Hans Cottage Botel (Ghana)

Tonight we are staying in a place called "Hans Cottage Botel". It's on the road between Cape Coast Ghana and Kakum National park. It's an eclectic place, with a pond-ish wetland that is inhabited by real crocodiles and there's bamboo forest and oodles of birds. You can actually hear them singing everywhere. It's beautiful. The restaurant is up on stilts overlooking and OVER the water. So you can sometimes see the crocodiles swimming around. Pretty cool. :P

We spent today in Cape Coast and Elmina visiting the slave castles. These are castles/forts used by the Portuguese, English, Dutch etc who were a part of the transatlantic slave trade. It's where the slaves were brought after being captured/sold into slavery and traded with the Europeans by other black mercenaries for guns/gunpowder. It was a saddening, somber experience, and yet it brought hope to my heart. The Ghanian people that we talked with said that the slave trade was awful and inexcusable. And yet they said from it hope has emerged because it has created the world that we know today and the many very influential African descendents (i.e. Barack Obama) that we see in our world today. I found it all to be a very humbling experience.

I'm really enjoying being here in Ghana. I hope to post more later. But I need to go wash some laundry. It really is stinkin' hot here. ha ha....you sweat a LOT.