When our elders, in this case the President of our Wakanda, calls the children of the African Diaspora home, we do as we have been taught – listen and obey. Ghanaian President, Nana Akufo-Addo, in observance of the 400th anniversary of the commencement of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and arrival of the first enslaved Africans to the English colony of Virginia in 1619, – declared 2019 the Year of Return. I knew I wanted to be among those making the pilgrimage – my African Birthright Trip.
I approach this trip with excitement, trepidation and gratitude. As I carry locks of my late mother’s hair to leave on her Akan and Ewe ancestral lands (yeah, our oldest cousin did a DNA test), my thoughts wander to what I will encounter as my sisters and brothers across the waters welcome me home. I know that I will walk through the Door of No Return and then return back through it, proving that the evil some intended could not possibly hold us down. I am excited to see Ghana through the eyes of one of its native sons, who has “pestered” me for 30 years to see his home. I already hear the music in my spirit and feel the rhythms in my soul. I am tingling thinking about the joy when my sisters and brothers of the African American Diaspora join me for a few days of honoring this moment and declaring the ties that bind are unbreakable (stay tuned for that).
But mostly, as I sit here in the Delta Sky Lounge I feel intense gratitude. They were brought over in chains. I am returning in First Class. TGBTG!!!
ThatTravelingBlackGirl 