* A 400-year slavery anniversary sparks rise in heritage
tours
* Ghana tourism board expects 40% rise in visitors this year
* Rise could benefit economy - if it can be sustained
By Alessandra Prentice and Siphiwe Sibeko
ASSIN MANSO, GHANA, Aug 20 (Reuters) - In a clearing at the
turnoff to Assin Manso, a billboard depicts two African slaves
in loincloths, their arms and legs in chains. Beside them are
the words, "Never Again!"
This is "slave river," where captured Ghanaians submitted to
a final bath before being shipped across the Atlantic into
slavery centuries ago, never to return to the land of their
birth. Today, it is a place of somber homecoming for the
descendants of those who spent their lives as someone else's
property.
The popularity of the site has swelled this year, 400 years
after the trade in Africans to the English colonies of America
began. This month's anniversary of the first Africans to arrive
in Virginia has caused a rush of interest in ancestral tourism,
with people from the United States, the Caribbean and Europe
seeking out their roots in West Africa.
"Ten years ago, no one went to the slave river, but this
year has been massive," said Awuracy Butler, who runs a company
called Butler Tours.
She said business has nearly doubled this year, which has
been touted as the Year of Return for the African diaspora
tracing their family history. The number of tourists has forced
her to hire more vehicles, she said.
"Everyone wants to add the slave river to their tour," she
said. The coastal forts where they spent their last days in
Ghana in suffocating conditions are also increasingly popular,
she said.
The increase in tourism has been an economic boon for Ghana,
which unlike other West African countries has aggressively
marketed its "heritage" offerings for the anniversary.
Officials see it as an opportunity to entice some
much-needed foreign investment into the economy, dogged in
recent years by high inflation and public debt that has needed
an International Monetary Fund lending program to fix.
The Ghana Tourism Authority expects 500,000 visitors this
year, up from 350,000 in 2018. Of those, 45,000 are estimated to
be seeking their ancestral roots, a 42% increase from last year.
On a recent day in the capital, Accra, a delegation of
tribal elders and a representative of the Ghana Investment
Promotion Centre welcomed a tour group at a hotel in the city.
At an event in a low-ceilinged hotel conference room, the
tour guide encouraged the visitors to sing a hymn in a local
language, gently chiding them for not yet knowing the tune. "You
are Ghanaians now," he said.
Members of the group, who were mostly African American, went
up to the front one by one to pose with a smiling tourism
ministry official or one of the robe-clad elders as they
received an official certificate of participation. The
investment representative launched into a lengthy power-point
presentation focused on the need for investment in Ghana's cocoa
sector and the minimum capital requirements for joint ventures.
With an average spend of $1,850 per tourist, the tourism
authority expects this year's revenues to top $925 million, a
50% increase from 2018, which it hopes to sustain over the next
three years at least.
The amount is dwarfed by Ghana's $2-billion cocoa industry
but is considered essential in a country of 28 million people
who mostly live in poverty.
Anthony Bouadi, a tour guide at Cape Coast Castle, a
fortress where the captives were kept until they were sent on
ships over the Atlantic, said he believes the site will change
the lives of those who visit.
"The moment you get to know your history, it is going to
change you," he said. "We are encouraging our brothers and
sisters from the U.S., from the Caribbean from Europe to come
back to their Motherland Africa to get to know the culture … and
whatever the ancestors went through."
The surge of visitors is part of a global phenomenon: Airbnb
data shows a five-fold increase in people travelling to places
connected to their ancestry worldwide since 2014.
U.S. genetics company African Ancestry says its sales of DNA
tests tripled after last year's release of the superhero film
"Black Panther," an Afro-centric blockbuster with a
predominantly black cast. The company is launching an
ancestry-based travel service later this year.
To make the most of the moment, Ghana will host a mass
"ancestry reveal" on Friday. More than 80 African American
participants, including the head of the NAACP, will learn their
genetic history, touted as the largest ceremony of its kind in
Africa's history.
Ghana has long encouraged its diaspora to return and has
strong links with the African American community. Malcolm X
visited in the 1960s and spent time with the American poet and
civil rights activist Maya Angelou, who lived there at the
time. The prominent black writer and activist W.E.B. Du Bois
settled and died in Ghana. Since, many other ordinary African
American families have returned.
But questions remain about whether the heightened interest
in Ghana can be sustained after the anniversary. Bad roads, a
cumbersome visa application process and expensive flights could
stem the number of visitors in the long term.
"The government has a huge responsibility," said Peter
Appiah, head of research and publicity at the Centre for
National Culture in Kumasi, Ghana's second-largest city.
"If we want to sustain this tempo," he said, "then we need
to do a lot more in terms of social infrastructure."
MASSIVE YEAR
At Assin Manso, a group of visitors removed their shoes and
walked barefoot down a path to the muddy river that runs through
a bamboo grove.
Together they placed their hands in the water, then waded in
to offer prayers in thanks for the opportunity to return.
"I can't even get my head around people coming from a land
like this and being snatched," said Miriam Allen, a 62-year-old
retired urban planner from New York, clutching a box of tissues
and choking back tears.
"This is a good place and a bad place. A good place to know
your ancestors, but to know what those white people did to us. I
can't …" she said, breaking off.
On most tours, Assin Manso marks one of the final stops on a
country-wide swing in which groups take part in Ashanti rituals,
meet local chiefs and trace the gruelling route captured slaves
took from the country's northern hinterland out to the coast.
The forts that still dot Ghana's coast are a reminder of
what slaves endured.
At the Cape Coast Castle, rusted old cannons point out to
sea from the ramparts, angled skyward, away from locals playing
football on the beach below.
The government is committed to its upkeep - on a recent
visit, workers were repainting the high white walls.
In forts like this one, slaves experienced their last days
on African soil crammed in steaming-hot dungeons without light -
and where tourists are now returning in droves.
"I have seen a lot of people - they really are coming," said
Bouadi, the guide at the castle, who now does up to six tours a
day compared with three last year. Each tour has doubled in
size, he said, to around 40 people.
He tries to help his family when he can, using the extra
money he earns to pay their water and electricity bills.
"Tourism organisations in Ghana are having to hire more
people," he said. "If people earn more, they can pay for school
fees; it boosts the local economy and reduces poverty."
Ghana's efforts stand in stark contrast to other West
African countries with rich histories of their own that are
little known outside the continent.
Despite a collection of slave sites, including the
picturesque but haunting Goree Island, where tourists can visit
old slave quarters and its "door of no return," Senegal does not
appear to have harnessed the potential like Ghana. Neither has
Benin or Nigeria.
In Nigeria, the main sites commemorating the slave trade are
three small museums along a road in the coastal town of Badagry.
Artefacts including chains used to shackle slaves are spread
across the museums, two of which are small single-story
buildings with corrugated iron roofs.
Foreign tourists are rare at the site, and a large
proportion of visitors are schoolchildren on tours. The poor
state of local roads, dotted with potholes, make it hard to
visit Badagry: The 65-kilometer (40-mile) journey from the
country's largest city, Lagos, takes around three hours.
"As far as I know, only Ghana has made such a significant
effort in terms of programmes and activities," said Shanelle
Haile, a doctoral student at Brown University in Rhode Island
who was in Ghana to study diaspora engagement surrounding the
anniversary.
"Now that we're here and we've done the events and the
activities, it's really moving and it's a powerful experience,"
she said. "I just hope that more African Americans learn and
hear about it."
A terrible passage from Africa https://graphics.reuters.com/AFRICA-SLAVERY-SHIPS/0100B0CV0SB/index.html
Retracing a slave route in Ghana https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/retracing-a-slave-route-in-ghana-400-years-on
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