Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Conference Attendee

Ghana Reflections: Ruth Drescher

It was an enormous pleasure and enriching experience for me to be able to accompany my husband, Seygmour Drescher, to the conference “The bloody Writing is for ever torn,”sponsored by the Omohundro Institute and others in Ghana in August 2007. This experience afforded me the opportunity to absorb a small piece of a culture I had never been exposed to before and to learn about the beauty of the land and the brutality of the history of enslavement. I felt visually saturated with astounding images during the conference as well as on the side trips that were so graciously offered by the conference organizers.

These photos attempt to capture some of the moments I will never forget. They were taken mostly on the trip to Nzulezi, a centuries-old village on stilts, which required a one-hour canoe trip through a marsh and a lake, and at the castles that served as holding places for slaves to be shipped to the New World—Elmina and Cape Coast castles—as well as at a few other locations.