Walking down the dark, slippery concrete ramp - sliding your feet in front of you to feel the way - you can't help but imagine how the captives must have felt. Chained, separated from their families, sick, tired and terrified, they were forced into the unknown.

"You are entering the male slave dungeon," said the man leading our group.

Visiting Cape Coast Castle offers a chilling history lesson. © 2000 Tim Zielenbach/Contact Press Images

Ten of us - Ghanaians and Americans - followed guide Kingsley Kofi Yeboah as he walked through Cape Coast Castle, perched on the Atlantic Ocean. During our travels between towns where CARE works, we stopped at the castle, a vestige of the slave trade that scarred West Africa.

For the Europeans who lived there, Cape Coast Castle offered a magnificent view, with spectacular sunsets, a cool breeze and waves lapping the shore all night. Directly below the residents' bedrooms, thousands of slaves suffered and died. The ones who lived were shipped to the other side of the earth.

The male dungeon, roughly half the size of a tennis court, held up to 1,000 men at a time. On the cold stone wall, Yeboah outlined with his finger the regions from which the slaves were stolen, including areas we had visited. Some were forced hundreds of miles - often undernourished, barefoot and carrying children - to Cape Coast.

Its picturesque setting belies the castle's terrible past. © 2000 Tim Zielenbach/Contact Press Images

The castle, begun by the Swedes in 1652, changed hands five times before being captured by the British in 1665. For the next 211 years, it was the headquarters of Britain's operations in West Africa.

At the height of the slave trade, in 1700, more than 650,000 slaves were exported from the Gold Coast to the Americas. England abolished slavery in 1807, but demand from the Americas fueled informal slave trade until 1865. Estimates vary and are controversial, but historians estimate that as many as 28 million Africans were forcibly removed from central and western Africa as slaves.

The castle's museum described the legacy of slavery: "Contacts with Europe have left an indelible mark on Ghana. Today, the history of the slave trade remains a shadow of this contact that will never be forgotten, and never should it be dismissed."

Carved in stone: a tragic chapter in Ghana's past. © 2000 Tim Zielenbach/Contact Press Images

A section on the African diaspora highlighted people like Soujourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Bob Marley, Jesse Jackson, Muhammad Ali, Stevie Wonder, Duke Ellington and Angela Davis. The last wall was blank, save for a quote from black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey: "No one knows when the hour of Africa's redemption cometh. It is in the wind. It is coming. One day like a storm, it will be here. When that day comes, all of Africa will stand together."

The coconut trees and the turrets protecting the castle provided an oddly picturesque setting. As the sun set, Yeboah led us through the "Door of No Return" to the ramp where slaves boarded the "floating coffins" - ships bound for the Americas.

"This was the setting for one of the most gruesome incidents in the history of humanity," he said.

Not half a block away, with the turrets still in view, dozens of boys played soccer on a football field on the coast. Their shouts, coupled with the sounds of women cooking, street vendors and children coming home from school, captured the daily routine of Cape Coast. With some 30 slave castles along the Ghanaian coast, the past is never far removed from the present.