Where do I start about my trip to Ghana? Let me start from the beginning and talk about how I got the opportunity to finally go to Africa, and the necessary preparations required to do so. I have a longtime friend that’s from Ghana and she was taking a trip home, and invited me to come with her and her siblings; I was so excited because I’ve wanted to go to Africa my entire life and so has my mom so I asked if she come as well, and it was a go for everyone.
We went March of 2021, so there were pretty strict requirements surrounding covid-19. We had to take a covid test no more than 3 days before departure, take another test once we arrived in Ghana, and one more to leave. Visa was required as well as a yellow fever shot, this you can get around if you don’t believe in shots for religious or holistic reasons. I feel like I’m leaving out some of the preparations, but doing the necessary things to travel to Africa is not nearly as hard as some people may think.
I was so happy when I bought my ticket I cried. The flight was not bad at all. It was 13 or 15 hours; I slept the entire time. This was when Delta was still not seating people in the middle seats so I had plenty of room.
We stayed in Tema. I felt so lucky to stay at my friend’s family home, staying with the locals gives you the opportunity to experience a place more closely I believe. Although a lot of the places we wanted to visit were not extremely far from Tema they weren’t close either coupled with the crazy traffic, so I found having a driver to be very helpful. You have to get out early to bypass being in traffic for hours which we would have done, but it was so hot in the house I couldn’t sleep no matter how hard I tried until three four o’clock in the morning, so we got out when we got out. If you don’t want to get a driver there are taxis, uber, bolt, and tro tros. Getting around in Ghana is really easy. We visited Accra, Aburi, Nima, Nsawam, and Cape Coast.
It was refreshing to see beautiful, creative, hardworking, friendly, helpful black people everywhere I turned. By Ghana being an English-speaking country, it was easy the navigate, get help, find what we needed, and make connections. I will say; no matter how black I am and how African I look the people knew I was from America, they knew we all were from America including my friends that were born in Ghana, and you’re automatically looked at like a walking money bag. I kept my Ghana cedis to US dollar converter open on my phone, because they were trying to play me left and right with the unreasonably high prices for goods. The way the shop owners were running us down at The Art Center as well as the people selling their goods at Elmina Castle (which was beautiful btw) really caught me off guard. I was understanding, but I really just wanted to shop in peace.
The food was pretty good, kind of redundant as far as what I was served and had access to buy, but I was so excited I could barely eat much anyway. The kebabs, waakye, bean stew, and pepper soup I enjoyed very much. I look forward to exploring the food more next time. Now Ghana does have the absolute tastiest fruit I’ve ever had in my life. The pineapples were so sweet, the mangos, soursop, cocoa, tangerines, papayas, everything. I really enjoyed going to the outdoor markets. Makola market was amazing, you can walk around for three days straight at that place and still not see everything. It was a little overwhelming because it was so busy and very crowded, but a great experience. We even meet a lady there that has a shop; she took us to her house, and cooked us a quick meal. I picked Papaya off her tree and made myself a smoothie, and she even took us to Aburi Gardens and a few other places.
There’s so much more I could say, but I would definitely recommend Ghana as a place for Black Americans to visit. Although there we some challenges; just not having a language barrier alone made it very easy for me and this was my first-time visiting Africa and leaving the county. Not to mention all the building, advancements, and access to technology. So go enjoy Ghana, and tell them Fatou sent you.
