Cape Coast

My four days in Cape Coast are almost up. Next stop is the Volta Region in the East. It will be very difficult to leave Cape Coast. There have been many long walks on the beach front here. Swimming is rough though. You go about knee deep and you're worried the undertow is going to pull you in. I love the ocean! Yesterday while lying on the beach (and getting college credit for it) a gigantic pig walked past my head, not even 5 feet away. It was just going for a little stroll, probably to the pile of garbage down the way where her 5 piglets were hanging out.
Pigs and beaches aside, Cape Coast has been an intense experience. We have visited Cape Coast Castle and Elmina Castle, forts used by the Portuguese, Dutch, and later the English during the slave trade. We were shown the dungeons where hundreds of people were crammed, imprisoned for six weeks at a time, awaiting the ship's return for its next load of human cargo.
In conjunction with these tours we had a lecture given by a Rabbi originally from New York, on the African Diaspora. It was fascinating. The effects of colonialism are evident the minute you get off the plane, but to hear of its full extent, and discuss the issues in a multi-ethnic group setting was pretty incredible.
The exchange rate here is 9,000 cedi's to the dollar, which I was fine with since it makes you feel pretty rich dealing in thousands all the time. During the lecture we found out that when Ghana received its independence in 1957 it was just 2 cedi's to the dollar. This is a downward trend that isn't improving. So much has to be done in Ghana, and progress is difficult in a culture which still carries the wounds of the slave-trade.