MPR: Local youths tell of Ghana trip

Local youths tell of Ghana trip
By Brandt Williams, Minnesota Public Radio
July 17, 2001

A group of black youths and adults from Minneapolis recently travelled to Ghana, west Africa. They told tales of meeting friendly people, eating new food, and exploring a country most had never seen before. However, they said they were most moved by their visits to the slave castles that once held their ancestors before they were brought to America.

"It makes me feel sad and it makes me feel mad that people just took people and decided when they lived, how long they lived, how they lived, when they died," said Jonathan Cooper, 11.

FOR SEVENTH GRADER DAMANI BEDIAKO, one of the most fascinating things about travelling to a land so far away and so different from Minnesota, was seeing faces that actually looked familiar. "I thought it was amazing that I saw so many people that looked like people I know. This guy told me that I looked like his brother. I just wanted to know more and more about Ghana," he said.

Bediako was one of four young people who appeared at the Insight/KMOJ public policy forum at Lucille's Kitchen, a soul food restaurant in north Minneapolis. Six students and nine adults made the trip. The journey was sponsored by the We Win Institute, a non-profit group that puts on educational programs about Africa. The organization's mission is to help African-American youth develop into healthy adults, by using lessons learned from the African experience. Last year We Win led a group to Senegal and Gambia, two other west African nations.

While in Ghana, the group travelled to a wild game reserve, met with tribal chiefs and visited a village where kente cloth is made. They also visited the memorials of Kwame Nkrumah, who led Ghana to independence from colonial rule in 1961 and W.E.B. DuBois, the African-American scholar and activist who lived the last years of his life in the west African nation. But the children on the mission say they were most affected by the Elmina slave castle.

"It makes me feel sad and it makes me feel mad that people just took people and decided when they lived, how long they lived, how they lived, when they died," said Jonathan Cooper, 11.

Cooper also visited the place in Elmina where African slaves last stood on their home soil before being sent away forever. "There was a room and a door and it was called the door of no return, and then the slaves would walk in to it and then they would have to jump into the boat and they would go to America and they would never come back," Cooper said.

Forum bandleader Wain McFarlane added musical accompaniment as Kinshasha Kambui and other members of the group talked about their experience in the slave dungeon. The dungeon is the place in Elmina where they put rebellious captives for seven days without food or water to either break their spirits or kill them.

But Kambui, who works with We Win Institute says out of that troubling experience came an important lesson. "The one thing that we understood so clearly and we talked about everyday is the victory, because we know and we understand that those of us who survived are the strongest of the strong," he said.

During the journey, the students kept journals and recorded audio diaries. Next month they'll make a similar presentation at the Sabathani Community Center in south Minneapolis.

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