As you may be aware, I traveled to Ghana in August of 2023. Recently I interviewed the five people who traveled with me on the Black and Abroad Tour to the capital of Ghana, Accra. Now, I want to share their stories with you as I prepare to release the interviews with them.
My friend, Chebrya Jeffrey, also interviewed me about the trip and I explained to her that I wanted to go to Africa to do research. As an author, I wrote a novel to explore race and political division. I believe that we’re all in this together, and as a Christian, I think we need to come together as a country and I want to write for justice, to plant seeds for change.
When I pitched the novel to my publisher, I promised to write three books. One about Ireland — Revelation in the Roots: Emerald Isle (All Things That Matter Press), a second about the Sea Islands, and a third about West Africa. To write that third novel, I needed to visit West Africa. When my friend Selena Singletary told me she was going to Ghana and that the trip would include the Cape Coast Castle, I told her that was where I wanted to go. She told me, “You should come, too,” and I did.
My travel companions chose to visit Ghana for other reasons. Here are their reasons.
My husband, Steve Schlather, joined me on the trip. He said, “My wife was going to Ghana and I wanted to go with her. I had never been to Africa. I was interested in seeing at least something in Africa. I didn’t have a particular interest in Ghana, but it seemed like a reasonable place to go. I looked into the tour group, the Black and Abroad group that Nancy arranged the trip through, and they seemed like they had a really good program, so I thought it’d be interesting.”
Another fellow traveler, Diane Sanders, said that she watched a guy on YouTube who talked a lot about black history, mainly where and how slavery started. This man decided to travel to all 54 countries on the continent of Africa and thought all Blacks who could, should also do this. You can watch this videos on his Youtube channel at: GoBlack2Africa54.
Diane explained that this man visited Ghana in 2019, the Year of Return. That year, the the President of Ghana invited descendants of slaves, the African diaspora, to return to Africa. As Diane watched many famous Black people visiting Ghana in his 2019 videos. They inspired her to visit Ghana, as well.
Diane’s son, Creavon Blair (Blair), planned to visit Tanzania. But then his mother shared the GoBlack2Africa videos. She told him, “We should go to Ghana.” Blair agreed. In our interview he told me, “It was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.”
Another fellow traveler was Selena Singletary, my former boss at the City of Springfield, Ohio. She told me, “As you know, I like to travel. I was talking to Diane Sanders some time ago about traveling and she mentioned about going to Ghana. And I go like, OK, that sounds great.” Selena also said she wanted to go with a friend, to see a different culture, a different country, and to be immersed in another land other than the US. In addition, she went because of her curiosity and the appeal of Africa as her motherland.
Finally, the couple (Adora and Keita Thompson) who traveled with us had this to say. First Adora said, “I want to go to find my home. I know that United States is not my home, so I want to see people that look like me. Also, Eric (Black and Abroad Tour Company owner) is a very good friend of ours. So we said, when you go, we’re going… And so we went.”
Keita said, “Africa is my mother, and so, more than anything else, I’ve wanted to go to Africa. I’ve been a few times on business, but this was strictly for the soul connection, getting back to my mom, getting back home, touching the hearts and minds and the souls of my people. So that’s what really motivated us and doing it together as one, with Adora.”
In future blogs I will tell you more about what I learned in these interviews with fellow travelers. Follow this blog and my YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@nancyflinchbaugh for future postings.