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AFRICA FIRST MAIN WEBSITE   PRESCREENING OF CRUDE MEDICINAL MATERIALS FOR NEW THERAPEUTICS "A Decade of African Traditional Medicine: Progress so far"

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EMANCIPATION DAY ACTIVITIES

The conference will begin with the activities marking the climax of the year 2010 Emancipation Day celebration with a Durbar and wreath laying ceremony at Assin Manso on August 1, 2010.

Today, you will be transferred through the city of Cape Coast to Assin Manso, to discover a very important of part of the history of slavery completely missing from the books. This place was known to be one of the major slave markets closest to the Slave Castles on the coast. 

Participants will participate in an elaborate, educational, spiritual and cultural experience, including rituals for the veneration of the departed souls and for mental healing, purification and empowerment of participants.

On the outskirts of Assin Manso is the Slave River where the kidnapped and shackled Africans had the last opportunity to wash down after uncountable days of trekking by foot several hundreds of miles through thick forests and dusty savannah tracks and with little or no food on a North-South journey to the coast. Final inspection and categorization of stolen Africans were then made before they got to the final transit point in the infamous dungeons of the Castles and forts on the coast.  Those who were too weak to continue were murdered and buried on the banks of the river.  It is believed that the reddish color of this river is due to all the blood spilled into over several years of slave trade. In the Akan language, "donko" means slave and "nsuo" means water. Therefore Donko Nsuo literally means "Slave Water" hence the Slave River.  Though this tragic part of history was never documented, the legend has passed on through generations thus the local people have always called the stream Ndonko Nsuo.

With the spirit of Origins blowing through the spheres of every race, coupled with the celebration of Emancipation Day among African-Americans in the United States and in the Caribbean every August 1, it was deemed appropriate that the celebration be supported on the African continent.

Pan-Africanists and human right activists with the support of the Ghana Government solicited the return of the departed spirits of Africans in the Diaspora back home by a re-interrment of the remains of ex-slaved Africans, which had been exhumed from the foundation of the City Hall of New York during its re-construction.

On August 1, 1998, as part of the 1^st Annual Emancipation Day Celebration in Ghana, the remains of Brother Samuel Carson from New York and Crystal from Jamaica were exhumed, returned home and re-interred at a site at the Slave market in Assin Manso. Since then the graveside of the two African Heroes at the Slave River have been declared "hallowed ground" for African-Americans and generally people of the Diaspora.

Before this historic event in 1998, the exist doors of the Cape Coast and Elmina Castles were called Doors of No Return.  However, since August 1998, they have been renamed "Doors of Return". This is because the physical beings of Brothers Samuel Carson and Crystal which had left Africa through those doors and had returned symbolically to Africa on the 1998 Emancipation Day through those same doors.

There will be guided tours with lectures to both Cape Coast and Elmina Slave Castles, designated by UNESCO as part of World Heritage.

There will be evening banquet and Pan African Awards.

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Last modified: 05/21/10