West Africa Study Abroad in 2002: How Travel is a Heart-Opening

“There is no bad body in African dance…only bad spirit!”

The large dancehall at the University of Ghana echoed with the pounding rhythm of live drums.  Sweaty students danced in ebullient circles while a futile ceiling fan whirled above.  Dust rose from the thin wood floor, caking white skin in a cloud of red.  Hot, wiggling, writhing bodies mimicked the movements of our revered teacher as he shouted these words to us. 

Five days a week, for one college semester, this was my life.  These words were shouted to encourage bigger, stronger movements.  They echoed over the pounding drums.  They pushed the rhythm of our synchronized movements.  They served as the mantra of my West African experience.

Deciding to go to Ghana was mostly a whim…

In high school I fell in love with the story of West African dance.  I learned the roots of its development along the Gold Coast of Africa.  I studied how it traveled with the slaves to the Americas.  Dance had the power to preserve the stories of the West African tribes that had been dismantled by the slave trade.  The circle dances performed around fires centuries ago evolved into the Hokey Pokey we did at weddings in the 20^th century.  Dance was more than just art, it was history and storytelling.  I became fascinated with a continent so far away and so different from my white Kentucky upbringing.

A year later, starting college at Loyola University in Chicago, I was 300 miles from home.  That wasn’t far enough.  I was looking for an acceptable reason to rebel from my parents and social pressure to “be a nice, pretty girl”.  After one conversation from a senior theatre student, I had tunnel-vision for Ghana.  His memories of dancing on dusty floors at the University of Accra, enthralled me.  His description of this exotic land sparked a deep, rebellious craving in me.

Now I had an excuse to run away: I could travel 5,550 miles away from home under the guise of a diligent student immersing herself in West African dance.  While my collegiate peers were experimenting with bad drugs and bad lovers, I was giving my middle-class white American upbringing the middle finger by hopping on a plane to West Africa.

So began an addiction: Rebellious Travel.

This was my first time travelling outside of the US, and I was completely naïve in my assumptions.  Surely, there would be a Walgreens nearby if I needed deodorant, right?  English is the national language, so I’d have no problems communicating.  Two years of living in Chicago I had the essential street smarts to be safe.  I had no clue.

Quickly, I realized that night markets were the best places for finding bath products, the native Twi is much more prevalent than English, and street smarts are laughable when your white skin glows like a ghost in the deep black of an African night.

The color of my skin shocked me immediately.  From the moment I stepped off the plane, my whiteness symbolized differentness.  My ivory hue represented all things American: money, education, and the allure of a Hollywood fantasy.  Most West Africans I encountered only knew about America from the movies.  This was 2003…there was no TikTok, no Instagram, barely even flip phones.  The only reference to the US came from Julian Roberts romcoms and Arnold Schwarzenegger action movies.  Almost like a celebrity, there was a bizarre reverence given to me simply because I was white.  Along with that, came an unnerving demand for donations, marriage proposals, visa-sponsoring, and picture-taking. 

As my five months there progressed, I began to resent my skin.  I would hide in my dorm room, ashamed to walk beyond campus and hear the whistles and pleas for money.  In this land of “there is no bad body”, I was confused about the power of race.

What was less confusing, though was the power of women.  In West Africa, women ran the homes, the markets, the families, the kitchens.  Unlike in the US where most of the CEO’s and store managers I knew were men, the West African people showed deep reverence to the females in charge.  Women were queen bees, directing their hives.  Tribal kings expressed gratitude for the wives who managed the household staff while their husbands showed gratitude. 

Women worked as teams: One would grow and harvest the food, another would take the food to market to sell, and another watched the children.  My notion of “feminine power” changed as I saw these beautiful, powerful females carry a baby on their back while balancing a basket of bananas on their head.  Through them, strength was defined by economic authority, intelligence, and your role in the community.

Besides my covert rebellion to my parents, I secretly hoped going to Ghana would help me lose weight.  I was sure that walking miles every day and getting off American junk food would help me finally get skinny.  That plan didn’t work (turns out Ghana has tons of chocolate bars and lots of palm oil).  Yet, small chinks started to fall off my size-0 fixation. 

In dance class at the University, the students around me looked different from any dance class I had ever taken.  In Chicago, I was often the hefty body in a room full of thighs-don’t-touch.  Even in grade school and high school, I was the chubby kid who stood out with her size-16 measurements for recital costumes.  This was exaggerated by the see-every-pudge-roll leotard and tights uniform required at my American dance classes.  But here, this world was different.

Here, the women with wide, loose hips were praised in dance class.  They shook wide behinds with power that matched the pounding drums.  Skinny, angular bodies were considered unattractive as men overtly flirted with the women with the most curves.  Sub-Saharan heat made minimal clothing acceptable for all body types.  Ladies wore Batik wrap skirts over leggings and t-shirts.   Men with potbellies bore their chests with as much pride as men with six-packs.  Big naked bellies were given just as much indifference as trim waistlines. 

Every day, dancing in that hot, dusty room, I got lost in the movement.  There were no mirrors for me to scrutinize my fat arms.  There were only the shouts from our teacher telling me to keep up, move more, dance with joy.  Repeating this exercise daily, it wore away my obsession with beauty.  It’s hard to completely resolve a 22 year weight obsession in one semester.  Yet, this experience cracked the window:  I could start to peak out at a world where my body weight wouldn’t define me.

Perhaps the most surprising memory of Africa’s beautiful spirit came from my trip to the Gold Coast slave fortresses.  Before visiting the structures, I thought of slaves in the American South – sleeping in rustic shacks, dirty from days picking cotton, huddling around a small fire at night.  Slavery was dusty, dark, dirty, and full of terrifying violence.  It was mostly a Southern thing, decorated with Confederate flags and statues of Robert E Lee.

But this was African slavery…this was where it all began.  Those big brick slave fortresses blinded me with white.   The huge alabaster walls reflected the powerful shine of the equatorial sun.  Once my eyes adjusted, I felt like I was looking into the smile of a horror movie villain.  The most perfect, white, welcoming smile, inviting me with warmth.  As I got closer, disturbing blackness dotted the view. 

The clean purity of those white walls fool you, and then you see the dark.  Black cannons poke out behind walls.  Black doors open to dungeons.  Black shackles remind you where humans were chained to the wall.  Black signs label “Female Dungeon” and “Male Dungeon”.  In the background, the blue-gray Atlantic Ocean casts an indifferent background.  Its waves have lapped the shores for all of history, and it will continue to do so long after that history is forgiven.

There is so much bad spirit in those walls.  This atrocity is the fault of my ancestors.  Afterall, it was white skin that stripped this land of its most valuable resources and its strongest people.  It was the American obsession with economics that stole these humans and packed them on ships like animals.  The United States has grown to be a global power only thanks to the backs of the West African tribes who are so easily forgotten.  My white blood should be ashamed of such a grotesque history.

The mantra echos… There is no bad dancer, only bad spirit.

No crime is beyond forgiveness.  Change is too heavy to also bear the weight of self-hate.

I may have gone to Ghana as an act of escape and rebellion.  What I discovered, though, is that forgiving the past starts by first embracing the truth.  Reconciling with your ancestors is like reconciling with your inner demons – it requires deep, diligent, reflective work.  Yet there is always a spirit that wants to find new life, to be set free, to find hope.  Let it shine.  Let it dance.

In Everlasting Memory:
Of the anguish of our Ancestors
May those who died rest in peace
May those who return find their roots
May humanity never again perpetuate
Such injustice against Humanity
We the living, vow to uphold this