The Only Difference is Time
(Ama Tuffour, 08/1/24, Cape Coast Castle)
The Cape Coast Castle was built by the Swedes as a trading post in the 1650s. It was later transformed into a slave fort in 1644 by the British. Following Ghana’s independence in 1957, the Cape Coast Castle now serves as a museum to commemorate the atrocities of the colonial era, including the slave trade.
In the summer of 2022, I worked with the Knowledge Haven, a non-governmental organization dedicated to commemorating the ingenuity and resilience of African and African-descended peoples through knowledge preservation, sharing, and creation. I served as a research and development intern. One of my projects was a field study. The primary focus of this study was to investigate how the members of the Elmina community surrounding the Cape Coast Castle engaged with the Castle as a historical site and, more broadly, with the dark history of colonization.
As part of this project, I toured this castle, and that was when this picture was taken, at the doorway of one of the final rooms where enslaved people were forced before being shipped across the Atlantic. In the photo, I stand at the threshold, looking into a dark room. In that moment, I try to imagine what it must have felt like to stand where I stand, but face a future defined by suffering, displacement, and dehumanization. Many never made it to the shores they were taken to. Some died on the ships, packed together like sardines in the name of efficiency. Others survived the journey only to face cruelty and exploitation in a world that refused to recognize their humanity. Most never lived to see freedom.
The truth that stays with me is this. The only thing that separates me from them is time. That realization is deeply humbling. I am the future they never got to see. Standing there in the present, looking into that doorway and into the past, I cannot help but feel that I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams.
