Back in July, I was afforded an opportunity to travel to Ghana as part of an academic sojourn of Black Women scholars participating in the Full Circle “Writing Our Lives” Retreat. Though I expected the experience to change me, never could I have imagined how transformative spending time reflecting, writing, and exploring a shared historical legacy with four amazing sisters in academia might be. Guided by our hosts, Black Woman scholar, Dr. Cynthia Dillard of the University of Georgia, and her life partner and native Ghanaian, Henry, we entered the “Door of Return” at the Cape Coast Slave Dungeon, once a door of “No Return” for our enslaved ancestors, and together we explored what it meant to be a child of Africa’s diasporic village. We visited the home of W.E.B. Dubois, now a museum, where we (re)discovered the ‘Brownies, a newsletter written to remind Black children of their value and worth. We (re)traced the footsteps of our enslaved ancestors by traversing the trails they were forced to walk after being captured by slave raiders, and poured libations to remember the legacy of resilience and resistance they left us. We washed our feet in the same river our ancestors were forced to bathe in before being branded, sold, and marched off to the dungeons and cried tears of simultaneous pain and joy as we set eyes on a village established near this same river, reminding us of the strength of its founder, a Ghanaian woman who escaped her jailors and ran for her life, refusing to live enslaved. We marveled in the beauty and Grace of Ghanaian women and girls as they carried the day’s load atop their heads and we waded in the authenticity of the love the Ghanaian people gave to each other and us – their smiles and welcoming spirits reminding us that we and they are one - brothers and sisters, cousins, aunties and uncles, family and friends, mothers and fathers, all children of the same village, one - how sweet it felt to (re)turn home. But mostly, we wrote. We wrote, and we wrote, and we wrote more! Putting pen to the page and fingers to the keyboard, we wrote of coming home, of finding and embracing a new way to be Black and Woman, of learning to love our people and the rich land upon which our first spirits were nurtured, of embracing the past and looking to the future, of becoming a sisterhood of mentorship teaching each other through the stories we shared, tears we cried, and laughter we dared laugh out loud, of breathing in every bit of the essence of Black love shared with us on a coast that felt like home but was so far away, and living this love given so willingly, loudly and proudly through the legacy we would come to create as Black Women scholars learning to BE, even as we also were (BE)coming! We wrote our lives because in Ghana, our lives wrote US!
I am so grateful to have had this time with my sisters in academia. We didn’t know each other when we arrived on Ghana’s shores, but through one shared experience, I, with each of these women by my side, fell in love with myself all over again. I fell in love with my womanhood, my Blackness, our people, our homeland, our historical legacy, writing, and what each of these things mean for the children who will take up the writing that I leave behind when my time on Earth is done. I am prayerful that I will use the Grace that has been afforded me in having this ‘Writing Our Lives’ experience to write my best life for our children, and I will start by paying it forward to the children of Ghana who taught me the most about what it means to write our lives on purpose- the children with whom I shared time and space during this journey, the children at the Cynthia B. Dillard School in Mpeasem, Ghana.
I was blessed to have my trip to Ghana include the children and teachers of this amazingly special place. They hosted us for a day at the school where we witnessed the most amazing spirits, heard them recite incredible poetry, and experienced firsthand the lessons and learning they experience each and every day. As you view the students' faces in the pictures, I'm sure you can imagine how much they impacted my heart and soul, mostly because they and the families in their village take nothing for granted, not even the opportunity to learn and "study" and to be educated in a school with the love and support of Dr. Dillard, Henry, their village, and the kind hearts who have committed their time and money to building and supporting the school in which they learn.
After spending time with the children, my plan is to sponsor a Ghanaian girl whose dream is to become educated so she can return to her village prepared to gift back the gifts bestowed upon her by it, and I am reaching out to each of you to ask that you join me in paying it forward by giving whatever you can to help the village complete their vision of building and sustaining the school. It takes a mere $100 to cover a child’s education at the Cynthia B. Dillard School for one year. This includes costs for a uniform, books and materials, school fees, and meals during school hours. However, whatever you give will be put to good use, including towards cost to finish building the part of the school that houses the pre-kinder classrooms (for our babies ya’ll). Please join me in giving. Let’s gather our collective resources in the spirit of Ujima and Ujamaa and help our Ghanaian babies write their own lives. Give what you can. Every little bit counts. And by all means, pass this on so your friends and family can join you. The link to donate to the Cynthia B. Dillard School in Mpeasem, Ghana is included below. Thank you for not passing on this opportunity to love on the babies in our diasporic village. Thank you for giving. But most important of all, thank you for joining me in writing our best lives!
To obtain more information about the school, and make a donation, please visit the website http://givebuildshare.org/ where you will see photos, a video, and the smiling faces of the babies of the Cynthia B. Dillard School. If you made it this far, thanks for your time, consideration, and prayerfully your donation.
I am so grateful to have had this time with my sisters in academia. We didn’t know each other when we arrived on Ghana’s shores, but through one shared experience, I, with each of these women by my side, fell in love with myself all over again. I fell in love with my womanhood, my Blackness, our people, our homeland, our historical legacy, writing, and what each of these things mean for the children who will take up the writing that I leave behind when my time on Earth is done. I am prayerful that I will use the Grace that has been afforded me in having this ‘Writing Our Lives’ experience to write my best life for our children, and I will start by paying it forward to the children of Ghana who taught me the most about what it means to write our lives on purpose- the children with whom I shared time and space during this journey, the children at the Cynthia B. Dillard School in Mpeasem, Ghana.
I was blessed to have my trip to Ghana include the children and teachers of this amazingly special place. They hosted us for a day at the school where we witnessed the most amazing spirits, heard them recite incredible poetry, and experienced firsthand the lessons and learning they experience each and every day. As you view the students' faces in the pictures, I'm sure you can imagine how much they impacted my heart and soul, mostly because they and the families in their village take nothing for granted, not even the opportunity to learn and "study" and to be educated in a school with the love and support of Dr. Dillard, Henry, their village, and the kind hearts who have committed their time and money to building and supporting the school in which they learn.
After spending time with the children, my plan is to sponsor a Ghanaian girl whose dream is to become educated so she can return to her village prepared to gift back the gifts bestowed upon her by it, and I am reaching out to each of you to ask that you join me in paying it forward by giving whatever you can to help the village complete their vision of building and sustaining the school. It takes a mere $100 to cover a child’s education at the Cynthia B. Dillard School for one year. This includes costs for a uniform, books and materials, school fees, and meals during school hours. However, whatever you give will be put to good use, including towards cost to finish building the part of the school that houses the pre-kinder classrooms (for our babies ya’ll). Please join me in giving. Let’s gather our collective resources in the spirit of Ujima and Ujamaa and help our Ghanaian babies write their own lives. Give what you can. Every little bit counts. And by all means, pass this on so your friends and family can join you. The link to donate to the Cynthia B. Dillard School in Mpeasem, Ghana is included below. Thank you for not passing on this opportunity to love on the babies in our diasporic village. Thank you for giving. But most important of all, thank you for joining me in writing our best lives!
To obtain more information about the school, and make a donation, please visit the website http://givebuildshare.org/ where you will see photos, a video, and the smiling faces of the babies of the Cynthia B. Dillard School. If you made it this far, thanks for your time, consideration, and prayerfully your donation.
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