of our party got really sick.

It was extremely cold so I couldn't even go into the hot tub for I swear I would freeze to death once I came out and the cold breeze took its toll!😡

So today, those who weren't seasick just hung around, not eating too much though as the food is really bad.

There was a short show in the theater in the night.

 It was promoted as celebrating European culture through song and dance. However it did not get a really rousing applause until three African male gymnasts came on stage and stole the show, so to speak. 

Tomorrow will be better as that's when we land in Morocco.

More anon.

Time for fun

 While we traveled to Ghana to reconnect with our roots and drink in the culture, we took time for relaxation too.

Luckily Labadia hotel had good facilities for that.

 Their food is excellent too and they host lots of conferences and parties.

 However, the beach is the Atlantic ocean which is rough and cold so we stayed far away from it😊.

Religion and slavery

Yesterday was our day to face the atrocities of the Atlantic slave trade. 

For this, we undertook the 135km journey from Accra to Cape Coast.

The roads are relatively good and we had an excellent driver in Livingston, who doubles as my informant on everything cultural, tribal and historical.😊.

He is well rounded.

Livingston is extremely knowledgeable.

Ghanaians, I find in the main, to be very polite and capable drivers and they are prevented from speeding too much due to the proliferation of speed bumps, (aka. sleeping policemen) large and small.

 Elmina Town today is a bustling fishing village, to which traders come to from near and far to get supplies.

The building on the hill is where the army barracks were for those who guarded the slaves and the fort at Elmina. In front, people hanging out at the bridge watching fishing boats come and go.

The market is below.

A long sea wall keeps out the water from the angry Atlantic Ocean.

The castle bears the memories of 'man's inhumanity to man' and the evils of Christianity.

Biblical quote in chapel above where slaves were tortured.

It was first erected in 1482 by the Portuguese as a trading center until they realized how much more lucrative it was to trade in humans rather than goods.

It is today a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Dutch seized the castle and fort from the Portuguese in 1637 and like their predecessors, used the promise of milk and honey through Christianity, to fool native chiefs and lull them into complacency while they continued the lucrative slave trade across the Atlantic, there.

Britain was one of the most successful slave-trading countries. Together with Portugal, the two countries accounted for about 70% of all Africans transported to the Americas.

Britain was the most dominant between 1640 and 1807 when  it is estimated that Britain transported 3.1 million Africans (of whom 2.7 million arrived) to the British colonies in the Caribbean, North and South America and to other countries.

The British took over Elmina Castle and the fort in 1837 after they claimed they had officially officially abolished slavery In 1807. However their traders either outrightly continued the trade or owned most of the ships that took millions of captured Africans to their doom.

You could often hear our guide's voice crack with emotion as he related some of the atrocities our ancestors experienced.

 He reminded me a lot of our guide at Robben island where Mandela had been imprisoned 😡.

Slaves were kept on the ground floor of the castle. The second floor was a chapel and where religious leaders lived and the third floor was the governor's residence.

Taking a break from the heartbreaking stories 

This is a museum today but it was also a chapel on the second floor. On the ground floor slaves would be paraded and buyers would inspect them through the peep hole on the chapel floor and choose the ones they wanted.

They would then be branded with hot irons bearing the names of their new owner.

The passage leading to a dungeon

This is where female slaves were held naked and chained. Sometimes they never received any food for 72 hours and all bathroom activities happened right there 😡.
The traders did not bring women so when they wanted sex, they would take one ore a few out and wash them off. The water used to bathe them came from an underground drainage which the Dutch said they could never use themselves, as it was toxic.

Those females who resisted were brutally punished.

 Those who got pregnant would be taken away to deliver and brought back to the dungeon immediately.

Their children were never seen by them.

The door of no return through which slaves were transported to small canoes. The canoes took them to the large slave ships anchored offshore.

The dungeon to which rebellious slaves were taken. It had no ventilation and they were starved to death, then their bodies dumped in the ocean.

One of the smaller religious billboards on the roadside.

I am shocked at how much Ghanaians are into Christianity today despite this stark reminders in their midst of how evil it was! (25% of Ghanians are Muslim, the rest are christian.)

This Methodist church was built in 1900.

I have never seen more posters and billboards vying for people's souls anywhere else in the world as on this road from Accra to Cape Castle. For, I dear say, at least 70% of the roadside ads were about church activities, a small number advertised funerals and memorials and the rest were commercial.

 I conclude therefore that Ghanians worship one spirit only!😁

Jamaica has just as many actual church buildings as they do (proportionate to size and population of course) but whereas in Jamaica, there is a bar beside each church (for the men?)😚, I saw very few bars along the road to Cape Coast.

High drama in Cape Town.

 Today we should have traveled to explore Table Top Mountain which is a UNESCO National heritage site, and go visit the penguins at the Cape Point.

Because of an unfortunate situation however, we had to turn back. 

As it happened, my cousin’s bag was stolen. Passport, credit cards, money, Air B&d key everything gone. To make matters worse, by the time she missed it, the bank was sending messages to say it was declining use of her card, because of the many attempts to use it in quick succession!

Long story short, and good news, by the time we got to police station, passports were returned but everything else gone. The passports were left on a huge rock and someone retrieved them and and informed the US embassy. 

Phew.

I must say how wonderful Luke, the young man leading the tour we were on, was. He told us to go to the Police station and didn’t stop until he found the emergency contact number for the US embassy as it had closed half day.

 Then he got an Uber, made sure it arrived and instructed the driver which police station to go to before taking us home. 

The other people on the tour were wonderful and understanding, not grumbling about the long delay the incident had caused. They all made everything so much less traumatic.

 We really have to be thankful for small mercies, as the Airbnb owner also quickly located and sent us a spare key, as she was out of town, some 3 hours away.

Before the high drama, we did get to see how the super rich live. (I was shocked when our guide named Fidel Castro as one of the famous leader's who owned a holiday home in the area?!)

                     Apostle mountain range

We had just reached Clifton,  the most expensive suburb of Cape Town, as it sits on the rock side beneath the Apostle Mountain range, overlooking the Atlantic ocean.

Lion head peak

 It's a beautiful area so I am sharing pics with you. 

Soon, I will record what I am learning about the real situation here though, for while the Cape is super beautiful, the gap between rich and poor is wider than ever. 

Yes, apartheid is no more and under that system the whites were 20% of the population. However although they are only 8% now, they still control the resources.

For example, according to my taxi driver Siya, although whites and the coloureds (high color people) are seen jogging on the beach at Clifton and the nearby Camp Bay etc, if blacks do, private security appear  immediately to question them. 

More on the other side of the Cape anon. 

In the meantime, enjoy the pics of the beautiful area.

Cycling, surfing, scuba diving, horseback riding, are popular at these beaches where the water temperature is usually in the 30’s!

Memories .