Learning to be African;
Step 1 – Immerse yourself completely within your country of origin
It all started the summer after I graduated high school, my mother had then decided that America was poison for me, poison in the form of a boyfriend I had reacquired, a decision that she did not at all agree with. So the day after I graduated I was in Ghana. And to be completely honest, my first few weeks there I absolutely detested it. There was nothing to do, no one to see, I was in this new and foreign land that didn’t even have Internet in the home I stayed! No Internet equaled no facebook, and no facebook obviously means HELL for the average 17-year-old girl.
It wasn’t until my cousin came to baby-sit me. She was a couple of years older but we were interested in the same things and she luckily knew a lot of people that I now hold very dear to me. She took me out a couple of times, we met some people and that was that. I was in love with Ghana.
Everything was just so foreign to me, and equally as amusing, and I was seeing things in my 3rd world country that I had never had the pleasure of witnessing back “home”. Ghana introduced many firsts;
- My first view of an actual gun, and not just any gun, a mother fucking AK 47. The policemen at the checkpoints just wield them like they’re fucking magic wands. Wingardium Leviosing niggas left and right.
- My first couple of a hundred club fights, I was never included in any to be sure, but I sure as hell witnessed a few, I was seeing this guy at the time who always seemed to be slapping or beating someone. I even got blood on my dress my last night out that summer. Whose blood you ask? Fuck if I know.
- Maids. Niggas to cook, clean, turn on the television, lay your bed, worship the ground you walk on and just generally feed you positive energy.
- A fucking fan base. EVERYWHERE I WENT, I commanded attention, now…. this happened in America but for some reason Ghana just isn’t used to me, will never be used to me because still to this day I know I can stop traffic, but I’ll never know why. And back then, all of this attention was detrimental to my development as a teenager, I had crap self esteem. I thought I was absolutely hideous, because I looked different, and in America different? Is otherwise known as ugly.
I had so much fun that summer I decided to put off University for a small period of time and basically trick off in Ghana for a couple of months.
My Mum paid off some lecturers to put me in their classes got me a room at a hostel and it was a go. And although a lot of negative things did crop up from those few months of enjoyment, I learnt so much, about myself and about my culture without even realizing what was happening. I was like a newborn baby learning how to crawl for the very first time. But it all came to an end, and I went back to what I called home and started University.
A year or so went by, and things at home also started to change, my mother got a job in Saudi Arabia and so we sold the house in the suburbs and I got an apartment in the city by myself, I didn’t realize how completely out of place I felt until my mother left the country. The first month or so was fine but then I realized that I was uncomfortable in this land.
I have been raised outside of Ghana my entire life, and grew up under the impression that simplicities like running water; electricity; MTV and French fries could never be attained in my country of origin. My mother had also cleverly used Ghana as the severest of all sentencing whenever I misbehaved, so my image of Ghana was a National Geographic prison filled with children whose parents had sentenced them to a life worse than death, a life without Facebook and running hot water. And so when I caught a glimpse of my land on my own terms, and then discovered that there was running water, there was facebook, there was even a strip club, it completely revolutionized my way of thinking without my noticing.
That small correction of thought completely changed my entire outlook on my existence.
And so after I was left by myself, the slow creep of unhappiness and unrest started to overtake me. I truly felt imbalanced and quite lost. Although I had already decided that come the end of the year I would leave and transfer back to a school in London I still felt…wrong. Like I had been put on the operating table and my surgeon had placed my fucking heart where my liver should be you know?
That time I was under the impression that my bout of melancholy was due to a love scorned and in turn lost, but now I know (I’ve run into the nigga a couple of times) that it wasn’t him, it couldn’t possibly have been him that made me so miserable, it was Ghana, or lack of Ghana.
It was like I had spent my whole life just eating one type of cereal every morning, never offered anything new, never wanted anything new because I was always told that anything else would poison me so I continued with the same cereal, neither hating or loving it, just surviving, and then one morning I am force fed something entirely different from the norm and the taste of it fills my mouth and lights up every single taste bud, a sensation I had never felt before.
And then once more I return to my normal cereal.
How the hell did I expect that to work?
I was sick and tired of that stale ass cereal, and even though I’d throw in a couple of strawberries here and there it didn’t affect me the way home did. Nothing touched me; I was filled to the very brim with apathy.
I just didn’t care. About anything.
And then there were my medical issues, and then I was alone. Not relationship wise but family wise, I didn’t have anyone to continue lessons about my culture, I didn’t feel connected in that way to anything around me and that tore me apart, and made it so hard to be happy, so hard to keep a smile on my face.
None of this came to me until I stepped out of the plane and set foot on the tarmac of Kotoko International Airport. It was like a light had switched on inside of me, and although I couldn’t understand the sighs of relief and contentment in various Ghanaian tongues that were being released around I knew exactly what they all meant.
“Finally. I’m home”
I’ve learnt how to crawl.
Time to walk.
Stay tuned for Step 2.
