Elwin International Tours
ELWIN INTERNATIONAL TOURS (est.1995) "A true knowledge of Africa"
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Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery......Ottobah Cuguano 1787
Visit the Land from which Ottobah Cuguano was brutally kidnapped into Slavery.
Elwin International Tours takes you to Southern Ghana where you can retrace some of the well known slave routes our ancestors endured. The Underground Railroad Tours present a later story in the evolution of the African Diaspora - the courageous escape from bondage in America to freedom in Canada
Elwin International Tours
Ottobah Cuguano of Fantee Country. It happened this way this is how he told his story. One day in 1767 Ottobah Cuguano of Fantee country, Ottobah Cuguano of Agimaque in Fantee Country went to visit his uncle, his mother's brother in Assinee, three days distance from his home. At first Ottobah Cuguano missed his home, family, friends but soon was drawn into work and play of the very many children in his uncle's compound. He loved to play their forest games though the darkness which hid the buonsam scared him also. They followed long paths and trails gathering fruits, chasing each other, catching forest birds. One day they came around a larger tree when suddenly they were set upon by ruffiuans with cutlasses and pistols who told them they had offended at distant Lord and now they would be taken to plead their case. They tried to run, run, run. They dove and jumped and shrieked and yelled. Uncle, father, mother, help but they were told to "lie down or die lie down or die lie down or die." Divided into smaller groups, separately they walked for several days, told soon they would be free, so the Lord would set them free. Tired they came to a town they did not know and heard some men speaking a language they did not understand. And days went by, confusing days where they were given something like a party and told to wait to see the Lord. And after still more days no Lord came but Ottobah Cuguano of Fantee country was told he could go home home to mother, father, family, friends home now, home. So he was told to walk again and after still another day and night Ottobah Cuguano came over hill and look beyond a fringe of trees to first-time sights of white and dazzling sands of water, brighter and more vast than all the sky of Fantee country. Suddenly the shapes and objects far away came into focus. Chains, chains, chains, chains! Two buy two, people like him shackled and tied, shackled and tied. Browfow, white faced people, standing by. "what am I doing here? ", Ottobah Cuguano cried “ to learn the ways of white faced people "he was told Ottobah Cuguano of Fantee country Ottobah Cuguano of Agimaque in Fantee country. Traded. Traded into slavery. Traded into ways of white faced people. Traded for one gun, one cloth, one piece of lead. Ottobah Cuguano wept, Ottobah Cuguano gatherer of fruits, player of forest games, nephew of his mother's uncle. Tears drifting silently through the depths of an ocean he had never seen. By Budd L. Hall February, 1991. Based on the account of his own capture written by Ottobah Cuguano in 1787 and published by Lalage Bown (ed.) "Two Centuries of African English" : Heinemann, 1973.

Underground Railroad Tours - Canada
What was the Underground Railroad? Technically speaking, it was neither. It wasn't a railroad and it wasn't underground. It was a name given to a network of people who hid and guided slaves as they followed the North Star to Canada -- to freedom. Historians’ estimate that tens of millions of black Africans were shipped as slaves to the United States and Caribbean in terribly overcrowded boats. Only 15 million survived the journey. Of those for 40,000 fled to Canada; after the Civil War 20,000 returned to the south. The saga of their bold journey North is the subject of these tours. An area steeped in history. In 1783, following the American Revolution, many British loyalists left the United States and moved into upper Canada; they brought with them the slaves. On May 21st 1793, Lt. Gov. Col. John Graves Simcoe introduced a bill, which prevented the introduction of further slavery into Upper Canada. As a result, a substantial black population established itself in the region. The 1820s, refugee slaves from the United States began following the North Star to find shelter behind upper Canada's humanitarian policies. By the 1830s the “Underground Railroad” had brought the first permanent settlements of fugitive slaves to Sandwich (a small town in South Western Ontario). The first Baptist Church in the area was quickly established; it still stands today. On August 28th 1833, King William IV of Great Britain gave Royal Assent to the bill, which put an end to all slavery, in what is today called Canada.

The African Diaspora
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