Slave Quarters

Not only did I notice the error of confusing the Indian Ocean with the Gulf of Guinea, but having lived and worked in Ghana for a year with a Ghanaian family, I noticed serveral other errors. I wrote a letter to the editor immediately upon noticing these huge mistakes, but the letter was not published. The letter follows here:

Dear Newsweek,

Turning to the last page in this week's magazine, I was delighted to see an article about Elmina Castle in Ghana, West Africa, entitled Slave Quarters. I lived as a young adult missionary in Ghana for one year, from 2006-2007, and I had the opportunity to visit other parts of the country during my time there, including Cape Coast and Elmina. Visiting Elmina Castle brought me closer to the historical connection between Ghana and the United States and made me more aware of the suffering that many thousands endured. I do not, in any way, want to diminish the author's experience or her moving account of her visit, but three major errors in the article stood out to me. The first error I noticed was the mention of Elmina Castle "sitt[ing] on top of a hill". It is not Elmnia Castle, but Fort St. Jago, which is on the hilltop overlooking the town. Elmina Castle sits on flat land next to the ocean. The second misinformation I spotted was the author's reference to "roofs peering out onto the Indian Ocean." This is a huge mistake in geography. The Indian Ocean is on the opposite side of the continent of Africa, while Elmina--and the rest of the Ghanaian coastline--looks out onto the Gulf of Guinea. Another error I saw near the end of the article was the reference to being called "ye vu", or "white visitor". This is a name from the Ewe language, and unless the author ran into someone of the Ewe tribe in Elmina, it is highly unlikely that a native of Elmina would use this term. Elmina is a town of the Fanti tribe, and Fanti is a form of the Twi language. In Fante or Twi the word for "white foreigner" would be "obrouni". I genuinely thank the author and Newsweek for this article, and I only ask that a bit more attention and respect be paid to a culutre so hospitable to one revisiting her roots.

Indeed, it is an unacceptable error. Lame, too, since it was not even necessary that the ocean be named ("peering out onto the sea", would have sufficed). But if you are going drop names to show your worldliness, make the effort and get it right. At least they named the country. Depressing the number of times African countries are not even named ??? just references to a monolithic Africa, as if there were not enormous variation between regions and countries on the continent. I'm still waiting for the error to be acknowledged as well. Lead me to google the title to see if a correction were at least posted online.

I, too, was shocked that both the journalist and Newsweek allowed the unacceptable error of "Indian Ocean" to slip through in the print edition. I am further shocked that the online edition only corrected one of the "Indian Ocean" references. I shall no longer read anything by this journalist, and I am considering permanently cutting off Newsweek as one of my (reliable) sources of information. Finally, the new editorial format is crappy.

I read the print copy, which mentioned the Indian Ocean, twice. The internet copy has corrected one of the mentions, so now both the Indian Ocean and Atlantic Ocean are mentioned. The author and editorial staff should be ashamed of their geographic ignorance.

I cannot believe that Newsweek published this! Aside from the numerous factual errors detailed in the comments below (adding one of my own, the singular term is trotro, not trotros), I am constantly surprised by the shock of African-Americans who are upset that they are not welcomed back to Africa with open arms. If Ghana was truly your home (as it is mine), then you would have taken more care to learn about the country and its people and would have been very careful to be factually correct and fair in your presentation. Furthermore, as a historian and someone who lives in Ghana, I find these kinds of situations and Ms. Scott's explanation of them really concerning and problematic. Despite the appeal of Africa as a homeland in the face of a long history of enslavement, discrimination, and oppression in the United States, your ability to travel internationally (particularly to Africa, which requires very expensive airplane tickets) makes you immeasurably more privileged than the overwhelming majority of Ghanaians. When you arrive, being chauffered around in expensive, air conditioned buses, eating only in "European" (i.e. Western) restaurants and staying in expensive hotels marks you off as privileged and different, much more in line with white American and European tourists than most Ghanaians. Even if you were to move to Ghana, your access to outside resources and your background would shape who you are, what resources are available to you, and what standard of living you would expect, not to mention your cultural and social interactions. You would never fully understand what it is to be Ghanaian. Neither will I. Even as I live without air conditioning or TV, eat Ghanaian food, take bucket showers, and ride in trotros, I still do not fully experience what it is like to be Ghanaian since I can always chose to opt out (despite this, Ghanaians are extremely respectful of my efforts to understand their country and its many cultures and languages). When Ghanaians call you "oburoni" (which is what they would have called you in Elmina, since they speak Fanti there, which is a dialect of Akan/Twi), they are recognizing you as a foreigner and someone from the West, not necessarily as a white person. They are extremely insightful, actually, in recognizing that the place that a person comes from shapes who they are sometimes even more than their race. To them, you are more like white Americans than themselves, and while this might not be a comfortable reality, it is not necessarily a reflection of a Ghanaian lack of education (however true) about the slave trade or the historical experiences of African-American life in the US. They are defining your relationship not based on historical connections but on contemporary social, cultural, economic, and political realities. People are extremely welcoming of all people, though it is on their terms, not ours. Come to Ghana and see for yourself!

I read this article in the waiting room of my car-repair place. I gasped out loud when I got to the part about the Indian Ocean. I had assumed the writer was there in person and had a MAP to look at. Don't the editors and copy editors there use maps? How did this get into print? I'm astounded at this error. I'm glad to see the previous comments about it.

Living in Ghana and having been to Elmina Castle many times, I must question whether Ms. Samuels actually made the trip she describes. As previous commenters have noted, the castle, and all of WEST Africa for that matter, is on the Atlantic, not Indian Ocean. As the above photo of the doors of no return indicates, there is not iron gate over it, it is just a narrow opening designed so that no more than one body could fit through at a time. The castle is not filled with small, closet sized rooms, it has a number of larger holding areas; originally used to store produce, etc and then converted to hold people. Not necessarily less horrible, but different than described. Further, the term for foreigner/white person is "Obroni" and for only approximately 15 intermittent minutes of what should be a 2 to 2 1/2 hr. drive can one see the ocean. Additionally, while certain parts of the drive would qualify as lovely (lush growth) most of the trip passes through heartbreakingly poor villages and burned out car/van/bus wrecks on the side of the highway. All in all, I was horribly disappointed. We do not get much recognition in Ghana and I was immensely pleased to see an article on Ghana in Newsweek. To have it filled with so much factual error so as to question the validity of the asserted trip was an awful let down.

I too want to comment on the sad error in this article. Alison Samuels has written several high profile articles on the African-American experience and yet she doesn't seem to know that African slaves were transported across the ATLANTIC Ocean to America, not the INDIAN Ocean. If only it was merely a geographical error, but the article strongly implies that she was IN Ghana, looking across the water and mourning the fate of her ancestors, and yet she didn't know what body of water she was gazing across!! Shame on her, the factcheckers, and the editors. I will read her commentary on the African-American experience with a large grain of salt from now on.

Like so much else in this country, evidently Newsweek has outsourced its fact checking. As others have pointed out, Ghana is not on the Indian Ocean.

Ghana is on the Atlantic coast... Making the mistake once could be an oversight - but twice...? I can't believe the author - who claims sensitivity to her roots - would make such a mistake. Had her ancestors crossed the Indian Ocean, she would have been a citizen of a Gulf country, not an American... Shame on her, the factchecker and the editor for this.

I can't believe Newsweek did not check the facts before going to press. First, there is no Indian Ocean in Ghana. It's the Atlantic Ocean. The minibus called tro-tro is only for intra city transportation. No tro-tro runs between Accra and Elmina. I wonder if this writter actually made the trip to Ghana.
Baffour Ennin-Quantico, VA

Glad to know I'm not the only one who noticed that the Indian Ocean is a whole continent away from Ghana. I was checking all kinds of map sites just incase I was the one who was confused. Newsweek should start sending their reporters out with maps.

My 2nd graders even know the difference between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. I too wonder if the author actually visited Elmina. My subscription to Newsweek is in jeopardy if I cannot rely on the writers and editors to provide reliable information.

I would like to join the others here in pointing out that Ghana is on the west coast of Africa and therefore Elmina Castle overlooks the Atlantic, and not the Indian Ocean. That mistake appears twice in the print edition and has only been corrected once (I'm writing on Saturday, May 30 at 9:00 AM CDT) in the online version.

Such an obvious error might cause some readers to wonder if Ms. Samuels actually visited the place about which she wrote, or if her editors spent sufficient time checking her work.

The print edition mentions the Indian Ocean TWICE. This kind of error makes one wonder if the author actually went there and if the article's editor actually read it.

Not to put to fine a point on it, but Ghana is on the west coast of Africa, so the ocean that the Allison Samuels saw from the castle and again through the bars of the ???door of no return??? was not the Indian Ocean, but was in fact the Atlantic Ocean. And, although it is remotely possible that some distant ancestor of hers passed through that very gate on the way to a life of slavery in the New World, it is highly unlikely since virtually all of the poor wretches who passed through that hideous portal were headed for misery in Brazil and other Portuguese colonies of South America and later the Dutch colonies of the West Indies and not the North American Colonies. Keep in mind that fewer than 500,000 native Africans were transported to any territory or colony that would eventually became a part of the United States, while nearly 15 million were transported to South and Central America and the islands of the Caribbean. While it is all a horrible chapter in our collective history and the horrors of slavery should never be forgotten, the memory of those poor souls who endured a life of suffering as a slave should not be diminished by poor reporting, inattentive editors and self-serving rhetoric.

I don't find many errors in Newsweek and found the article very interesting. But as has already mentioned, Ghana is I believe in West Africa overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. I will continue to subscribe to Newsweek as I have for years although I'm not sure that I care as much for the new format. Wayne Wathen