Midlife Meditation

First Lady Melania Trump visits Elmina, a Cape Coast slave castle. This means nothing. That's all I could think when I read of Melania Trump paying a visit to a slave castle and being moved by what she saw. I've been to that castle, both in 2014 and, again, three months ago as I concluded my second trip to Ghana. It's a shattering experience, seeing the horrific conditions slaves were kept in even before they were crammed into ships for the middle passage. Knowing about the abuse, torture, and murder experienced by untold millions of West Africans ought, if this were a just world, to transform the way we who are descended from the abusers live our lives every day, opening our hearts to the plight of refugees, immigrants, and impoverished people. If we took these lessons seriously, there would be no question but that our borders should be open, our nation generous, and our world utterly interdependent. Instead, we live in a country whose president makes it a habit t...

How could they do it? How could they treat human begins as animals, as worse than animals, abusing them to the point of death, then jamming those who survived into the lower decks of ships for a weeks-long journey that would kill even more of them? Forget the inhumanity of it: who treats valuable stock like that? I was not asking these questions, though I could have. I raise them whenever I contemplate the evil my people—white European colonists—visited upon first the indigenous population of the New World, then upon countless millions of Africans. Last night, as we gathered for a banquet to mark the end of the International Body Music Festival, I heard these questions from a fellow IBMF attendee who, hours after the final cultural event of our week in Ghana, could not put it out of her mind. Visiting Elmina, one of many slave castles on the coast of west Africa, is a shattering experience. The old buildings, some dating to the 16 th century, are maintain...

To experience Ghana in a day, there is just one place to visit: Elmina. Elmina sits on the Cape Coast. It’s a fishing community with a scenic harbor crowned by two historic structures: a castle on one hill, a fort on the other. Parts of these buildings, as well as other buildings in town, date back to the earliest incursions of Europeans into West Africa in the 1400s. Viewed from the castle, Elmina is as photogenic as any place I've been in Ghana (though it should be noted that this has not been a touring experience; in fact, we spent an entire week in one location, focusing on the culture of that site). The harbor and the shore teem with long, brightly painted fishing boats that are rowed out to sea, then brought back by the tide. There are no sales, and all the fishing is done with nets. The lack of modern tools for this ancient trade is typical: when I’ve seen buildings under construction, work was being done with saws and hammers, not a power tool to be heard. Even...