The RYSE in Ghana - week one!

The RYSE Team

1 day ago

5 min read

This week has kicked off our Study Visit to Ghana - on the SANKOFANUNANSA Planet Repairs Action Learning Internationalist Grounding trip! It’s been beautiful, it's been incredibly educational and it’s had its challenges!

We’re sharing here some of our activities and snippets of learning for you all to follow along while we’re here - hopefully it sparks your curiosity. We’re too busy (and still taking things in) to put out any more detailed reflections so save your questions for our 21st October event and stay tuned for more!

We hope autumn is arriving well in the valleys at home❤️

The MAYCESC

We landed on Wednesday 16th, and after a stay in a hotel in Accra we arrived at the MAYCESC which has been our home in Nsawam. The MAYCESC (Miano Asaseya (Mother Earth) Community Educational Sanctuary Complex) is a beautiful place, very much a sanctuary where people have come together to build houses, grow food, and are starting to build a school for Planet Repairs Education.

Here we have got to finally meet members of PAYSCOG in person (Pan-Afrikan Youth and Student Council of Ghana) - such as Jerry, David and Mawuena - that we have been working with through the year. It has been a great chance to dig into conversation with them, and learn about the impact of Galamsey (small scale mining) on the local environment and the echoes of British boarding school culture in Ghanaian boarding schools. While we were there we also learnt how to make palm nut oil from Sister Akorfa (who some of you will have met on her delegation visit to Stroud in January 2024), fixed up some solar panels (shout out to Robin's engineering degree), and started filming interviews with our siblings that we hope to continue through our Study Visit- amongst other activities!

Nkrumashikishan

On Saturday 19th we marked the first annual Nkrumashikishan day, remembering the comradeship between Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah and Naa Dedei Areteey Ashikishan - the ‘flour queen’ of Makola market whose financial backing and mobilisation of the market women helped win Nkrumah's first seat in government, all while he was imprisoned in James Fort. We started our walk there in so-called "Jamestown" - which sadly still bears the colonial name given by the British when they invaded this part of the indigenous Gamashie territory - placing of course at the centre of their new outpost James Fort itself. As said it was here that Nkrumah was imprisoned for his activism and so through these doors that we walked a free man when he won the election.

Our team brandisihing our banner before the black doors of James Fort!

We then headed to the Nkrumah Memorial Library before walking through Makola market to hand out leaflets with Ashikishan’s story. It was a very powerful day, with lots of learning about both the importance of Ashikishan (and many market women like her), and of the differences between the UK and Ghanaian political organising context.

We were joined on our walk by members of the Ga-Dangme Advancement Union who taught us about the difficulties faced by the Ga-Dangme minority ethnic group in Accra. They are utilising the popularity of football and boxing to offer actually engaging education for Ga-Dangme people; a grassroots people’s educational movement that is not waiting for the government to help their siblings.

This event was an initiative led by, among others, the ACUP (Afrikan Continental Unity Party) and the Pro-Nkrumah Unity Movement - it was an honour to walk alongside them in memory of Nkrumah and Ashikishan.

Elmina and Cape Coast Castles

On Monday 21st we visited two truly harrowing places: Elmina Castle and Cape Coast Castle

Elmina was the first and largest Enslavement Castle in Ghana - set up by the Portuguese in 1482 who were drawn to the area by gold - it quickly became the key site for human trafficking with dungeons that held up to 1000 enslaved people at a time. All of this was built with rock quarried from the local indigenous people's sacred site (where the god of the river lived) that the locals tried to defend before being subdued and having their village burnt. It's a truly unholy site where of course you can find the oldest Church in West Africa - originally placed at the centre of the castle. When the Dutch took over in 1642 they turned the old church into their auction house before building a new church directly above one of the dungeons where you must have been able to hear the cries of enslaved people through the floorboards over the sermons.

Finally, it was taken by the British in 1872 who swapped it for a fort in Indonesia. They promptly used such a cursed place to of course open a school, the local administration office, and later a police academy. The school was set up in order to train the mixed-heritage children of soldiers and enslaved women in the administration of the trafficking trade.

We spent a long time there trying to reckon with this depth of violence and so only briefly got to visit Cape Coast castle - which was run in a similar fashion by the British Royal African Company for hundreds of years after taking control in 1664. Notably it is a site built by the Swedish, with another castle established up the coast by the Danish, a real reminder that the elites of all European countries were hungry for profit no matter how bloody!

There is of course lots more to say and many horrific specifics that we heard on the tour. Overall please simply try and reckon with the timeframes of this. It wasn't one evil captain or merchant but generations upon generations who decided to traffic and brutalise their fellow humans for profit - profits that of course went a long way to building Western dominance and the relative world of abundance we call home. This isn't to make us guilty but to show the depth of repair needed, the first step of which must be facing the truth. In hiding we do nothing to stop the inheritors of the Royal African Company: the companies who are running mines and fast fashion and more all across the world, ruining lives and environments in the process. Together, moving through the pain of the past into action there is such a beautiful world to build, one we're seeing glimpses of everyday here in the relationships we're building with our Ghanaian siblings and all we're learning and sharing with them .

Ho and the Asogli Teza

On Wednesday 23rd, we travelled five hours to Ho in the Upper Volta Region, where we will be staying for about two weeks. We are preparing for the Asogli Te Ză Yam Festival, an indigenous celebration of yam farming and Ewe culture! This event is so important as a piece of cognitive justice in the context of a community divided by colonial borders, mainly across modern day Ghana and Togo. (If you want to learn more about the impact and work to challenge these colonial borders check out this on the Afrika to Europe Peoples to Peoples Planet Repairs ActionDialogue Internationalist Forum (AEPPPRADIF) that some of the RYSE attended in Berlin last year). We are excited to see the festival, its role in local and national politics and experience our (packed) itinerary of round tables, ceremonies, dancing and more.