I was overwhelmed with tears’ on tour of slave trade post in Accra, Ghana- Hon Turnbull
Hon Turnbull, along with a delegation led by the Speaker of the HoA Honourable Corine N. George-Massicotte, was in Accra, Ghana, Africa attending the 66th Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference (CPA) (September 30- October 6, 2023).
The Second District Representative noted that while he has been in Africa before, this particular trip to Ghana, “has been one of the most humbling experiences that I have ever had in my life.”
He noted that while he went to high school in the United States of America and to a historically Black college and understood and read about the “history of slavery and read about the history about what we as a people had to endure, this was the first time in my life that I was able to stand in the very place where persons that looked like me” and seen what they went through during the slave trade.
I was 'overwhelmed with tears'- Hon Turnbull
Hon Turnbull noted that he took a tour of a slave trading post in Jamestown, Accra in Ghana, which was an “underground tunnel built by the colonel masters to transport slaves" to the USA and European countries, which he described as the “path to nowhere.”
He said it was “five steps to get to the bottom then you make a left turn and once you make that left turn, it turns completely black, you can’t even see your hand”. The legislator noted that slaves were transported from that location out to the ocean where they were most times “drowned or taken on the boats and thrown overboard”.
I stood there and “became overwhelmed with tears. I stood there and tried to appreciate what our ancestors and foreparents went through."
We are 'bonded together'- Ghana President
The former Minister for Natural Resources and Labour (2022-2023) said he also had the opportunity to sit with the President of Ghana, Hon Nana Akufo Addo whose message to the leaders of the small CPA branches of the Caribbean and Latin America was that despite the many differences we are all bonded together by a common heritage of our past and that despite the abuse during the slave trade, “we can achieve anything that we hope for our people once we unite.”
Slavery is now recognised as the biggest crime against humanity and the genocide of Blacks from Africa conducted by European countries, the USA and others.
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39 Responses to “I was overwhelmed with tears’ on tour of slave trade post in Accra, Ghana- Hon Turnbull”
some among us have forgotten the whips; the chains and the murdering of our ancestors by the those slave masters
DO you really think if Great Britain take over this British Overseas Territory that living will get better for the West Indians who call this land they home
put more competent people in government offices
the divide and rule cool aid- The planned ignorance plan of depriving slaves and their descendants of the opportunity of learning how to read, write and do arithmetic was to keep them dumb and you can control them.
The colonial government in England sanctioned this planned ignorance initiative. They did not put forth any initial effort to provide even basic education, for slaves and descendants were subhuman and therefore inferior and mentally challenged. The Methodist and Anglican churches took the lead in providing basic education; the colonial government, embarrassed, reluctantly followed. Taking over education from the churches, they showed no interest in going beyond a primary school education( Seven Standard certificate) for a select few. Nevertheless, they showed great interest in and invested in Her/His Majesty’s Prisons. They are highly visible up and down the former West Indian colonies. Most of these countries though independent are still under the web of colonialism by having the UK monarch as head of state, an anachronism at best.
Though eager to invest in HMP to lock up the beasts, where are the His/ Her Majesty High Schools? Let’s continue drinking the cool aid? It was George Hegel who wrote, “ he that values life over liberty is the slave. And he that values liberty over life is the master.” Hegel also wrote that people are enslaved because they acquiesce, are docile, weak, lacking the will to resist. Thus, they are enslave, reenslaved, etc.
The BVI is headed head long into recolonization, reenslavement ., etc, with Virgin Islanders becoming powerless, landless, in their homeland. It is coming. The disunity, altruism to false interests promises of Mount Olympus, etc is accelerating the pace of powerlessness. The Venerable J. R. O’Neal aka Jose in his master piece Life Notes tell the story that during a Wickhams Cay give away discussion questioned former Administrator Martin Stavely ( who got crimson red) about the New Jerusalem situation being instituted, ie, locals on one side of the dividing ditch, the dividing line, between the Tortola Mainland and Wickhams Cay paying duty, but the whites, the apartheid practitioners/schemers on Wickhams Cay, the New Jerusalem paying no duty. National hero Noel Lloyd and PAM ‘s Action scuttled that plan, give way, etc. The giveway was engineered by the Administrator who at the time was in charge of BVI finance. Finance was transferred from the administrator/ Governor to local government under the Dr. Williard Wheatley Administration in 1979.
us we going forward
It was not right. Similar to the nuclear bombs on Japanese civilian cities and the concentration camps of Germany it was not right & we need to honor that fact.
Why all the hate as if it is a joke.
People who joke about it and minimize it while being the very foundation of the Virgin Islands & wider Caribbean need to go where the politician went and be humbled. An atheist might make a shrine afterwards.
unimaginable suffering of hundreds of thousands of people.