It is a truth universally acknowledged in the world of me that heat and I do not get along well. I can handle it as long as I have an ocean near by to plunge into, but hiking? Walking long distances? Even with my usual big floppy hat and several gallons of water…I don’t do so well.
But despite how grumpy and sticky and woozy I was on the way up to the top of the hill, the view and the lovely ocean breeze when we got up there was more than worth it.
Like so many other places, Fort King George does not have a pretty history. Built on the backs of the slave trade, it has its own share of darkness amongst its restored ruins. The cannons that now rest completely silent along the defensive walls surely have taken their own share of lives, and the air was probably choked with their smoke on more than one occasion. Now, however, time has washed all the ugliness away and what remains is a historic landmark with a breathtaking view and a troubled past.
The first building we encountered on our way up to the top of the compound was a relatively simple one: a large paved outer courtyard with a small structure in the center. Nothing to look at. However, the sign outside the door told us what it was we were seeing: the Punishment cells. Tiny dark spaces no more than a few paces wide, larger than some I have come across in previous ports, at least these ones you couldn’t touch the walls if you stood in the middle, but that doesn’t mean that they weren’t terrible feeling dank little places. Stepping into the outer courtyard from the road I was flooded with only one phrase repeating over and over again…
This is a bad place…
That hasn’t happened to me for a while. I am not particularly keen to have it happen to me again. Especially not when I’m being pounded by direct tropical sun! Oddly though, I didn’t feel particularly ill at ease, I suppose I’ve become used to such sensations in some ways. They can’t hurt you exactly, you just kind of acknowledge them and move on. Like so many other things in life…
Leaving the brick lined purgatory behind us we continued up the hill to the Fort Proper, where we managed to get some excellent pictures of the ship from a distance, and explored the tiny museum housed in one of the old barracks structures. That is when something else happened to me that hasn’t happened to me in a long time. I was absorbed in looking at pottery fragments when I realized Amras wasn’t beside me anymore. It’s a small place, so it’s not as if he could have gotten far. I looked around and spotted him at the far end of the room, reading something I couldn’t see. I came up behind him and took a breath to ask what he was looking at, and then I saw what he was looking at.
Western culture no longer displays human remains for the most part, with the exception of Egyptian Mummies (and that is under hot debate), and most of our native “artifacts” have been removed and reburied in their rightful place. Where they should have been all along.
Looking at the carefully preserved, broken and small skeleton in the glass case in front of us, I was starkly reminded that I wasn’t in Canada anymore.
Amras pointed at the plaque he had been reading
Male or female could not be determined, nor could cause of death.
I couldn’t take my eyes off its eyes. Or where its eyes would have been. At least, I think I was looking a the eyes, I wasn’t really seeing anything.
A helluva a lot of pain…
And I walked away.
I had no sooner crossed the room and started trying to focus on something else when the headache stabbed through my eye like a hot needle. I would have loved to have put it down to the heat or the sun, but we were in an air conditioned building in the shade, and my sun-headches don’t normally come on that suddenly. After I had caught my breath somewhat, I turned around
Be right back.
Where you going?
To read what I couldn’t read before.
So I go back to the little dark side room with it’s disturbing display, and I take another deep breath, and I say I’m sorry, I’m sorry that you’re still here and you probably don’t know why, I’m sorry that we don’t know who you are or who you were. You don’t deserve that. I hope you can rest some.
And having done that, and feeling slightly better, I ignore that needles that are still piercing through my brain and wander through the rest of the museum, looking at fragments of arrow heads, and musket balls and a random old pram from the 1960s.
The walk down was much easier than the walk is – as is always the case! It was still dreadfully hot, but the ice-tea I’d bought earlier helped and there was a bit more breeze on the way down. Of course there was also a big van with speakers on the roof that happened to be right behind us blaring advertisements, but hey you can’t win ‘em all!