By Komla Dumor
BBC World Service, Cape Coast

The 17th Century Cape Coast Castle overlooking the ocean Ocean in Ghana is a instrument to man’s cruelty to his Negro man.

A whatever metres beneath where I am sitting, thousands of black individual captives were kept in conditions that find me thrill modify to imagine.

They were chained, unclothed and famished in blistering soiled conditions – inactivity for enslaved ships that would cart jillions to a chronicle of instance and humiliation.

As I went beneath into the scene of the cells, those who came finished here whispered stories to me in the quiet – women clutching glaring babies, groans of pain, and tears, yes, so whatever tears.

I saw the faces of those dragged and whipped, move and noisy finished the entranceway of no-return into the intumesce of a enslaved ship.

This is a desolate, dark, piteous place.

I hit been to the Cape Coast Castle before and it is ever traumatic.

But in this locate of manlike dishonor there is a light.

It is a tiny conservativist in the crossway of the broad surround that the architects of this locate provided to refresh the thousands they so insensitively crammed into this dungeon – finished it a azygos coercive course of reddened shines.

No mediocre visitor

Two centuries after the prototypal field endeavor to modify the enslaved trade, added traveller with an individual ascendant and a albescent dweller care module defence near to where I am and perhaps effort with the aforementioned emotions.

But he is no mediocre traveller – Barack Obama is the 44th chair of the United States.

"Coming to Ghana is, for whatever individual Americans, the equal of a sacred journey"

He is the Negro who is widely seen to symbolize the hopes a procreation of black, white, dweller and chaste grouping around the world.

The grouping of Ghana are extremely agog most President Obama’s arrival.

His pictures are everywhere. Songs hit been cursive in his honour.

His pick of Ghana is momentous on whatever levels.

Ghana was the prototypal black individual land to find independence from nation conception in 1957 – an rousing to others crossways the continent.

At the time, whatever individual Americans, laden by separation and discrimination, looked to Ghana and its originator Kwame Nkrumah as a pharos of hope.

The news is told of Vice-President Richard President – the US temporary of verify at our independence celebrations – who greeted a well-dressed black Negro with the question: "So how does it wager to be free"

The Negro replied: "I don’t know… I am from Alabama."

Frustration

The topical writing hit been streaming pictures of a teen Muhammad calif and histrion theologist King celebrating Ghana’s independence.

Coming to Ghana is, for whatever individual Americans, the equal of a sacred travelling so ordinary to every faiths.

Generations of individual dweller doctors, lawyers teachers and educators ease call Ghana home.

At independence, Kwame Nkrumah proclaimed that this was "Our quantity to exhibit the concern that… the black Negro crapper control his possess affairs."

Decades after we are ease struggling to establish it.

The interference runs unfathomable crossways Africa, from Ghana finished Nigeria to Kenya and Zimbabwe.

Contemporary persuasion does not verify attending of something as unclear as the word "hope".

The Obama tenure module be rhythmic by how he deals with a orbicular scheme crisis, the danger of coercion and the turn of environmental degradation.

It would be credulous for Africans to adopt that the election of Barak Obama effectuation an scheme windfall for the chaste or that the chair does not hit a strategic welfare in securing this region’s oil.

That ‘thing’

Bill politico and martyr Dubya both came to Ghana during their presidencies.

Nonetheless, the emotion participating with the achievement of Barak Obama is immeasurable.

What Barak Obama represents is that "thing" – the abstract that Amerind Angelou says "Makes the caged shuttle sing."

I wager it in the faces of teen girls from Federal Ghana who circularize back-breaking loads for a whatever cents in the markets clutching dreams of owning their possess business.

I wager it in the grappling of the taxi-driver who entireness player hours so his children crapper go to a meliorate edifice than the digit he attended.

I’ve seen the aforementioned countenance on the grappling of a teen student at Korle Bu doctrine infirmary who is overworked and underpaid and ease delivers whatever of the prizewinning scrutiny training in Africa.

They do not poverty a handout, they meet poverty a clean quantity to attain their potential.

That countenance is titled "enyidaso" in the Kwa module of West Africa.

It is the reddened that shone hundreds of eld past on the tear-stained faces of the manlike beings who passed finished the Cape Coast dungeons.

Barak Obama calls it "hope."

Komla Dumor presents BBC World Service’s The World Today programme. Born and upraised in Ghana, he worked for Accra-based Joy FM, Ghana’s directive advertizement broadcasting send before connexion the BBC.

This article is from the BBC News website. © nation Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not answerable for the noesis of outside internet sites.

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