walking thru the door of no return: elmina and cape coast slave castles

okay, went to the slave castles yesterday, not quite sure what i should say about them
feel like if you cant come strong on the slave castles shouldnt say nothing at all

 i can honestly say they were sobering, made your flesh crawl
when you went down into the dungeons where the slaves

were kept, and through the doors of no return
elmina we went to 1st, and it was this huge maze of an edifice

steps leading nowhere and cul de sacs abound, that door with the skull over it
where they punished recalcitrant slaves by entombing them basically

the governors balcony where he would have women slaves paraded
for his nightly bed choice and the ladder from the slave pens to his bedroom

the diff between the slave dungeons and the airy church right over them
where they would be able to smell and hear them during services

and the even more airy governors bedroom over the church

the door of no return, from which the sea has retreated
and folk, incl myself, took pictures standing in front of it

god knows why

bonnie refused, considered it a sacrilege i believe, she said the castle should be
allowed to rot away, to declare its impermanence, i thought it should stay, a

never again never forget kind of thing
and then there were the hustlers

not so bad at elmina cause the town, a vibrant sprawl i would like to walk thru
was somewhat separate, i did get a new conchhorn from a guy outside

guy knocked out the end right there while i was watching and
now i know how its done, i will show you how he said

i use the conchhorn to open all my performances, like the jews w/the
shofar, i call myself purifying the air and preparing it for my words

call myself calling down the ancestors and whatever
spirits appropriate to the moment, most often the conqueror

thru legba cause in the voodoo tradition whenever you doing spiritwork you ask legba
trickster of the crossroads to open the gate between this world and the spiritworld

for a longtime legba was the only god that made the middle passage to the united states
plenty elsewhere in the americas but in the united states it was the trickster

for many years i called on legba, then i added the conqueror cause this a hoodoo thing
and thats who i serve personally, the african american trickster god, the mighty conqueroo

lord legba, open this gate, it is i rickydoc rootdoctor ask that this gate be
opened this work be done - in the name of the conqueror

sometime i name myself rickydoc trickmaster in that opening but when i do that you
best step back cause that mean im in a take no prisoners state of mind

and most likely Working w/my left hand

i use the conch cause it was used to call the slaves to work in the Caribbean
and was also used by the slaves to call each other to rebellion

and when i blow it i feel like a maroon in the mountains of jamaica or brazil calling on
the slaves to join me in palmares - for those who are enslaved there is always palmares

so i figured a conchhorn from elmina would mean something
its got a good sound too, i thanked the conch who provided it for me

then we went to cape coast, not as impressive an edifice as elmina
but somehow more chilling because the dungeons were even more

depressing holes in the ground

jeff said he read that the floors were found out to be compacted feces
from the slaves who were kept there

it was a brutal experience on many levels, at cape coast i ditched
the tourguide and the group experience and went on my own

the better to feel the moment and it was a stone cold never again downer
and the hucksterism that surrounded it was a downer too

the beggars and the aggressive vendors, calling out rastaman rastaman, respect respect
buy this from me, because you are a blackman, because you have come home

and bonnie got hustled by this guy at the restaurant next to the cape coast
who swore he made his own jewelry and a couple of days later we saw the same pieces

at the local art mart in accra for much less, and when we were in the mens dungeon at capecoast
there was this shrine built there and this guy sitting there on it and some bills on it

and when we went by it all solemn he said you must  leave money in the shrine, which i balked at
as kinda transparent but after bonnie and i left i went back because i wanted a picture of him and the

shrine and told him i would give him a dollar if i could take a picture and he said fine, kinda like
thats why he was there and i figured it was a fair deal and i try to be understanding about folk

needing to make a living and doing what they gotta do but i have since been very dismissive of the hustle

always to the call of rasta rasta, my fellow black man, do this for me because we are brothers
everywhere i go in the blackworld, my dreads are a passport and folk call out to me rasta rasta

respect respect, burning spear

often it is this pan african solidarity thing that really move me, but its just as often a hustle
somebody trying to sell me something, get something out of me, trying to make me feel obligated

i always give love back cause it move me but kinda warily until i determine the motivation
but after being huckstered at the slave castles my patience for the hucksterism short

and sometime i think these the folk that defeated us, sold us into slavery
part of what forged us into a new people, a new tribe, of which i am very proud

i love being african american and wherever i go in the world im proud of being an african american
it is a pride of place that has been accented here in ghana and walking thru the door of no return

peaking at the grave of dubois, he who lived a pan african vision
there is, corny though it be, a sense of having coming home here

and it is still fucking w/my head being in those slave dungeons and wondering what they must
have felt like entombed in those communal graveyards

and i think of all the folk who suffered there, who died there, the folk who died on
thje ships and it make me want to cry even as i sit here writing this

last thing bonnie saw was the suffocation cell, another entombment cell

for recalcitrant slaves, just a concrete box in the ground where they were entombed
and left to suffocate and it left her down

by then she had rejoined the tour and it was the last stop on the tour
but i didnt do the tour, last thing i saw was the door of no return

it was open so i stepped thru and outside there was this vibrant

scene of fishermen coming in at the end of the day
and it was somekind of market thing happening

and there were all these blackfolk and their boats and each boat had a flag flapping in the wind
and stacked high with colorful green fishing nets and it was so vibrant

and full of life and blackfolk taking care of business the beggars and hucksters out front dismissed and it was a kind of still i rise moment

and i think that scene is what im going to try to take away from the slave castles
still i rise

that and my new conchhorn, my call to the ancestors
who didnt make it out of those dungeons

on the opposite side of the door of no return was a sign
saying the door of return, a guesture i appreciated

as i reentered the castle thru it

i thought this i can live with
this i can live with

all my love

rdoc

Comments

[laniza]

Thank you for writing this. How I long to experience this journey one day.