BOOK II THE RETURN AT LAST Chapter I: Early Days in Ghana, Accra, Part II

 This is the last instalment of BOOK II THE RETURN AT LAST Chapter I: Early Days in Ghana where Abdul returns to Accra. 

We will next week go to BOOK III called The Regeneration because that is where Abdul will visit areas which produced slaves and get healed in Senegal's infamous Goree Island to accept to be himself, that is, both Amerrican and African.

Accra, Part II           

The plane touched down at the Kotoka International Airport at 2 p.m. Abdul didn’t regret paying $130 for the journey by flight N° 04 332; the one hour twenty minutes it took was certainly worth the expense compared to the twelve hours or more the bus drive would have lasted for a mere $17.

Zenabu leapt into his arms and kissed him tenderly when he came out of the arrival hall. “How I’ve missed you, my love,” she sighed.

“Me too,” Abdul said and kissed her again on the lips.”It’s been almost three weeks.”

“Welcome, brother-in-law,” Usman drawled and Abdul caught a whiff of grass.

They sauntered to a deep gloss black Toyota Land Cruise Prado GX. “An uncle loaned it to me to come fetch you,” Zenabu explained as they clambered in.

Usman drove hard as if the Liberation Road was a motor-racing circuit.

“Careful!” Abdul chided.

“Don’t worry,” Usman replied, wriggling to the rhythmic Ivorian décalé-coupé music of Doug Saga.

Zenabu barked something in their language.

“Okay, okay, Sis,” Usman said—as Zenabu went back to necking with Abdul in the backseat—and drove a bit carefully.

Back home Mohammed hugged Abdul like a long-lost relative, spluttering: “Welcome! Welcome! Welcome!”

“How was your trip?” Zenabu asked as they sipped Malta Guinness under the straw hut.

“Great, but as I’ve been telling you on the phone I’m a little disillusioned about Africa.”

“You still want to go back home?” Zenabu could hardly hide the thrill in her voice.

“I’ve to give it one more serious thought before taking a final decision.” Abdul still fought hard the urge to go back to America where he now felt he really belonged.

“In-law, you’d help get me an American visa before you leave, okay?” Usman said as a matter of fact.

Abdul shook his head vigorously.

Usman tittered. “Then I’ll wait till my sister gets her green card.”

Abdul did not answer: the least said about that the better.

Not having received any positive answer or no answer at all to the applications he had sent for work, Abdul went round trying to find work. “Even Ghanaians don’t find any, how do you hope to land one?” an employer was frank enough to tell him. “The energy crisis, by increasing the cost of doing business for some and reducing productivity for others, will even lead to redundancies and dismissals.”

Abdul felt dazed. He had not in his wildest imagination thought life would be so grim in Africa. Was this paradise lost?

Back home Abdul sat for a while thinking; he had expected peace and love in Africa and if it will be so bitter ... Then better return to America? Abdul felt confused; he sighed and tried to think. But he was too befuddled to concentrate properly.

As the days wore on Abdul’s frustration reached the depths of despair. He couldn’t talk to anybody without raising his voice. Even Mohammed began to keep his distance. Unable to stand the situation rendering him crazy any longer, Abdul lumbered to the cybercafé to send a message home for a ticket back to the States. The Internet connection was maddeningly slow. Resisting the urge to slug something, he picked up the day’s copy of The Daily Graphic and thumbed through it. The title ARAA to Entice More African Americans Here caught his eye and he read a part of the article cursorily. Then he sat straight and began reading it carefully. Abdul devoured the first paragraph and stared into the ceiling. The Association of Returned African Americans said it could help African Americans feeling reticent to settle in Ghana make the final decision to do so. Abdul read the rest of the article slowly. He switched off his cyber account. He must call on the ARAA right away. Maybe these guys could help him recharge his batteries of the desire to remain here. Yes, that’s what he should have done right on coming back: contact others who had come back. There is no substitute for experience.

Abdul hailed a taxi to the ARAA’s office at Cantonments. It was a nostalgic colonial building on piles set in a large compound with lots of flowers in bloom and old shady trees hugged by lichens and ferns. Birds sang happily all over.

A gorgeous Ghanaian secretary introduced him into the Coordinator’s office.

Ian Cromwell, the Coordinator and author of the article, received Abdul with wide open arms as if he was an old friend. A very tall, slightly stooping figure, bespectacled Ian had a very fair skin and bushy, curly hair. Smiling broadly, Ian indicated a settee in a corner of his large office. He sank cross-legged into another one before Abdul and running his long fingers through his shiny beard sprinkled with some grey, said: “Feel at home in our modest office.”

“It’s quite impressive,” Abdul said, sweeping in a gaze the walls hung with paintings, photographs and artefacts. A large bouquet of flowers stood on Ian’s large desk nearby laden with books and files.

“Is it?” All of Ian’s large teeth showed while his alert eyes shone proudly behind his horn-rimmed glasses.

“Sure,” Abdul said, nodding approvingly and then leaned forward. “I read your article yesterday.”

“Yeah, that article.” Ian leaned forward too.

“I came down here intending to stay but I’m sort of disillusioned.”

“Uh, huh,” Ian said. “The people and the country seem to put you off?”

Abdul nodded.

“Well, let me start by plagiarizing Kennedy: Don’t ask what Africa can do for you but what you can do to make Africa liveable for all.”

Abdul sighed, imperceptibly.

“You know Ghana is the first and so far the only African nation to provide the right to return to Africans in the Diaspora?”

Abdul nodded.

“This is a significant first step in fulfilling W.E.B. Dubois’s dream of true Pan-Africanism, with Ghana, the very country in which Dubois spent the last years of his life, leading the way.”

Abdul remembered his visit to the Dubois Center.

“It could mean this: if Ghanaians and African Americans could find a way to accept one another as brothers and sisters related first and foremost by an enslaved ancestor and by the shared color of skin; and it could also mean this: if, and only if, African Americans are truly ready to reconnect with their point of origin.”

“Reconnecting with that point of origin is precisely what I’ve been trying in vain to do.”

“It’s not easy, I must agree. But don’t be discouraged. In addition to over one thousand African Americans currently living and working here in Accra, the number of African American visitors to Ghana is more than ten thousand each year. Furthermore, in comparison to other African nations, Ghana attracts far more African Americans. This is due primarily to mild weather, beautiful beaches, a low cost of living, and above all the sense that Ghana could be a spiritual homeland for many African Americans.”

“Yeah, the sense that Ghana could be a spiritual homeland attracted me here too.”

“The same attracts many here but what the returnee perceives as an apparent intolerance for African Americans is one very big detracting factor.”

“That was my biggest shock: that we’re not really thought of here as distant relatives.”

“While it’s true that many African Americans have had much success in making a home of Ghana via fulfilling employment or entrepreneurship opportunities, and especially marriage to Ghanaian citizens (as is the case in the U.S. for many Africans living and working there), and many more describe their visits to Ghana as a reconnection to the mother land, there are others who have been deterred by a Ghanaian regard for African Americans as oburoni, the Twi word for white or foreigner.”

Abdul’s face lit up. He wished Zenabu was here to hear that. “My girlfriend pretends I should be proud to be called oburoni.”

Ian sat straight. “What?” he cried and shook his head. “That and societal treatment that includes such norms as the denial of government jobs, the right to vote, and higher costs for hospital visits make some African Americans, who come here seeking the spiritual home that cannot be attained in the United States, feel as little more than an American dollar sign.”

“When I complained about that a Liberian friend said I shouldn’t overdo the slave thing. He thought we African Americans were paranoiac. He said we were behaving as if mythical people left Africa and became us and not the African. He said that we were two sides of a coin.”

“Of course we are,” Ian agreed, “and that’s the problem: the two sides of a coin do not look alike.”

They laughed about that.

Ian continued: “Another factor preventing African Americans from making the connection with Africa is that Americans are terrified by anything that takes their comfort away.” 

“Yeah, the misery and the raw poverty here is appalling.”

“That maybe doesn’t make it hard to imagine African-Americans feeling unwelcome in an African nation. I suspect poverty makes some Africans hate anybody coming from America perceived as a neo-colonial country.”

“We’ve nothing to do with that,” Abdul cut in. “We are also exploited within the American system.”

Ian nodded. “Then think of the perceptions that many African Americans have of Africans. Think of the ignorance many African Americans still have of the African continent. Think of Eddie Murphy’s joke that African’s ‘ride around butt-naked on a zebra’. Think of Will Smith’s recent statement that he didn’t know Africa had beautiful women until he’d come here. Think of the treatment many Africans receive from African Americans in the United States.”

Abdul didn’t know what to say about that.

“The treatment I read about that a Nigerian student received at Tuskegee University reminds me of the biblical saying that all have sinned and that none could throw the first stone.”

Abdul nodded, in the manner of the one who agrees but doesn’t yet fully understand.

“The Nigerian said he caught hell from the black students on the campus. They were always trying to make him feel uncomfortable. This was at a time when African Americans were shouting, ‘Say it loud, I’m Black and I’m proud.’ Yet if they saw Anthony with an African American girl, they would yell to her, ‘Hey, sister, what are you doing with that African?’”

Abdul breathed hard.

“Up to today, Africans and African Americans still do not form easy bonds or relationships. African American women who marry African men often find they have difficulty contending with strict patriarchal expectations of womanhood, while the African men accuse our women of tendencies of superiority and paranoia.”

Abdul breathed hard again.

“We must accept that Africans and African Americans have two very different and very distinct cultures,” Ian said. “Because Africans were not exposed to slavery as we did in the New World they do not understand its whole concept, or its effect on the attitude of a lot of African Americans.”

“For we African Americans still living with the brutal consequences of slavery, realizing that one who is also Black does not identify with the pain of slavery is a hard truth to face.”

“In the best circumstances, Africans and African Americans see one another as family, an extension of the other. Unfortunately the experiences on both sides do not seem to suggest that this is always the case.”

“The proprietor of the motel where I live says the perceptions that Africans and African Americans hold of one another stem from negative things we’ve been taught about each other. A lot of African Americans were told that Africa was nothing more than just a primitive, backward jungle, while Africans learnt that African Americans are criminals and very violent.”

“That’s part of the problem,” Ian said weakly. “Our work here is to help Africans and African Americans bridge this gap by tearing off the artificial barriers that won’t allow us to get together. It is not in our best interest to always be at each other’s throat.”

“But how can we embrace each other again over such a chasm?” Abdul asked.

Ian counted his long fingers. “First, by doing away with damaging ideas about ourselves and those who look like us.”

Abdul nodded.

“Second, by accepting the differences between us and dwelling more on the similarities.”

Abdul nodded again.

“Third, by putting aside the fear that identifying with Africans would be tantamount to proving the White ideology about Africans that we too are backwards, Black jungle bunnies; something we have told White America we are not.”

“I hope they work,” Abdul said, “But how do Africans put aside all that they know of us: guns, drugs, violence, and money to burn?”

“First, education; second, education; third, education.” They laughed hard about that and Ian continued: “For Pan Africanism to have the effects W.E.B. Dubois might have liked to see, false sensibilities need to be disarmed. Furthermore, there must be a realization that the problems of Black peoples anywhere are the problems of all Black peoples just like the Jews do. We must refuse to see Africans as those foreigners and they must do the same to us.”

Abdul shrugged-nodded.

Ian dashed to his desk, snatched a book with a golden cover and handed it to Abdul. “It’s the childhood memoir of an African British author, Ekow Eshun. The theme centers on identity as the author who spent part of his childhood in Ghana where he comes from and the other in the UK he has adopted wonders where he belongs as he finds neither satisfactory. Maybe reading it will do you some good. Black Gold of the Sun focuses on Eshun’s recent trip to Ghana to explore his heritage.”

Abdul glanced at the golden cover of the book.

“Feeling that something was lacking in an environment he felt was occasionally hostile and often marginalizing, Eshun journeyed home to search for his roots. Here in Ghana Eshun discovered that estrangement was not restricted to his adopted homeland. He felt as much a foreigner here as he did in Britain. More shocking, Eshun learnt his white patriarch and his mulatto son both engaged in the slave trade.”

“Yeah?”

Ian nodded.

Abdul dropped his head into his arms.

“Eshun’s work reflects the similarities and the differences between Africans whose ancestors never left the continent and those whose forebears did.”

“Did those realizations help him to come to terms with himself?”

“I guess so.”

“I wish I get over this horrible feeling too,” Abdul said.

“What you’re going through is pretty common,” Ian said. “It explains why a small percentage of African Americans who intended to relocate here stay. And of that number about a third really makes Ghana their permanent home.” Ian fetched a brochure from his desk and handed it to Abdul. “There’s a symposium coming up on Monday October 30^th at the Institut Pan-Africain, IPA, at Ouidah in the Republic of Benin on the return of the Diaspora. Maybe it’ll also help you decide if Africa is the right place for you. You may come with me.” He smiled and Abdul nodded. “A visit has been planned to a slave trading post at Ouidah. There are others at Porto-Séguro—actual Agbodrafo—and Petit Popo—now Aneho—in Togo, and on the island of Gorée in Senegal. Visiting those emotionally charged historical places did help some of us to be reconciled with Africa, its peoples and our past.”

Abdul nodded.

“Everybody belongs to a certain period and a certain country, and what remains an end to itself, is not history itself, but rather the well-being of individuals and groups. That’s why to benefit from the psychotherapeutic function of history, we have chosen to propose to individuals to plunge into their past in a visit which is both historic and cultural. From it often comes unsuspected healing of one’s restlessness and pain.”

Abdul left Ian feeling partially satisfied. Donna and other members of the family encouraged him to continue searching and sent him money for the trip. He bought necessities for the journey, including guides to West African countries. Then he called Ian who confirmed their departure in three days time at 8 a.m. And the day before his departure, Zenabu came to see him off.

“My father refused that I accompany you to Benin because we’re not married,” she said.

Abdul’s eyelashes curved upwards. “Is he for our marriage?”

“Sure,” Zenabu answered eagerly. “Especially since you’re an African American Moslem. Let’s get married quickly and go.”

“I’m not decided on going yet.”

“But you have to.”

Abdul began to feel anger. “Look, I said I ain’t decided yet.”

“But I want to go to the States,” Zenabu insisted, saying it as a matter of fact. “America is where the life is.”

Abdul chuckled, shaking his head. “I wish you could see the heavenly life tomorrow.”

“Abdul, my status here will change if I go there.”

“Zena, wanting to go to America is a terrible reason to get married.”

“There’s too much misery here,” she drawled. “America is the land of opportunities. I can best achieve my dreams there.”

Abdul bit his medium-sized lips. “Okay,” he said with a sigh. “We’ll go to the U. S.”

“You’re saying that just to make me shut up.” She fondled the top button of his shirt. “Give me a firm assurance, darling.”

Abdul gently brushed off her hand. “Either you believe me or you go to hell.”

“You go to hell too,” Zenabu hurled back and they laughed and embraced hard.

When Zenabu recovered her breath and felt alert once again, she stroke Abdul’s chest. “Abdul, when will we go for our AIDS test to do away with the condom?”

“Anytime. But whatever the result, we’ll continue to use it.”

Zenabu put on a pout.

Zena may be up to something. “Do you want a kid?”

Zenabu nodded shyly.

Abdul understood. African girls try to have a kid with foreigners so that the doors to overseas could be wide open. Abdul sighed.

Zenabu grabbed his hand. “How I wished you were fair-colored like the other Afro Americans, Abdul,” she said, caressing it, “for us to have light-skinned kids.”

Again? Abdul suppressed a sigh. Is this a college educated girl? Abdul felt a wall wedging itself between them.

The taxi brought Abdul on time to Ian Cromwell’s big house at Cantonments.

This posh residential quarter was unusually quiet on a Sunday. If the lavishly tiled exterior made Abdul’s eyes widen, the gleaming interior made him bounce to his feet when Ian appeared in a loose African style cotton dress.

Soon they were whirling away in a Suzuki Grand Vitara over the Cantonments Road and joined the Liberation Road at the Akuafo Circle. The smooth ride continued straight on after the Tema Roundabout. Savannah grass swished past; an occasional, isolated village or a roadside town whose busiest area was the lorry park dragged past. Abdul found the bush settlements pretty, with thatched-roof huts on neatly-swept red-earth clearings but where modernity reared its head with concrete buildings so did garbage and squalor. The single-lane highway was broad and smooth and they went quickly along. Sometimes they had to tag behind a crawling truck loaded as high as its own height, which, with oncoming traffic, impeded their progress for long stretches of distance. Ian kept veering slightly off his lane to peek ahead for an opportunity to overake the long line of traffic. In the rear-view mirror, Abdul glimpsed a long string of vehicles behind them. Some impatient minibus drivers did overtake at the least opportunity and the oncoming vehicles flashed their headlights and blared their horns at them and veered to the other side to avoid a head-on collision. The driver and the passengers, if he had any, of the vehicle in the opposite direction screamed at the driver as he swerved into his lane, obliging the driver behind him to jam hard on his brake to avoid ramming into his rear.

“Reckless, ain’t it?” Ian observed.

“Certainly,” Abdul agreed. “I can’t drive here.”

 chortled. “I thought so too. But here I am, behind a wheel.”

“Aren’t there many accidents?”

“You’ve been seeing the wreckages of vehicles along the way,” Ian said. “Accidents here are due to many causes. Potential drivers are hardly trained by driving schools so many drivers don’t know the highway code; the poor state of vehicles; lack of maintenance of vehicles; inobservance of the highway code which I said many don’t know anyway; overloading far beyond the allowable limit; overtaking even on hills; and driving beyond the allowable speed limit.”

“Whew!” Abdul exclaimed and they lapsed into silence again.

“There’s nothing like this Ghanaian courtesy,” Ian soon said, pointing to the bus in front of them blinking left to signal danger ahead.

“Wow!” Abdul cried when the bus began to blink right, showing the coast was clear to pass.

“Solidarity, isn’t it?” Ian commented and blew his horn to thank the bus driver.

“Amazing,” Abdul said with a smile as the bus driver blew back a rhythmic combination while his passengers stared at the speeding Suzuki. Although hard to do, Abdul captured the whole scene on his video camera. He also photographed the slow-moving mammy trucks (belching thick fumes of diesel smoke whose acrid stench penetrated right into the air-conditioned interior of their off-road vehicle) loaded high with local goods, especially tomatoes in boxes and raffia mats, behind which the drivers’ mates hung. Abdul went wild when they came behind a truck carrying a huge dug-out canoe, the stern slung on the top of the truck and the bow sticking out of its bed with a red cloth tied behind to signify danger.

            “Exotic, exotic,” Abdul kept on raving.

Despite the off-road vehicle’s excellent shock absorbers, Abdul felt the jolts produced by the numerous potholes on the road as from the Tefle Bridge over the Volta River at Sogakope. Two hours later they cruised to the Ghana side of the Ghana-Togo border at Aflao hugging the beach. Abdul’s eyes widened at the drove. He was sure the atmosphere prevailed here when Aflao was a center of slave trading. Now many people went and came like a busy column of ants, some of them carrying goods and luggage. Others lined up before the immigration check points where their traveling documents were checked and then around the customs and excise officials clad in blue trousers and light blue shirts who rifled through their luggage. Truck trailers loaded high parked everywhere or dragged about. Ian slid his car among other vehicles before a huge abandoned building built like an airport terminal. On completing the formalities at both sides, they cruised over the deteriorating highway hugging the sun-dappled beach in Lome, the capital city of Togo. Hard to believe that slaves were traded here.

            “This is one of the slave transit points in the Ge country,” Ian said twenty minutes and thirty kilometres later, gesturing to the right hand side as they cruised over the highway passing by the right fringe of Agbodrafo. “Mainly the so-called illegal slave trade took place here.”

Abdul saw what looked like a sleepy town. Making a mental note to visit it, he wondered what benefits Africans got from slavery.

“And here is another one: Aneho,” Ian said a quarter of an hour later when they coursed through an almost deserted town with crumbling Portuguese style buildings.

Aneho, an ancient town, was fifteen kilometres from Agbodrafo, and at the end of about half an hour’s drive from Lome. The rapid crossing of the historic town was enough to call attention to the prestigious past of Aneho. Wondering why some old majestic buildings were left in ruins, Abdul asked himself if such places had been cursed by the Passion of the slaves.

“You see how rundown they are,” Ian said. “While these areas suffered the fate of underdevelopment like the rest of Africa, they couldn’t sustain their progress because the African middlemen depended wholly on the slave trade to the detriment of other businesses and occupation. So when the trade was abolished, their enterprises finally collapsed and they became impoverished. Just the way African economies go bankrupt when the price of the single resource they depend on declines.”

“No tears for a slave post becoming destitute,” Abdul retorted.

The Hillacondji border post five minutes away offered the same spectacle as at Aflao even though less busy and less crowded.