The pirogue noses out of the Benya Lagoon mouth, and the Atlantic opens up grey-green and endless. Kofi, the fisherman who rented me his spare rod, points to a line of brown pelicans riding the swell. The drizzle from dawn has stopped, but the sea is still breathing heavy. For about twenty cedis — a couple of dollars — he's letting me see a morning's work, not a tourist trip. The boat is a dugout, hollowed from a single tree, and it smells of salt and sardines and old paint.
We paddle past the huddle of painted boats — yellow, blue, the names of fishermen's mothers and football clubs. The motor is a small outboard that coughs when Kofi pulls the cord. He's nineteen, maybe, with a face that's already been weathered by years of this. His family has fished this coast for longer than anyone remembers. He doesn't talk much, which is fine. The rhythm of the oars, the creak of the hull, the gulls crying overhead — that's enough conversation for now.
We drop the nets over the side, and I watch the floats bob in the swell. Kofi tells me the catch has been slow this season. The lagoon is quiet because of the Fetu Afahye week of silence — the ban on fishing in the Fosu Lagoon starts any day now, they're just waiting for the final announcement. The ocean is his other workplace, and it doesn't rest for festivals. We wait. The sun breaks through the clouds, and the water turns from grey to green.
We haul in the net, and it's mostly empty. A few small silver fish, a crab that Kofi tosses back without a word. He shrugs. Some days it's like this. The price of fish has gone up in the market, but that doesn't mean the catch is bigger. We head back in, the outboard pushing us through the harbour mouth, past the castle walls that have seen four centuries of this same scene. Kofi sells his few fish to a woman at the beach landing, who'll smoke them over her coal pot. He gives me a small one to take home. I don't know what to do with it, but I say thank you.
Back on shore, my shoes are wet, and I'm grinning. The whole thing cost me about twenty cedis for the rod and Kofi's time, plus a tip I pressed into his palm. It's not a typical tourist activity, but it's the kind of thing I've learned to look for. You want to know a place, you find someone who works there. I watch a group of diaspora visitors in matching t-shirts file into the Cape Coast Castle entrance, paying the foreigner rate of about a hundred and eighty cedis. I already did that. I already stood in the dungeons. This morning felt more like an answer to all that heaviness — a small, living gesture of a coastline that still works, still feeds people, still holds its own.
I walk up from the beach, past the fish-smoking sheds where women turn the catch over open flames, their faces shining with heat. The smell is strong, smoky, familiar now. I'm going to miss this town. I stop at a stall in Kotokuraba Market to buy gari and beans — the gob3 that's been my cheap, reliable fuel for weeks. The woman in front of me is haggling over the price of dried pepper. I pay about five cedis for my plastic bag of food, and it's still the best deal in town.
Lunch is at a chop bar near the market, where I sit on a wooden bench and eat banku with peppered fish. The whole meal costs about fifteen cedis — a dollar fifty. The fish is smoky, the pepper sauce is vicious, and the banku is sour and dense, the way I like it. I watch the market women fan themselves with straw hats and call out prices. A man delivers crates of tomatoes on a bicycle. The week of silence is holding — no drums anywhere — but the market has its own percussion of haggling and laughter and the scrape of metal spoons on plastic bowls.
After lunch I decide to explore Pedu, the hill district where the university sits. I take a tro-tro from the station, paying my two cedis for the ride, squished between a student with a textbook and a woman carrying a basin of oranges. The air gets cooler as we climb. The streets widen, the houses get bigger, and suddenly there are students everywhere, in bright shirts and backpacks, talking in clusters on the grass. The University of Cape Coast spreads across the hilltop like a small green city.
I find a café called Algorithm Coffee & Juice, which is exactly the kind of place I needed today. Air conditioning. Power outlets. A menu with something called a 'Cape Coast Special Smoothie' that turns out to be pineapple, ginger, and mint. It costs about fifteen cedis, which is steep for this town, but worth it for the table and the quiet. I pull out my notebook and try to write down what I've learned since I got here. Most of it doesn't fit into words. The castle. The lagoon. Kofi's empty net. The way the fishing women laugh when the smoke gets in their eyes.
I'm working on my notes when a man at the next table strikes up a conversation. He's a lecturer at the university, in his fifties, with a kente cloth draped over his shoulder. We talk about the festival, and he tells me about the history of the Fetu Afahye — how it started as a Purification festival, to cleanse the town, and how the ban on drumming and fishing is a way of leaving the lagoon alone, letting it breathe. He says it like it's something you understand with your body, not your head. I nod like I get it. I think I'm starting to.
He also tells me the durbar on Saturday is going to be enormous. Chiefs from all over the Central Region, in full regalia, with palanquins and drummers and the whole town turning out. He says if I want a good view, I should get there early, and expect to stand. He mentions that the municipality has asked people not to wear red or black, out of respect. I file that away. It's the kind of detail you don't find in a guidebook.
I leave the café around four, feeling the day start to melt into evening. The rain has held off, and the sun is low and golden. I walk back down toward the coast, past the old colonial buildings with their verandas and rusted tin roofs. The light hits the castle walls and turns them the colour of old bone. I've spent so much time in this town trying to understand its weight, and here I am on my last day, and it still feels like I've only scratched the surface.
For dinner, I take myself to Lemon Beach Restaurant, which has become my ritual. It's the same place I came with the grilled tilapia and banku last week, and the owner recognises me now. I order the same thing, and it costs about eighty cedis — the most I've spent on a meal here, but it's worth it. I sit at a table near the water, watching the fishing boats come in one by one, the lights of Elmina twinkling across the bay. The waves are louder tonight, like they know I'm leaving.
I think about the trade-offs of staying. My guesthouse in Cape Coast costs about a hundred and fifty cedis a night, and if I stay through the durbar that's another three nights, maybe four. It's not cheap, but it's not crazy either. I could go back to Accra and do my NHIS registration and the residency permit, or I could stay and see this thing through. I came to Ghana to understand something about movement and settlement. This is the closest I've felt to both at the same time.
The owner comes over with a small glass of something local — a palm wine they make in Elmina. On the house, she says. I sip it and watch the dark come down. The lights of Cape Coast Castle glow softly across the water. I remember what the lecturer told me about the lagoon being allowed to breathe. I feel like I'm learning that too. A day of empty nets and smoked fish and coffee on a hill, and it all counts.
Tomorrow I'll go to the durbar. I'll stand in the crowd with everyone else and watch the chiefs pass, and I'll try to understand the history of this place all over again. The two-year plan has shifted, but that's the point. You can't plan for everything. You can only show up, pay attention, and sometimes let the tide carry you a little.
Everything I've talked about today — the fishing trip, the market prices, the café, the festival details — it's all in the episode notes if you want to find it. For now, the sea is right there, and I've got one more night in this town. I'm going to listen to it until I fall asleep.