We did it!
We just touched back down in the States after the Hood Exchange’s first ever trip to Ghana. I couldn’t have dreamed of a better group. We had a cohort of four formerly-incarcerated young men (three had never been out of the US and one had only flown on an airplane twice). We also had an incredible accompaniment team, composed of a therapist / social worker, a formerly-incarcerated activist / mentor, an entrepreneur, a cultural anthropologist, and a cinematographer / revolutionary. All Black. All magic.
We toured Ghana’s capital city (Accra), including W.E.B. Du Bois’ home and final resting place and the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park. We visited the Cape Coast Castle, one of the many dungeons in western Africa colonizers used to house and begin to psychologically break Africans before shipping them to the Americas and into slavery. There we explored dark, cave-like cells as we stood on the literal human waste of our ancestors, still caked onto the structure’s original brick floors.
Later we visited the Nkyinkyim Museum, an open-air space in the farmlands of Ada, with breathtaking sculptures honoring African history and heritage. One highlight was a site featuring hundreds of cement heads, cast from the faces of real museum visitors and made to resemble and honor the Africans bought and sold into slavery. Poetically, at the center of this space is a pond, symbolizing the Middle Passage. The pond has fish in it but no one put them there and no one feeds them . . . and yet, there they are . . . surviving. Just like the many of us today living in environments not conducive to our survival. And yet . . . here we are.
We also met with an herbalist and therapist who both use local plants and talk therapy to heal their community. We rested and rhode horses on the beach; took a traditional, Ghanaian cooking class; crept across rickety bridges strung between trees 100 feet above the ground; spent a day with formerly-incarcerated locals and a leading non-profit supporting people during and after their time in prison; and experienced Ghana’s rich nightlife (two of our cohort members, both artists, even performed some of their original songs in a club).
It’s hard to reduce to words what this journey has meant. While many in our group had never met each other before this month, we returned home as family. We spent the last week laughing hysterically. We cried as people admitted out loud, for the first time, struggles with their own mental health. Some spoke about having just lost family to violence. We’ve held each other in the pain of seeing where our people were kidnapped, brutalized, raped, and murdered. We had heated debates about the state of Ghana’s infrastructure, the difference between African and American Blacks, the possibility of abolition, and whether reparations would ever be “enough.”
During our final group dinner, one person said “I can honestly say I’ve developed a love for every single one of you.” Some expressed how this experience was “life changing” while one young man revealed this trip came right on time, at a moment when he was questioning his own worth.
I’m still wrapping my mind around everything we’ve just done together. I hope one day I will find the words to describe the fullness and immense gratitude I’m feeling, even as I type this. I’m excited to see how we can build on this moment (after some much-needed rest) to show what is possible when Black people have the resources, time, freedom, and space to be with and fall in love with each other and ourselves.
So, what’s next? First, we all need to sleep and hydrate. Capitalism encourages us to forget that rest is just as important (if not moreso) than productivity. Then we are going to continue pouring into ourselves and each other. Those who came to Ghana are already busy in the group chat brainstorming ways to support each other's business ventures and connect socially. We will be officially celebrating our journey next week during a Welcome Home dinner for trip attendees and their loved ones. The Hood Exchange will also be working closely with our cinematographer to produce a documentary about the experience by this fall. We’re also excited about the possibility of collaborating with members of this trip’s accompaniment team to organize similar experiences for additional cohorts.
In the meantime, you can learn more about our inaugural cohort and see initial photos (with so much more to come) from our time in Ghana here.
This trip was made possible through grant funding from the University of Maryland Baltimore’s Global Learning for Health Equity Network and a very generous private donor. Planning support was also provided by Birthright AFRICA.