President Barack Obama walks with Ghana President John Atta Mills. Courtesy: Ap
Before I saw the motion picture, “The Bucket List” starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, I compiled an unofficial must-do list for my lifetime. It changes as I get older, move and achieve certain goals.
But among the leading – yet unfulfilled – items is traveling to places such as Gorée Island off Senegal’s coast or Ghana’s slave castles, places that houses slaves, one of the last places where they touched African soil before they were forced to endure the Middle Passage and subsequent slavery in North America, South America and the Caribbean (unless they died during the cross Atlantic trek).
I believe I would react in the same way as Saadia Williams, who headed up Knoxville’s Project Change when I lived in the East Tennessee city a few years ago. During her trip in 2001, she “stood on the sandy shore of the island. Barefoot, she approached the old forts. Tears wet her face as she stood inside slave quarters.”
“I got the earth between my toes and made the journey to the slave castle,” she told me for a story for the News-Sentinel in Knoxville. “I tried to imagine what it may have felt like for them to take that walk and not know where it was going to end. I am trying to process why the tears were there…. I cried because of the separation of families — mothers from daughters and sons from fathers, husbands and wives. I think I also cried, because they probably didn’t know what was going to be happening on the other side. Many died along the way. Still, many persevered, which speaks to the resiliency of the people.”
Last night, President Barack Obama arrived in Ghana, his first trip to sub-Saharan Africa since taking office.
“All Ghanaians want to see you,” Ghanaian President John Atta Mills told the president.
“Akwaaba” or “welcome” in Akan appears on signs, billboards and newspaper headlines, underscoring Ghanaians’ excitement about Obama’s visit.
He’s expected to address the West Africa nation’s Parliament this morning. He also plans to visit a hospital and a one-time slave trading post with his wife, Michelle Obama, whose great-great grandfather was a slave in South Carolina. The president’s late father was from Kenya.
I wonder how America’s first black first couple feel about the trip? Their hosts? And what should African Americans expect by the visit? Stronger business and cultural relations with our West African/African counterparts? I know this leg of Obama’s overseas trip is the shortest, but I am very curious about its lasting effect.
