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Week of April 9:  There is a confession I have to make - it's called "Work with Pleasure." This past weekend the Stop Team went to the Gold Coast to work on our final reports for WHO, CDC and the Ministry of Health in Ghana, formulate our recommendations and to provide organized information which will be useful for the next STOP Team coming after us.

                                   Dr. Jina Shah     Dr. Chima Ohuabunwo    Dr. Kwaku Otoo Austel (my Ghanaian name) 
THE STOP TEAM TO GHANA

Chima, the Nigerian doctor member of our Stop Team, was working in the Central Region, which includes the Gold Coast and became familiar with a nice Beach Resort. When we arrived we found that there was no beach at the resort, but there was an old fortress, or castle near by. We spent most of the time in our air conditioned rooms working in a very pleasant surrounding (tourist oriented), while listening to the waves pound on the rocks in back of the hotel. As you can see by the pictures below, the accomodations were excellent. In the background of the center picture below you can see the historical Elmina Fortress, which we visited laater.

(Please click on pictures to enlarge them)

We took a couple hours off for pleasure and visited the old Elmina Fortress, built initially by the Portuguese and then taken over by the Dutch. It was used throughout as a secure area to live while expoiting that part of Africa. It was also used as a holding pen for the slaves that were delivered to them by other Africans, for trade.The majority of African slaves were captured by other Africans, who already had a slaving system established in their cultures that were usually captured in tribal warfare. Now, however, they were bartered for cloth, knives and articles from Europe. You can see me standing in the doorway of one of the cells with the "Cross-bones and Skull" emblem over it. That symbolized what happened if a person was placed in this particular cell -- they were simply starved to death, locked up without food and water until they died.

The tour guide was quite explicit in describing the cruel and inhuman treatment of the slaves packed in crowded and unsanitary conditions in small rooms. He also made it a point to describe the sexual exploitation of female captives as well as the fact that less than half of the captured slaves survived the conditions of the holding cells and so many died while waiting for the slave ships to come and carry them away, where many more of them died during the trip.

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