0:07

2019 was an important year for

0:09

the African diaspora, the 400th anniversary

0:11

of the arrival in the US

0:13

of the first enslaved Africans. Most

0:16

were brought from Ghana, and in 2019,

0:19

the Ghanaian government announced the Year of

0:21

Return, a campaign to

0:23

encourage descendants of enslaved Africans

0:25

to visit and reconnect.

0:28

Since then, something like a million African

0:30

Americans have made the trip, and many

0:32

have decided to stay. They're

0:35

fed up with America, with

0:37

police brutality and entrenched racism,

0:39

and they're ready to build new lives in

0:41

the homeland that was stolen from their ancestors.

0:45

I'm Anne Strangehamps. Today on To the Best

0:47

of Our Knowledge, coming home

0:49

to Ghana. Wisconsin

0:57

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vary based on how you buy. best

2:00

of our knowledge in industry. Today's

2:07

show begins with a reveal and

2:10

a conversation between two friends. So,

2:18

um, Robert, do you want

2:20

to, do you want to be visual or do you want to shut

2:22

it off? Hey, no, we can leave mine

2:24

on. I'm cool. As long as that's, you know, whatever. Charles

2:29

Monroe Kane is our producer and Robert Hansard

2:31

is his friend. So

2:34

I have this idea of you just saying, Hey, my name is

2:36

Robert Hansard. And you say what you want to say. All

2:38

right. It's pretty personal and I don't want

2:41

to either talk or interrupt

2:43

you till you're like done. Yeah.

2:45

That makes sense. Yes. Robert's

2:49

a professor of history at Columbia college

2:52

Chicago. He's the author of

2:54

identity, spirit, and freedom in the Atlantic

2:56

world, the Gold Coast and the African

2:58

diaspora. All

3:01

right. So, uh, I'll just start in. All

3:04

right. Hello

3:09

everyone. My name is Robert

3:11

Hansard. I'm actually a

3:13

African-American and West African and

3:16

what's called the Atlantic world

3:18

historian. I

3:20

go back and forth to Africa quite a bit. But,

3:23

uh, I guess I'm

3:25

here to reveal my DNA results.

3:29

It's from 23andMe. So here's

3:31

a ancestry. That's

4:00

it. So

4:05

Robert, what

4:07

were the results? Well,

4:10

let's see. They

4:15

say using this

4:17

category Sub-Saharan, I'm

4:20

88.9% from the Sub-Saharan

4:22

region of Africa. And

4:26

like the major markers, I guess

4:28

you call them are Nigeria is

4:30

like 32%. So that's not

4:32

a big surprise. Ghana is 25%. The

4:35

next highest, that was

4:38

interesting. The

4:40

Senegambia, like 4.2%. So

4:44

that's interesting too. About

4:47

10% European, British

4:49

and Irish, which that's interesting because I've

4:52

been kind of investigating that. They

4:54

have this thing, I guess, that

4:57

says where you have connections, what

4:59

they call ancestry composition in the

5:01

Caribbean. And mine goes straight to

5:03

Jamaica, straight to, you know,

5:05

these places that I've always talked

5:07

about that had all these maroon resistances

5:11

with different folks at Khan, being

5:14

the primary group. Like

5:16

the 25% from the Gold Coast

5:18

is an interesting number, I guess.

5:23

Was there anything you were afraid of? That

5:28

I was gonna be all white? No,

5:33

I'm just kidding. I'm just

5:36

kidding. I hope I have a

5:38

spinning body by saying that I'm just joking there. I

5:43

don't know. Nothing really. It kind

5:45

of revealed to some degree what I already kind of

5:47

knew from looking at. Right, right. You know, one of

5:49

the things I would like to do is look at

5:52

the Slave Trade Database because I just want to look

5:54

at how those numbers come out. These

5:56

are these numbers. You've

5:58

been going back and forth to Khan. for 20 years. Some

6:01

of those time frames you've been there a long time.

6:03

Have you ever thought about moving there? Oh yeah, I'm

6:06

definitely, yeah, I'm considering moving as other

6:08

folks are. But more because of the

6:10

maybe long, long, long term connections I've

6:13

been building there. So,

6:16

yeah, something in the context. So,

6:23

a few things. A

6:25

lot of people take DNA ancestry tests, but

6:27

for some, like for Hubbard, the

6:30

results can spur a set of questions

6:32

that are profound and pragmatic. What

6:35

would it be like to return to

6:38

the place your ancestors came from? Not

6:40

just to visit, but to actually move

6:43

to Ghana. Well, more and more

6:45

people are doing just that. So

6:48

when Robert made another trip to Ghana recently,

6:51

Charles Monroe Kane went along too. Well,

6:56

the Ghanaian government called 2019 the year of return. It's

6:59

the 400th anniversary of

7:01

the first slaves that came to America.

7:04

And they wanted to get people to come visit, come

7:06

to Ghana, you know, and it worked.

7:09

Many, many people came to visit. But

7:11

what I don't think Ghana was ready for, that a lot

7:13

of those people came to visit a couple years later, a

7:15

year later, were like, I'm sick of

7:17

racism in America. I'm sick of George Floyd getting

7:19

killed. I'm sick of all of it. So

7:22

since 2019, thousands of

7:24

African Americans have moved and made them under

7:27

30 single. It's quite interesting, actually.

7:30

Ever since W.E.B. Du Bois settled

7:32

in Accra, Ghana has been

7:34

a kind of symbolic home for African

7:37

Americans. In 1957, when

7:39

Ghana became a country, it became the leader

7:42

of Pan-African movement. As we get Marcus Garvey,

7:44

like you said, W.E.B. Du Bois, a lot

7:46

of people, African Americans, especially intellectuals, associated

7:49

themselves with being in Ghana. Partly

7:51

because Ghana was the place where the

7:53

European slave trade had been centered. Yeah,

7:56

I mean, it's one of the most powerful places I've ever seen

7:58

in my life. I went to the main castle where the

8:00

slaves came through, almost a million slaves went through

8:02

there, through the British Castle. And

8:05

it's just horrible when you go there. And I think

8:07

I can imagine being African American and

8:09

coming on a visit to Ghana and having

8:11

the same slave tour that I got and

8:13

how that would feel. That's

8:15

where your ancestors are from. They came from

8:17

that door, the door of no return,

8:20

it's called. And that's where they went out. And that's

8:22

how they got to America. So I can really imagine

8:24

the power of that if you were just visiting it.

8:27

So you put together this entire hour

8:29

looking at what it's like for African

8:31

Americans who are repatriating

8:34

to Ghana and what it's like for

8:36

Ghanaians to be welcoming African Americans. Tell

8:39

me about the first piece we're going to hear. So

8:42

I asked this guy, he's a Ghanaian

8:44

journalist, very famous, his name is Ridwan

8:46

Kareem Dina Osman. And he asked him

8:48

just to track some rural African Americans

8:51

down for me and interview them about

8:53

how they're settling in. Welcome.

8:59

Thank you. You're welcome. Thank

9:01

you. In this thick forest

9:03

up the hill of Ikwia

9:05

Pimampong, a town in

9:07

southern Ghana, Kueku Asantu Maroon

9:09

Asare lives in a one

9:11

bedroom house, the only

9:13

structure in this vast forest. Are you

9:15

from Ghana? Where are you from? Yeah,

9:18

I'm Ghanaian. Oh good, good, good. I'm

9:20

near Ghana needs to see. A

9:24

drive to this place is breathtaking as

9:27

the car meanders its way through

9:29

winding roads. We got a

9:31

lot of birds. It

9:33

looks like you're fascinated by your own location.

9:36

Yeah, this is what it's all

9:38

about. To be in

9:41

tune with nature. I see. And for

9:43

me, I'm in tune,

9:45

like I can hear everything. Born

9:51

in the US, Asantu Maroon

9:53

Asare now calls Ghana home.

9:57

He moved from Florida to Ghana to

9:59

settle permanent. a year ago. Maroon says

10:03

racism and repeated police attacks

10:06

on black Americans forced him out of

10:08

the US. He made

10:11

the final decision to relocate to

10:13

Ghana after the murder of African

10:16

American George Floyd by the police

10:18

in Minnesota. Before

10:20

George Floyd, you had Ammar R.

10:23

Berry. When the list

10:25

goes on, the last

10:27

straw for me was George Floyd. So what I've

10:29

seen as anomalies

10:33

was just normal for the system.

10:37

So at that point I told myself I would

10:40

leave and I would go where the system is

10:42

different. And the

10:44

system has been different since the 42

10:46

year road moved to Ghana.

10:52

You know when you leave America, everything

10:55

is white. You pass

10:57

through customs, it's dominated by

10:59

white people. You pass through the airport,

11:01

it's dominated by white people. And

11:04

when you arrive in Ghana and you

11:06

get off that plane and

11:08

you don't see no white people. And

11:11

then you tell yourself this is where I should

11:13

be. A place where

11:15

the people look like me. Even

11:18

if you don't know the vehicle, you still feel a

11:21

connection. Maroon's quest

11:23

to settle in Africa actually

11:25

started years ago when he

11:27

traced his ancestral roots through

11:30

the genetic test 23andMe. It

11:33

showed me that my roots were Nigerian

11:35

and Ghanaian. That a

11:37

high percentage of my roots were

11:39

from Nigeria and

11:42

Ghana. And that

11:46

piqued my interest to the degree

11:48

that I need to go visit. And

11:51

to reflect his African identity, he

11:53

changed his name. Now I

11:56

use a Santu, Kweku,

11:59

Maroon, Asari. That

12:02

gives you more history about who I

12:04

really am instead of Andre St. Patrick

12:07

Lewis. Aside

12:14

from the name change, he's now falling

12:16

in love with Ghanaian music. For

12:20

instance, the song by popular

12:22

Ghanaian rapper, Sakhadee. You

12:31

know the strength of a woman. Ha ha,

12:33

strength of a woman, Sakhadee. Singing

12:36

that one. Oh, I see. You love the

12:38

strength of a woman by Sakhadee. Yes,

12:41

yes. You know how to sing that? A

12:44

little bit. Okay, so just give me a bit of

12:46

that. Wow. I

12:48

take my last city and I bet on you.

12:50

Ha ha ha. Of

12:56

course, moving to a different continent is

12:59

a major life change. So

13:01

what will sustain Maroon in Ghana? Real

13:05

purpose of becoming

13:07

an ancestor that fights for black

13:09

power, black liberation and black protection.

13:13

If you have that as a foundation, then

13:15

you have a real purpose in life. This

13:21

country is one of thousands of African

13:23

Americans who have made Ghana their new

13:25

home. Since

13:28

2019, Ghana's call for people in

13:30

the African diaspora to return

13:33

home has led many black Americans

13:35

to settle in this West African

13:37

country. About

13:42

20 miles from Maroon's home is to another

13:45

small town in southern Ghana. Here,

13:48

I meet a 28-year-old poet

13:50

and writer, Yellieni Sansori, in

13:53

her apartment. Born

13:56

and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, she's

13:58

now a permanent gay woman. Yellien resident.

14:01

Hello. Hi, Ellie. Yes.

14:04

Is that her name? Yes. Nice

14:06

to meet you. Nice to meet you. Finally

14:08

up here. Yes. You have

14:10

such a nice place. Thank you.

14:13

Yeah. So, my name

14:15

is Nakia Brown. That's the name of my

14:17

mother and my father gave me. And

14:19

since I've come to Ghana, they've

14:22

named me Yellieni, which

14:24

is a name from the north,

14:27

and it means speak once. So,

14:29

the importance of being brief,

14:31

of being proverbial, of being very

14:33

important when you speak. So,

14:36

Yellieni, that's what people call me here

14:38

now. Yellieni Sansori

14:40

has been living in Ghana for almost

14:42

one and a half years. She's

14:45

not only found a home here,

14:47

but also love. She

14:50

married Eganean and is now

14:52

pregnant. Yes. I am

14:54

currently eight months pregnant with my

14:56

first daughter. Sansori

14:59

says the thought of having a

15:01

child in Ghana gives her enormous

15:04

joy. I envision my

15:06

child just being able to have a

15:08

stronger sense of identity. So,

15:10

here I envision her being able to be

15:12

more like, at least starting

15:15

off, my natural hair is beautiful, my

15:17

natural skin is beautiful, I

15:19

come from an abundant and glorious people.

15:22

In essence, her journey to Ghana

15:24

started years ago. She

15:26

experienced a lot of racism and

15:28

trauma in the U.S., going

15:30

back to her history class in

15:32

high school. They omit African

15:35

history, and they tell you your history. They started

15:38

from the point of slavery,

15:40

basically. They began, their story

15:42

of Africans to the Europeans is when we

15:45

picked you up on the boat and took

15:47

you to America. When

15:50

I started to really realize that I would be alive

15:52

too, which was probably around like when I was 18 or 19

15:54

years old, I'm 28 now, I will as well. You

16:01

know, this history is

16:03

not true. Then

16:06

the series of police brutalities

16:08

against African Americans got her

16:10

thinking a lot more about

16:12

where she wanted to live. And some

16:15

of us are like, no, I'm not

16:17

going to stay here and be oppressed and be subjected

16:19

to this. I'm worth

16:21

more than that. I deserve it. I

16:23

have a vision of something greater that I can do. She

16:26

then took the bold decision to move

16:29

to Ghana. Here, she

16:31

realized life was totally different.

16:34

Once I was passing, you know, a police and

16:36

the police was like giving me a high five.

16:39

And I've never gave a

16:41

high five to a police officer in my life. I've been

16:44

alive 28 years. I

16:46

wouldn't even feel comfortable touching one.

16:49

Like keep distance, first and foremost.

16:52

That type of stuff, it makes you like

16:54

angry just to know it

16:57

doesn't have to be like that. But

17:00

Ghana also has its own

17:02

challenges. The country is

17:04

struggling to deal with corruption, not

17:07

to mention its struggling economy. Currently,

17:10

there is high inflation as

17:12

the cost of food and

17:14

fuel, and almost everything is

17:16

skyrocketing. You are

17:18

angry when you come to Ghana,

17:20

a developing country. Conduct

17:23

anger for seniors. You

17:25

have to also have a passion for your people. When

17:28

you have a vision of victory,

17:30

of I want to see my

17:32

people win, that's

17:35

going to sustain you over a long period

17:37

of time. She is

17:39

also optimistic that as more black

17:41

people leave the US to settle

17:44

in African countries like Ghana, it

17:47

could also help speed up the

17:49

development of the continent. and

18:00

has a lot of them not connected to history,

18:02

but you have to have people willing to work

18:04

through those troubles to get to a greater

18:06

vision. Being in America,

18:08

you're only gonna be able to

18:10

be tolerated, and that's not the

18:12

vision, I don't think, of people's survival themselves,

18:14

is being in a place where you're

18:16

tolerated only. The vision is

18:19

for people to be free and independent and

18:21

to have control be self-sufficient over

18:23

themselves. ["Abrigada

18:26

from South Africa"] ["Abrigada

18:28

from South Africa"] ["Abrigada

18:30

from South Africa"] ["Abrigada

18:32

from South Africa"] ["Abrigada

18:34

from South Africa"] ["Abrigada

18:36

from South Africa"] A few

18:38

miles away from Sansori's residence is

18:41

the home of 75-year-old Mawiya Kanbong. It

18:45

is an eco-friendly environment. She

18:48

uses solar energy to power her

18:50

house, and also has a

18:52

farm where she grows what she eats.

18:55

About eight months ago, she moved

18:57

from North Carolina to

19:00

settle permanently in Ghana. I

19:03

could see the beauty here. I

19:05

could see the naturalness here. It's

19:07

not that Ghana's without problems, because

19:10

there's, you know, ethnic prejudice and

19:13

some corruption and all, but I could

19:15

see that everywhere I turned, there were black

19:17

people doing everything. And

19:21

so mine was not a last-door. Mine

19:24

was an intent to come. It

19:27

is not Kanbong's first time in Ghana. She

19:29

visited the country a couple of times in the

19:31

1970s, but

19:34

this time she came with her

19:36

husband, Kamal Kanbong, her husband for

19:39

over 40 years. Kanbong

19:42

says the relocation of many

19:44

black Americans like herself is

19:46

sending a strong message to

19:48

America. The world is

19:50

changing. This is no longer

19:52

going to be a world for imperialism.

19:55

It's a black man's time, and

19:57

we're rising all over the globe. wherever

20:00

we are, we're going to be great. Ghana

20:08

hosts people of the African diaspora

20:10

who relocate to Ghana can help

20:12

steer its development by bringing new

20:15

skills and talent as

20:17

well as American entrepreneurialism. Two

20:20

years ago, the government said it

20:22

would allocate about 500 acres of land

20:26

for African Americans moving

20:28

to Ghana, carving out enough

20:30

space for about 1,500 families

20:34

to settle. The

20:36

government also said it will

20:38

facilitate citizenship for those who wish

20:41

to become Ghanaians. Back

20:45

in the home of Song Sori, she

20:48

has a word of advice for anyone

20:50

planning to settle in Ghana. It's

20:55

not just about wanting

20:57

to escape America, but it should be

20:59

also about how you want to build

21:01

Africa. So if you're just

21:03

thinking about escaping, then you want

21:05

to end up with a question because there's also issues

21:07

that might want to escape in Ghana. While

21:12

some are skeptical that this

21:14

move by black Americans to

21:16

Ghana won't stand the test

21:18

of time, Kambong and Maroon

21:20

disagree. What

21:23

will sustain me is just being that

21:25

close to nature, being with family, being

21:27

with ancestors, you know,

21:29

who dwell here. And

21:32

those are the things that matter for me. So

21:36

Ghana is for me, I hope

21:40

to achieve more

21:44

in the values,

21:47

African values that I have now than

21:50

that which I had in the U.S. Hopefully

21:52

give birth to the

21:54

next Kwame and Krumis, to the

21:57

next Marcus Kavi. Rydwan

22:14

Karim Dini Osman is a journalist and

22:17

news anchor based in Ghana. He

22:19

won the 2021 International Center for Journalists

22:22

Award for his COVID-19 reporting. Also

22:25

he took some great photos of the people he talked with

22:27

for this piece. You can check

22:29

them out at ttbook.org. Coming

22:38

up, Charles Monroe Kane is on the road

22:40

in Ghana with two historians. For

22:43

him, they say, that is rubbish. That's the

22:45

name they call it, isn't it? And then

22:47

they know that they say, once that rubbish has

22:50

come, it's going to be contaminated

22:53

and planted. In

22:56

his book, African Indigenous Systems, there's a place in there

22:58

where I describe in detail my first time eating a

23:01

consummary stew. And here's no lie, every time I go

23:03

somewhere, that's the first thing I'm asking for. Especially if

23:05

it's good. And I don't like, you know, sometimes they

23:07

make it as a small size when they have a

23:09

big meal. But when they make it as

23:11

the main big meal, oh, watch out,

23:13

it's delicious, it's delicious. I can eat today,

23:15

you know? And even now, even now, it's

23:18

good, it's good. For

23:24

the best of our knowledge from Wisconsin

23:26

Public Radio and

23:30

PRX. We're

23:35

talking about the current wave

23:37

of African Americans moving, repatriating

23:39

to Ghana. And Charles, you

23:41

were telling us earlier that the Ghanaian

23:43

government actually jumpstarted this in

23:45

2019 with their year of return campaign.

23:48

Charles Yeah, I watched some of the ads.

23:50

They absolutely just grabbed your heart. If you're

23:52

African American, I said, come home. Ghana

23:55

spends a lot of money and time and

23:57

effort to maintain traditional culture. I

23:59

met this. man named Prince Marfaux, he's a

24:01

cultural director, but there are multiple cultural

24:04

directors that are like ministers of culture.

24:06

He was ready to critique what

24:08

the government's doing, what the government should do

24:11

more of. He's also aware

24:13

that other people in the government see this as an

24:15

economic boom, right? Hey, they're going to come in, they're

24:18

going to start nonprofits, they're going to start businesses, they're

24:20

going to pay taxes. He sees

24:22

that as a tension of what is the role

24:24

of the African American coming in. Is it economic

24:27

or is it cultural? A

24:29

thing that is happening now, actually,

24:31

is a very good thing that is happening now.

24:33

Because to me, when I

24:36

look at the African American, sometimes

24:38

I ask myself, what identity do they have?

24:42

Because they don't belong there.

24:46

And if they come here and they also don't

24:48

belong here, then where do they belong to? So

24:50

it is half warming that we

24:53

have our brothers coming back. Because

24:56

this is where they belong to. Because there,

24:58

they are not seen as part of

25:00

them. It doesn't matter how many years

25:02

they've been there. They will not be

25:04

accepted there. But we, they

25:06

are brothers who have just traveled and they

25:08

are back. To me, if

25:11

we don't look at them from

25:13

that lens, as our brothers

25:15

who have just traveled and they are coming

25:17

back, and we look at them as Americans,

25:19

then we have failed in our

25:21

attempt to call them back home. I know

25:23

I should know the answer to this question,

25:25

and I don't. You work for the government. Is

25:28

there an official part of the government that sure,

25:30

Ghana can welcome them, but is there something

25:33

official to work with people to help them

25:35

understand your values better, to integrate them into

25:37

society, into your society? What

25:39

are they coming here to do? They're coming to

25:41

learn their values. They are coming to learn their history. They

25:43

are coming to learn about their culture. That's all

25:46

that they are coming to do. And that

25:48

is our work. Yeah. So

25:51

as the cultural director, would you want funding? Would

25:53

you want to have the control of African Americans

25:55

coming to educate them when they come in? Yes.

25:57

You mean we want funding? Right. the

26:00

opportunity for us to even welcome them and

26:03

then integrate them into the society. We

26:05

have the core power, we

26:07

have the entry point to all the

26:09

communities because we work closely with the

26:12

chiefs and the communities around and

26:14

we know all the values that

26:17

are within every community. And to me if

26:19

you say year of return and

26:21

you keep them in Accra, Accra

26:23

is not Ghana. Accra was just

26:25

an exit point but what

26:27

you went through, through the hinterlands,

26:30

through the forest, from the

26:32

north, so if

26:34

it is really a conscious effort to

26:36

really welcome them then they should know

26:38

their roots. And

26:40

as they move along I know with

26:43

the power of our ancestors when you get

26:46

to a community or any

26:48

part of the country that your ancestors

26:50

spread is you feel it in your

26:52

body. You automatically feel it in

26:55

your body and that's the way I belong. Because

26:57

it seems now people are just coming around their

26:59

own because they know somebody and they come here

27:01

and you don't even know they're here. Yes.

27:04

So you already started daydreaming right? If

27:07

you ran it here's what you would do and you would have

27:09

them go on the slave route down which is actually a very

27:11

good idea. Okay let's pretend you

27:13

and I are run the bringing in of

27:15

African Americans. What else would you do? What

27:17

would you do for them? I

27:20

would look for opportunity for them to invest and

27:23

feel at home because the fair

27:25

thing is if we really don't

27:27

see them as our brothers and

27:30

still see them as Americans coming. I

27:33

think when they feel at home and they stay

27:36

then they will think of staying or

27:38

maybe coming back and then

27:40

coming back will be what? What am

27:42

I coming back to Ghana to do? But

27:44

if you have a business that you set up here and

27:47

you know that you have a home maybe you

27:49

have both here then you are coming

27:51

back to look at the success of it or the filler

27:54

of it. Right. Or we need them

27:56

to bring in their investment, to bring in their

27:58

technology, to bring in their assets. to

28:00

build a country. So we need to make

28:02

the grounds feta for them to germinate. It

28:06

could be a schoolteacher, it could be a nurse,

28:08

to be a businessman, why not integrate? Bring them

28:10

in. Bring them in. As we will kill

28:12

the seed before it is even planted. My

28:15

puppy, my mommy, why

28:17

did you make your mommy? You

28:21

are a pig. My

28:25

mommy, my puppy, why

28:27

did you make your mommy? You

28:30

are a pig. Your

28:34

ancestors were slaves, period.

28:38

You are now not a slave. Let's

28:42

push that one aside. What is

28:44

the way forward? That is what I'm looking at. Rather

28:49

than repeatedly talking about the pain

28:53

that ancestors went through, and

28:57

in course of even telling their stories, some of them

28:59

can collapse. Taking

29:01

them to the dungeon and showing

29:04

them how the ancestors slept

29:07

and how they were taking through

29:09

that tunnel into their ship.

29:14

You are just reversing

29:16

the pain that they have come to

29:19

heal. There

29:21

are no historians who come and look for history.

29:24

There are just people who

29:27

have traveled and come home. If

29:37

my brother comes from a journey, I need to sit

29:39

down with my brother. Welcome.

29:42

That is our culture. So

29:45

when you come, we give you water. You

29:47

take your water. We ask you what transpired

29:49

when you went out. You

29:52

give us all the details. We also give

29:54

you what has happened in your absence. And

29:58

then we take a conclusion on it. becomes

30:00

a new model for us to move on. ["F

30:20

to a friend, a mutual friend's house, and

30:22

when we got there, there was a dance troop and

30:25

a drumming troop and singers. This

30:27

was one of the dances. And it's basically about

30:29

two fisher folks who are sitting on the beach

30:32

and they're kind of discussing if they're going to

30:34

keep fishing." A

30:41

lot of drumming you hear, the male and the

30:43

female drum, well this is two men, two different

30:45

drums kind of competing for who's going to

30:47

go back out and fish again. And then we had fish.

30:51

It

30:55

was just a very powerful thing and it brought me

30:57

back to what he was saying about culture. I'm

31:00

a white dude, but I can imagine

31:02

what that would feel like coming from, say, the

31:04

South Side of Chicago when you're 28 years old

31:06

and you move down your own and you get

31:08

to have the experience I just had, it would

31:11

be very powerful instead of being in a craw in

31:13

an eye. Coming

31:18

up, one reason Ghana is

31:20

encouraging African Americans to resettle there is

31:22

to remedy a problem that's plagued many

31:24

African nations for years, the

31:26

brain drain to the West. It's

31:29

to the best of our knowledge from

31:31

Wisconsin Public Radio and

31:35

PRX. African

31:40

Americans may be moving to Ghana in

31:42

increasing numbers, but that is

31:44

nothing compared to the number of Ghanaian-born

31:46

Africans who migrate every year to Europe

31:48

and the U.S. This

31:50

is a familiar story for Africans with

31:52

professional ambitions. Once you're qualified

31:54

in your career, you have a choice.

31:57

Stay in your native country or pursue

31:59

a career. high-profile career in North America

32:01

or Europe. For Ado

32:04

Kwaisan, it wasn't that much of a

32:06

question. Born and raised in

32:08

Ghana, he grew up in a family of

32:10

storytellers. As he told Steve

32:12

Paulson, his love of books led to

32:14

his career as a renowned literary scholar

32:16

at Stanford and past president

32:18

of the African Studies Association. My

32:21

father of a weekend, of a Saturday,

32:24

there would be food and he would

32:26

invite kids in the neighborhood to come

32:29

and he would tell us regalers with folk

32:31

tales. And he never

32:33

repeated the same story. He often

32:36

said that it was an insult to a

32:38

story to be repeated the same way. But

32:40

you have to have a knowledge of a

32:42

lot of folk tales to be able to

32:44

do that. Yeah, so that's how

32:46

it started. My mother was also avid

32:49

storyteller, but had tales with city tales. She was

32:51

a trader at the market. So

32:53

she brought a lot of market stories. You

32:56

know, what today I now understand as

33:00

organizational storytelling. So stories about

33:02

the market actually as an

33:04

organization. So the anecdote

33:08

is very important for me. The

33:10

anecdote, the detail, the anecdote,

33:12

the detail, and

33:15

the relationship in an anecdote,

33:17

detail, background, foreground. So these

33:19

were readily satisfied in literary

33:22

studies. When did you start

33:24

to realize that this is what you wanted to study?

33:27

You wanted to study literature? It was actually somewhat

33:30

by accident. My father,

33:32

like most people of his generation, wanted

33:34

me to go into the profession, wanted

33:36

me to be a lawyer. And I

33:38

was interested, in fact, I did a

33:40

year of law, but at

33:43

the time I was extremely lazy

33:45

as a young man. So

33:47

I thought that I should choose

33:49

a subject to do at university

33:52

that would allow me to spend

33:54

as much time as possible lying

33:56

down in bed and

33:59

lingling. English literature seems to be

34:01

perfect. Most

34:03

people wonder whether I'm joking, but it's actually

34:06

true. I spent a lot of time just

34:08

lounging around in bed, reading all kinds of

34:10

books, and it was magnificent. And

34:12

this was the University of Ghana? The University of

34:14

Ghana. So that's what got me to

34:17

do literature. Of course, I did a combined

34:19

honors with Arabic. But

34:21

Arabic, you could do a little bit

34:23

of it lying down. But English literature

34:25

was magnificent because it satisfied my ...

34:27

because at the time, I felt that

34:29

the highest sign

34:32

of civilization was

34:35

languageness or

34:38

leisure. The more

34:40

leisurely you could be, the sign

34:42

of civilization. This was a kind

34:44

of ridiculous romanticized idea. So

34:47

when you were becoming a literary scholar

34:49

in college and maybe once you went

34:51

off to graduate school at the University

34:53

of Cambridge, were you mainly

34:55

reading books by Westerners or by

34:58

Africans? Well, it was varied. The

35:01

education, the undergraduate curriculum at the

35:03

University of Ghana, which is what I

35:05

did my undergraduate, it

35:07

was a very traditional English department.

35:10

The reading was varied

35:12

but not dissimilar to

35:15

the kind of period, paper immersion that

35:17

you would find in any tradition. It

35:19

was very completely traditional. So

35:22

then you went off to the University of Cambridge to get your

35:24

PhD. And of course,

35:27

England was one of the colonizers

35:29

of Ghana for centuries. And

35:33

you ended up becoming a scholar

35:35

of post-colonial literature. And I guess

35:37

I'm wondering if Cambridge was a

35:39

good place to investigate this subject.

35:41

Well, at the time, it didn't

35:43

seem like a good place. In

35:46

fact, I was the first African to have been

35:48

admitted to the faculty of English to do a

35:51

PhD in like 30 years. Now

35:53

this also meant that I was an

35:55

object of curiosity. You know,

35:58

for that I had many times. to

36:00

answer the question whether Africa had literature, the

36:02

novel form is foreign and so on. So

36:05

I talk about those things all the time.

36:08

However, the one advantage that Cambridge

36:10

provided me is

36:12

that precisely because everyone

36:14

was ignorant and a little bit

36:16

confused, I could define my own

36:19

self however I wanted. So

36:22

I would think for a lot

36:24

of African scholars who go off

36:26

to a Western university and get

36:29

a PhD, the question is where you're

36:32

gonna live, where you wanna work, do

36:34

you go back to Africa or do

36:36

you go find a job at a

36:38

university in North America or Europe, was

36:41

that a big question for you? It was a

36:43

big question because when throughout my PhD, my

36:46

mind and I said this to anyone that

36:48

bothered to listen was to get my doctorate

36:50

and go back to the English department at

36:52

Lagoon with the University of Ghana and to

36:55

quote unquote shake up the department. That's all

36:57

I wanted to, I wanted to get my

36:59

degree and go back to my department and

37:01

teach them. In my final

37:03

year of my PhD, which was my year

37:05

three, my supervisor called me

37:07

in and said that I

37:09

should apply for at the time what

37:11

they call JR, this postdoc, I'll

37:13

apply for postdoc but in the Cambridge,

37:16

Oxford system they are called Junior Research

37:18

Fellowships. And when I said,

37:20

well, what does this mean? He said, no, just

37:22

apply, see what happens. By

37:24

some stroke of luck, I actually won one

37:28

they're very prestigious. And

37:30

my supervisor, I remember when I

37:32

won the GRF, the Atrocet in

37:34

Oxford, for the first time, he

37:37

actually hugged me, he had never done that

37:39

before. It was very English, very distanced, he

37:41

gave me a hug. And

37:43

then he said something that I

37:45

never forgot, he says this represents

37:47

the golden fleece of academic life

37:50

in this country. You will

37:52

understand many years from now and

37:54

it turned out to be true. Gradually

37:56

the idea to go back and shake

37:58

up my department. Ghana was

38:00

put off. So let me finish this and then

38:02

I'll go and then of course I never went

38:04

back. So you spent years

38:07

then teaching at the University of Cambridge

38:09

in England. Then you later spent another

38:12

dozen years teaching at the University of

38:14

Toronto and now you are at New

38:16

York University. So your

38:18

whole career has been at Western universities.

38:21

Do you feel torn at all? Or do you

38:23

think that's just sort of the logical thing to

38:25

do? No, I used to feel torn, especially

38:28

in the start of my career, because

38:30

the kind of, the

38:33

only way that I can find uses

38:35

hunger, the hunger for

38:37

knowledge that I myself had

38:39

growing up in Ghana and

38:42

what I know the impact of if

38:44

I had gone back what kind of

38:46

impact I would have. I

38:48

always used to think of I

38:51

need to take early retirement from the Western

38:53

system and go back home to the way

38:55

of home. However, the idea

38:57

of home also began to shift in

39:00

the sense that I began to

39:02

establish more networks of

39:05

both professional and

39:07

convivial networks outside the

39:09

country. So as strong and perhaps even stronger

39:11

than what I had at home. So I

39:13

went back to Ghana many times, I have

39:15

collaborations and so on. But

39:17

more and more my friends

39:20

were abroad and my intellectual

39:22

interlocutors were also abroad. The

39:24

idea of home began to change gradually.

39:26

So like 15 years in, I

39:30

began to see that perhaps I

39:32

had held an overly romanticized idea

39:35

of what going home might mean.

39:38

My book, Oxford Street,

39:40

was partly to address the

39:42

nostalgia for home. The

39:44

reasons why the book came up, but one

39:47

of it was what does it mean to

39:49

not be at home, but to

39:51

think of home and feel home

39:54

and homesick on a daily basis. One

39:57

of the ways to address that was to write

39:59

a book about Accra. Yeah.

40:02

Do you ever think about moving back to Ghana? All

40:04

the time. Yeah, I

40:06

think about it all the time and what it might take to

40:08

move. I would love to

40:10

move back to Ghana, have a good library

40:12

and live close to an airport. The

40:17

definition of a global citizen. Yeah, I need a good

40:19

airport. I don't care where it is, but

40:21

I need a good airport. Ojai! Ojai!

40:25

Ojai! Ojai! Ojai!

40:27

Ojai! Ojai! That's

40:32

Otto Koisan, a literary scholar who

40:35

now teaches at Stanford University. He's

40:37

the past president of the African

40:39

Studies Association, and his many books

40:42

include Oxford Street Accra, City

40:44

Life and the Itineraries of

40:46

Transnationalism. He

40:49

was talking with people.

40:56

We're talking about relationships and connections

40:58

across the African diaspora. This

41:01

is an hour our producer, Charles Monroe

41:03

Kane, put together after he spent several

41:05

weeks traveling around Ghana with a couple

41:07

of friends. Charles, there is one more bit

41:09

of tape you wanted to play for us. Can

41:11

you set it up? You

41:14

know, it's funny

41:16

you say a couple of friends. It was coming

41:18

with one friend. He was an African-American professor. You

41:20

heard him earlier in the show, Robert Hansard from

41:22

Chicago. But he has his best friend,

41:24

a Ghanaian historian. And I kind of just tagged along.

41:26

I was like the white token, they called me. It

41:28

was really cute. Wait, so Robert's African-American,

41:31

who's this other guy? Kofi

41:33

Bimpong is a Ghanaian, and

41:35

they know each other because for 20 years, they've been friends for

41:37

20 years off and on. And it was just

41:39

such a lovely thing to hang out with them. We

41:42

were drinkers. We would drink at night,

41:44

and we would drink this stuff called orogen. And

41:47

orogen is this local liquor that's

41:49

made from bark. It's very

41:51

strong. Lots of herbs and stuff in it. We

41:54

would sit around and drink orogen for hours. We're

41:58

on a bus. It was rough traveling there, by the way. in

42:00

the rainy season, I realized that the two of

42:02

them were joking around. I'm like, oh my

42:04

God, this is the microcosm of the whole reason I

42:06

came to Ghana. It's that diaspora

42:08

coming together in a beautiful way.

42:12

I had met Robert in

42:15

a little over 20 years

42:17

ago when I was a

42:19

tour guide. I had then just

42:22

completed my first degree

42:25

in history from the

42:27

University of Ghana. And

42:29

Robert had also come on tour with

42:32

this group of young men to

42:35

Ghana, basically to have an

42:37

in-depth cultural and funding of

42:40

the African. And

42:42

Robert, tell me what was it like to be here

42:44

when you guys first met? Yeah,

42:46

I mean, I've worked for an

42:48

organization in Chicago called Youth Guidance, which

42:51

was an organization that worked directly in

42:53

community schools throughout the city of Chicago

42:55

to bring programming that actually took kids

42:58

out of really very tough communities in

43:00

Chicago and exposed them to African history

43:02

and culture. I mean, used like a

43:05

rites of passage sort of process that

43:07

brought young men, as Kofi described, to

43:09

come to Africa and to

43:12

sort of go through a process of

43:14

being exposed to and learning about Africa.

43:16

Everything from naming to exposure

43:19

to the slave experience, just a range

43:21

of things. So yeah, I mean, Kofi

43:23

and I connected because we both were

43:25

very interested in similar subjects and

43:28

just over time we built a very

43:30

very strong relationship. Yes. Okay,

43:33

so it's 20 years later, I'll sit

43:35

with you guys in a bus going

43:37

to your house with your children

43:39

and he knows your

43:42

children and you have a

43:44

book and he wrote the foreword and

43:46

he's advising you on your PhD, like,

43:50

what is that like? What is that relationship like? The

43:53

relationship has been a

43:55

win-win situation in the sense that

43:58

there has been impact. that has

44:01

been achieved on both ends. And

44:03

again, when I met him, I was running

44:06

my own tour company. Again,

44:08

through his inspiration, guidance and so forth, I

44:11

have been able to and almost nearer to

44:13

the completion of my PhD as well. And

44:16

also, before I met him,

44:18

I have not even made an

44:20

attempt of writing a book. Yes.

44:23

And since I helped him in

44:25

doing his PhD and

44:28

then also helped him in writing his book, he

44:30

equally inspired me in writing my own and kept

44:32

me on my toes and so forth. And my

44:34

book is almost out now, as you can see,

44:36

I have attached copies of it. And

44:39

Robert, you've been coming here for 20 years now.

44:42

Yeah. You wrote a book. From

44:45

here, you do a lot of stuff.

44:47

You brought me here, which is, thank you,

44:49

by the way, it's been a very powerful

44:51

experience. What are you getting out of

44:53

this? You will hear honorarium

44:55

after honorarium when we talk, because there's so

44:57

much that he and I celebrate.

45:00

And yet there have been struggles with it. But

45:02

mostly what you'll hear is our celebration of our

45:04

connection. And more than anything else, the more

45:06

and more we came, the more and more I came, the more and more

45:08

I felt like I was at home. And

45:11

that has a lot to do with the fact that we

45:13

connected as brothers. We became brothers over time. And

45:16

so that's why I know his kids very well.

45:18

He knows my wife and my kids. That's

45:20

why, because we built something significant. For me,

45:23

it's very valuable. There's

45:25

something that happens to me in my spirit when I

45:27

come here every time. It doesn't matter. The

45:29

U.S. brings a negative vibe to me

45:31

sometimes, even in the airport. The aspect

45:33

of being sweated down and my passport

45:35

being pulled or separated out. And oftentimes,

45:37

there's a racial component to that. Not

45:39

every time I get all the issues

45:41

about security, but very frequently there's a

45:43

racial component to the slowing down of

45:46

things. And it builds attention. And if

45:48

you couple that with being pulled out

45:50

of a police car, you couple that

45:52

with being separated out even when you

45:54

have a PhD. You

45:56

couple that with seeing your wife or your child

45:58

being maltreated because of their race. Suddenly

46:00

to come here is a release in

46:03

many ways is a release for me It's helpful

46:05

for me. It helps me helps me in my

46:07

own spirit to get strong again Every time I

46:09

come here, I feel strong when I go home.

46:12

I can go back home now. I can go back to the

46:14

US Where

46:19

is home home is here almost here home is

46:22

here So even if I

46:24

don't end up living here even though that's part of what

46:26

I hope to do in the end This

46:28

is still my home. This is my spiritual

46:30

home. This is where this is my spiritual

46:32

home So I'm beyond the bounds of time

46:35

I'm beyond the bounds of culture and all these

46:37

other things that may say oh no you can't

46:39

go I'm not an unnecessary social political. It says

46:41

that will restrain so you can't go this that

46:43

the other There's something greater that

46:45

has happened, you know So

46:48

when I came here and I could see freedom in

46:50

this real form and I could touch it as tangible

46:52

and then write about It as a historical kind of

46:54

a thing. That was the end for me. I know

46:56

I was home then You know for both

46:58

is interesting. So obviously we've been hanging out for

47:00

three weeks in cars and

47:03

traffic jams and your home and

47:05

wonderful places and we're tired and

47:07

Eating and drinking or gene and having fun doing

47:09

everything. It's been it's really it's been an amazing

47:12

experience for me. I'm chasing And

47:17

we we've been literally like I'm

47:20

chasing a story and the story is after

47:22

Americans coming to Ghana Which is a big story a

47:24

lot of after marriage are coming Scott and then it dawns on me one

47:26

day We're all driving in a car together.

47:28

I'm like, this is it So

47:31

you guys both know that there are asked Americans moving

47:33

here all the time You

47:36

guys have the relationship already in a microcosm.

47:38

What would you say? To the

47:41

African American family moving here. What advice would

47:43

you give them? You

47:45

see if I

47:47

want to talk to an African American, like

47:49

you said Who

47:51

wants to come to? settle here

47:55

What I would say is that he should

47:57

make a decision Whether

48:00

he wants to get himself to be

48:02

fully lived in an African or

48:05

he's coming here to live just like a

48:07

visitor and go and you

48:09

could see that Robert doesn't live here like

48:11

a visitor. Over

48:14

the years when you came to

48:16

the house you saw her the way the

48:18

children and my wife and everything was with

48:20

him we fetch water together we do everything

48:23

together we eat together he stays in my

48:25

house everything that is

48:27

an African American who is

48:29

prepared to come who. So

48:33

Robert what about you what is that I mean like you said there's a

48:35

lot of people moving here you

48:37

in many ways have what do

48:39

you say to that guy listening right now I was like yeah I'm

48:41

sick of America yeah okay you're gonna move to

48:44

Africa okay dude what do you say to him I

48:46

have to quote Holly Salazzi

48:49

who said liberate before you repatriate

48:51

I have to quote him there

48:53

because you have to free yourself

48:55

first that's mainly the main things

48:57

and for us as black Americans

48:59

myself included sometimes as yeah I

49:01

just described race constraints and constricts are

49:03

sometimes that you know what you got to be able to do

49:05

let it go but I will tell

49:07

you this if you are a person who you're a black

49:09

American you're very serious about

49:12

it come here to listen don't

49:15

come here telling everything you don't

49:17

know any even if you know

49:20

everything there are doctors and

49:22

lawyers and brilliant people who have come here and

49:24

lived here but they have not been successful the

49:26

ones who have been successful have learned to listen

49:29

take your time and

49:31

understand and understand and don't come with

49:33

any don't come with a prejudice a

49:37

prejudice because those are the very

49:39

things that we are critical of the whites in

49:41

the US for doing so why

49:43

would you come here and bring all your baggage of

49:45

this and I presume this I expect this and then

49:47

other slow down listen

49:50

I have

49:53

one last question and

49:55

what about origin you

49:57

see you see You

50:00

see, in coming to

50:02

contact with Robert, I

50:05

could see that there are certain things that, though

50:07

I live here, he seems to introduce

50:09

them to me all the time. And

50:12

it is the same thing that this

50:14

drink origin came about. Because

50:17

in my relationship with

50:20

him, all the time, yes,

50:22

we always meet, we share drinks, you know,

50:24

but our commonest drink that we have had,

50:26

the beers, and the look-out, you know, simple

50:28

ones, that's the way I used to. Then

50:31

one time, I started seeing

50:33

him, exposing something we

50:35

call origin, he started ordering, origin,

50:37

origin, origin, which

50:39

was a sudden departure from the normal, you know,

50:42

beer that we always drink. So I

50:44

said, okay, let me give you a try. I

50:46

give you the try, and I said, it's a very good drink. So

50:48

I asked him, how do you think you got to know

50:50

about this? This is the best. It's more than living better

50:52

than beer. So ever since, origin

50:55

has been my best drink. And I

50:57

always tell people, do you know

50:59

who introduced me to this drink? I

51:01

have a friend from America, he came from America

51:03

to come introduce origins to me. And

51:08

so ever since, it's been my favorite drink.

51:13

That's Robert Hansard and Emmanuel Kofi

51:15

Bimpong, speaking with Charles Monroe

51:17

Kane. Kofi is a

51:20

Ghanaian historian and author of African

51:22

Indigenous Systems. Robert is

51:24

a professor of history at Columbia College

51:26

Chicago and author of Identity, Spirit and

51:29

Freedom in the Atlantic World, the Gold

51:31

Coast and the African Diaspora. This

51:38

hour was produced by Charles Monroe Kane. And Charles,

51:41

how do you want to go out? Well,

51:43

like we should with all things in our lives, I want

51:45

to go out with a song. This

51:53

song is called Akwaba by Guilty

51:56

Beats. It's interesting. This song has 11 million

51:58

listens on Spotify. and 10

52:00

million views on YouTube. Keep

52:07

in mind, the Ghana only has a population of

52:09

30 million people, so if you're driving

52:11

in cabs and hanging out in Ghana, you're going to hear this song.

52:14

But I think more important to me is

52:16

the title of the song, Aqaba. Aqaba Nimes

52:18

welcome in the tree language. Second,

52:24

so many people welcomed me in Ghana, I

52:26

want to thank them. I want to give

52:28

credit to Ridwan, Karim, Dina, Osman, Will

52:31

Geomfi, Faro Shabazz,

52:34

and Mascot, Prince Marfo, and of

52:36

course my friends and travel companions,

52:38

Kofi and Robert. And

52:41

thanks to you for listening. Be

52:44

well and join us again next time. Madasi.

52:57

BRX.