Today was quite an intense day. We have learned and seen so much in one day about ourselves, our culture, and Ghana. While one would think that the point is to learn more about another culture, I have to admit the intense look at another life, another way of thinking, another region of the world, also adds to your understanding of self on many levels. I'll mention a few of those things, but it seems that there is so much to say from just the two days that I wish I were able to pause and take many notes of every experience.

The first part of the day has proven to linger with us beyond today since it is comical, frustrating, shocking, revealing, and just plain interesting. The apartment we are staying in through booking.com did not (still does not) have payment for our stay from last night. Since we are supposed to return Thursday and Friday, we are hoping things are resolved before Thursday. Now, the owner visited with us before we left and assured us that it would be resolved and for us not to worry, but you can only imagine that I am not too excited about how to resolve payment--especially being in a foreign country. OK, how did this happen? Booking.com is not Expedia! They take the credit card information, send a receipt for the stay, and only confirm the room. [In their defense, I'm thinking that the credit card information was not passed along because the hotel operation did not ask to have the credit card information that was needed to bill us through the College.] We did not realize that Ghana is such a cash-expected economy and many businesses simply do not use credit cards; they want cash only. The companies have limited understanding sometimes of how to operate a credit card machine. I found myself trying to help the hotel person hook up the credit card machine, connect the Ethernet cable, and put in the dollar amount for the credit I tried to use. But the machine simply did not work. I'm wondering if the Ethernet cable was even active. We could spend days trying to figure out proper networking. I am only imagining how much I would need to do make sure all of my computer access requests were available if I were in Ghana a while. We do not have as much access as we are accustomed to in Tulsa. Granted, we have similar problems in many parts of rural Oklahoma, so it is not just a Ghana or African problem since we have the same issues in Oklahoma and many other states in the USA. Anyway, we've had to contact the College through Google Voice and a few emails with attempts to resolve the issue. So many thank you notes to Doug Price, Fredrick Artis, and Linda Mann. I don't know what they are doing to try to make things work, but I know they are working on our behalf to straighten things out--which still remains an uncertain conclusion at the moment. We are just going to ask questions again tomorrow since it seems to be a problem of familiarity with credit cards versus cash. Who would have thought???

Once we left Accra, we headed to the Cape Coast area of Ghana, the area where slave ships took many Africans after they were herded from interior locations of the country and continent and placed on ships. We stopped at the small town of Assin Manso, an important stop along slave trade routes of the 18th and 19th centuries, where slaves were washed and checked for fitness before being taken to the Cape Coast for shipment out of Africa. The tour guide for the facility noted that 30 million Africans were enslaved, chained, and walked to toward this area--and only 17 million of them made it to the coast (since many died due to no food, illness, or torture as they walked with no shoes during the journey). One part of the memorial site is along "Slave River," the place where the slaves took their last bath before going to the coast. The guide walked us to the river and had us put our hands in the river. Now, I am not the most open person to nature (yes, OSU Writing Project people know this well)!!! But I knew I had to touch the river and sense the water that my ancestors may have bathed in before they were shipped to the Americas. The feelings I experienced were of dark sense of loss and hurtful reality to think that humans were treated so cruelly--all for three goals that the guide listed of what led to the Slave Trade:

• 1st to find a different route to ship spices from India
• 2nd to spread Christianity
• 3rd (after being embraced by the Africans in various countries) to seize gold that was a natural resource in the land

When I think of these three reasons, I find the idea of Slave Trade so ingerently part of humanities greed that it is mind boggling. Yes, people may have started out with the simple purpose of looking for alternate routes for spices, but all in the name of commerce, of making money, actions of greed moved people to hurt an entire continet and leave consequences that stain and define the world to this day.

We do not seem to be able to move past this history. It haunts us daily even though we want to heal as a humanity. The Slave Trade is one additional example of the Holocaust; one big difference is that for years most countries considered the human transport of other humans and treatment of a specific group of people as property to be normal, Christian, economically reasonable, and morally upright. And today some people still maintain that it was proper (and act in a way that suggests this is acceptable). I think this reality matters a great deal for us--all people, all races, all genders, all income levels, all educational levels, all religions. The depth of the problem reaches far beyond the 1500s to 1800s and Civil Rights Era concerns in the USA. How does this stain define and hold back all of us? How does this heritage keep us from becoming all that we are meant to achieve as humans who are connected to each other through common humanity? More importantly, how do we live with these truths and at the same time grow wiser, closer, stronger--more human? We need to connect with the painful realities of our pasts, share the stories, the pain, and healing together if we are to move forward and never have these types of painful and de-humanizing events become the tragedies that keep our fellow humans from living healthy lives, pursuing academic endeavors, finding creative expressions, and trusting in the good will of humanity. I believe in the innate desire for humans to connect and do good, but I also recognize that the constant push within the human spirit to conquer the world is one that must be put in check to avoid daily activities that initially appear to be "survival" but end up being "persecuted lies of superiority against our fellow brothers."

Michael and I signed our names on the memorial Wall of Return, also known as the Pillars of Recognition, to be recognized as someone who has returned to the area to see the path of past ancestors. We signed as "TCC's Dream Team Michael Singleton and Dewayne Dickens" since we were representing the African American male Dream Team at our College. Now, TCC has recognition on the wall.

I took a few videos and more pictures but am unable to load them tonight but will do so later. The Internet connection does not seem to handle big images well.

Tonight, we had a great meal in an off-the-road outside bar and grill that served rice and chicken or fish. The closest I can come to describing the taste is to compare it to Louisiana Creole cooking. It was good, filling, and an item I'd definitely cook myself at home.