I had the privilege of studying abroad in Ghana for five weeks through the Pitt in Ghana program! The experienced was unmatched; I learned more in Ghana from the people I met during those weeks than I have in classrooms on campus. I am eternally grateful to everyone who made it possible that I could attend the trip.
The first week was definitely an adjustment period. I believed those stories parents told their children about having to walk miles to class and back were all exaggerated lies. That was until I found out my walk to class was 1.4 miles each day. The material I was learning in my two classes, West African Performing Arts and West African Cultures and Societies, was interesting and new. We had various guest professors visit and present on information specific to West Africa or Ghana. Our first guest lecture focused on African Traditional Religion, a topic I had never studied formally. He discussed the many aspects of ATR and how it is still practiced today, even though the majority of Ghanaians are Christian or Muslim. This aligns with Cultural Dynamics by how the Ghanaians integrate traditional religious practices into the introduced religions and having to balance the two within their societies.
One of our programs leads invited us to a Palm Wine Festival put on by his Hi-Life musical group. There were about 15 of them, all playing various instruments, sitting in a circle. In traditional times, this circle was where stories were told, political issues were brought up, village events were discussed, and entertainment was performed. That day, they told a story of Anansi and discussed the political matter surrounding a Ghanaian soccer team official and bribery. It was a bit difficult to follow since another tradition during these gatherings is to conduct business only in the traditional language. Either way, it was lovely to be apart of the festival and to see a tradition specific to Ghana up close.
The most transformative experience of my life took place when we visited the Elmina Slave Castle. Be it that my family is from Cameroon, and the way public school education in most parts of America is, there is no subject I’ve been taught more than slavery. I’ve learned about it at every level of my education, including in many of the Africana Studies courses I’ve taken at Pitt. I’ve heard my grandparents and parents talk about colonization and what it did to our country. I’ve heard and read a great deal, yet I was still grossly unprepared for the visit.
Prior to going to the slave castle, we stopped at an Ancestral Walk. Here was an actual path enslaved Africans from as far as present-day Cameroon were made to walk. The tour guide told us to remove our shoes so we could feel the Earth, feel what people were made to feel. I was stepping on blood, on lives, on history. He brought us to a still river where enslaved Africans were meant to take their “last bath” before walking thousands of miles to the slave castle. As I stepped in the water and poured our libations for my ancestors, I still could not wrap my head around what exactly I was experiencing.
When we drove up to the slave castle, we met a somber atmosphere. It was as if the entire place demanded to be paid attention to and respected. We walked in over the drawbridge; I looked down at what used to be a moat and unintentionally started to imagine what the place looked like when it had just finished being built. We entered and met our tour guide. I stepped on the same stones where my ancestors were mercilessly beaten, raped, tortured, starved. I walked through the hallways of the churches the Europeans built and held services above the heads of my dying family members. I stood in the dungeons and I could not believe the smell was so pungent. It was too strong and indescribable. If tragedy had a smell, it would be whatever aroma was still lingering in the slave dungeons after all of these centuries. Then I slid my body through the Door of No Return and felt an instant wave of nausea. It was all too much.
Race, racism, and slavery have always been difficult topics for me. Growing up, I lived in an area with multifaceted diversity. This leads me to understand racism as an ancient practice connected to boring history classes and the ever so tiring slavery unit. I ascribed to the notion that racism was dead and people bringing it up was what kept it alive. After I got to college, I realized how naïve I was in assuming all areas of the world resembled my hometown. It seemed like every day of my freshman year I was confronted with racism from my peers, my professors, or random people on the street. I went from ignorant to furious in the blink of an eye. My anger fueled me and I wanted to abolish anything and everything that remotely related to systematic oppression, even if it meant incorrectly attacking first and asking questions later. After having walked through the castle, on the path, in the dungeons, my view of the entire topic has shifted yet again.
I would tell 16 years old me that there is pain, living and breathing pain, that will forever be attached to slavery and its after effects. I would enlighten me on the fact that racism cannot be dead because there is still blood that has seeped into the soil and sprouted trees that people have not yet atoned for. I would tell 19 years old me to read and research as much as I can, and to not let my anger distance myself from the pain. It is the living and breathing pain that makes the desire to correct the injustices authentically, or else we run the risk of doing to others what was done to us. After standing at the highest point of the slave castle and looking out at the beautiful and vast sea, I felt oddly comforted in my hurt. I knew I could take this memory, augment it with what I have been studying in the Cultural Dynamics concentration, and continue to develop a holistic view of blackness, identity, and cultural duality within a person. I would use it all to also develop a deeper understanding of myself.
As a part of our West African Performing Arts class, we visited went to Club +233 and witnessed the amazement that was an all-female, Ghanaian jazz band, as well as watching an authentic Ghanaian play in the National Theatre. I thoroughly enjoyed those excursions as I was able to apply what I had been learning in my class the weeks prior. I noticed how the elements of the play aligned with practices from the Palm Wine Festival. I reveled in the empowerment that was a group of talented women performing covers of songs with a cultural twist to it and immediately connected them to women scholars I studied in my Woman of Africa and the African Diaspora course at Pitt.
My study abroad experiences also confronted me with self-consciousness due to my surroundings. When I am on campus at Pitt, I would stick out because I am Black. I would be the only Black person in my classes, causing me to be extra aware of how I presented myself since I knew I was the representative for my entire race in those spaces. Coming to Ghana, being surrounded by people with the same skin color as me, I had this unrealistic expectation that I would automatically fit in and be embraced. It was then that I realized I viewed Black people of the world how we are often times viewed in America: as a homogenous group. This was a huge reality check considering I place diversity and inclusion at the forefront of everything I do at the University. Diversity and inclusion are more than just race; it is cultural, financial, spiritual, and everything else that makes up a person, which is another aspect imperative to Cultural Dynamics.
This study abroad experience enabled me to witness a different culture up close, as well as providing the opportunity to learn from people living in an opposite culture than my own and being able to apply my studies to their lives.
