Lately, I’ve been thinking a certain way about America. I’ve been thinking that America is not the place I want to die in. I yearn for a place that feels like home. This place does not feel like home. I need to feel a sense of oneness with what surrounds me and envelops me. This place has never welcomed me. I, and my fellow African-Americans, hold a unique and untenable position in American society. On the one hand, our ancestors paid in blood and terror to make this country “free”; on the flip side, me and mine have never benefitted from the very treasure we helped to create, and are unlikely to ever do so (at least in my lifetime). So, I yearn and I search. And what better place to look for a new home than my real home?
I, like most all African-Americans, are the direct descendants of our parents and grandparents who migrated to the North from Jim Crow South. They fled the oppression and terror in order to make a better life for themselves and their children in the “land of opportunity”. My mom and dad endured “Colored Only” toilets and water fountains. I myself (along with my twin sister) was the very first black person to attend a previously all white elementary school when busing opportunities first arose in the late sixties and early seventies. I’ve witnessed and have been a part of “integration” my whole life. Now, I ask myself the hard question: “WHY”??? Because all I have to do is turn on my computer, look at my smartphone, or turn the TV on, and I am witness to the daily oppression that me and mine continue to suffer in the name of “freedom”. We are definitely a police state (for me and mine, at least). To make matters even LESS palatable, the food supply in this country, and the evil companies who control it, is killing us. Who wants to live in a place where you have no idea what you are consuming? Everywhere I turn, I see misery and despair. The media lies and tries to maintain the status quo, but even our oligarch overlords sense that things cannot continue down this path. It seems as if we are sliding backwards at an alarming pace…. We continue to pay in blood and terror. There does not seem to be any viable recourse, except to leave.
When I think of my ideal living arrangements, I think of what has become most important in my life as I grow older: the opportunity to live in harmony with nature; the chance to grow and control my own food supply; and the opportunity to contribute to a society that values life and respects life, regardless of class and circumstance. The current state of this country does not allow for any of those things to be possible for me (and you either, but everyone must reach their own epiphany, in their own time). So, I am making plans. Plans to get out of this country, forever. Although I am at the start of my initial research, I am becoming more and more enamored of Ghana, in West Africa. Let me tell you what I’ve learned about Ghana, so far.
Ghana, which gained her independence from the U.K in 1967, is 98% black. How I yearn to walk around and see nothing but versions of me!!!!!!!! A culture that is black….who could have thought? Modern Ghana was founded on the principles of Pan-Africanism (do your research), an ideology I wholly embrace. The climate is perfect, and I am eager to learn all I can regarding farming and sustenance techniques. Being present on soil whence my ancestors were born will have a profound impact on my psyche, and allow me to gain true knowledge, wisdom and insight into who I am and what made me who I am. How I long to imagine a life that allows me to know my true beginnings, not the world me and mine were forced into. I yearn to be able to live side by side with like minded people; people who work together for the common good of all. I imagine me and mine being welcomed like the family we are. Accra is the city I am interested in, and I am reading all I can to enlighten myself on this beautiful city. The first step to true knowledge starts with the will to change; the will to want to change. I have finally reached that point in my life. And if the Universe is in agreement, I will die on soil that not only feels like home, it will be home.