Central & Ashanti Regions: Assin Manso Slave Site & Anglogold Asante Gold Mine

This past week, my CSU program decided to take us on our last and final trip as a group to Assin Manso Slave Site in the Central Region and to the Anglogold Asante Gold Mine in the Ashanti Region.  Because of different reasons only about half the group was able to go on Wednesday morning when we left for the slave site. The Assin Manso slave site was in a very remote area in the Central Region 3 hours away. This site was important because it was a major traffic area during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. Here is where slaves from all over West Africa were priced and auctioned off to the highest bidder. This was also the location of the last bath these slaves would ever take before being sent to the slave castles at Elmina or Cape Coast before being sent to their final destination. This was the fate for those whose lives were spared. For others such as the weak, elderly, sick, pregnant women and children, they were sent behind a bamboo bush to be executed and buried because they wouldn’t be able to be sold for anything. The whole thing was pretty informative and even found out that according to our guide, Jamaicans are actually descendants of Ghana. Jamaica is where a large portion of these slaves were taken to and these would be the people to form a new nation. After the tour ended we headed to Kumasi where we would be sleeping for the night.

Early Thursday morning we left to be at the gold mine in Obuasi by 9 am. Of course things don’t go according to plan and we actually ended up getting lost for 2 hours. Every time we got directions from someone it took us further and further away and by the time we got the right directions we realized we were on the right track in the beginning and the first wrong set of directions started this whole domino effect. We got to Obuasi in an hour but since we were late we missed the time to go underneath into the gold mine so we would only be able to get a tour above ground. We were all really upset but there was really nothing we can do because there was no convincing the director since they were going to start blasting by the time we got there.  Since we didn’t get to go underneath, the whole thing was kinda a waste of time. the director started by giving us a 2 hour spiel of pure propaganda about how much good this gold mine has done for the community and Ghana. We could all see that it was a load of crap considering the community looked like every other run down rural town in Ghana despite him saying they contribute “hundreds of thousands” of cedis into the community. After that the rest of the tour consisted of just showing us whatever was above ground like elevator shaft and where the gold was processed. It honestly would’ve been amazing to see where the gold was actually extracted but oh, well. After that, we left for home and arrived at ISH 6 hours later.