By DeNeen L. Brown, Illustration: Diana Ejaita/The Washington Post, The Washington Post, September 26, 2022
The mouth of the Volta River in Ghana seems to be swelling with the stories of my people. By day, the river, black and thick, runs south, dumping its fresh water into the Gulf of Guinea and eventually the Atlantic Ocean, where it churns in a powerful vortex. By night, I swear I see the river reverse itself, running inland, as if an invisible force were swallowing it whole. The pink water lilies, with plump green leaves that floated south that morning, appear to be moving backward. It is magical and mysterious. I’ve never witnessed a river reverse course.
I believe this river carries the stories of my enslaved African ancestors who may have been transported down its waterway hundreds of years ago into waiting boats anchored out at sea before making the transatlantic voyage as “human cargo,” heading from this Gold Coast for South America, the Caribbean islands and other parts of North America. As many as 15 million Africans were packed in the belly of slave ships, often without proper ventilation or sufficient food. It is estimated that up to 2 million died in the Middle Passage, lost in deep-water graves.
My ancestors, though I do not know them, must have survived that gruesome voyage, only to have to endure the barbarity of enslavement in the Americas. As with many people in the African diaspora — scattered by the evil of the slave trade, disconnected from our language, song, culture and people — I am not exactly sure where my ancestors are from. Still, I know that my distant ancestors are from this continent. As Peter Tosh sang, “Don’t care where you come from / As long as you’re a Black man, you’re an African / No mind your nationality / You have got the identity of an African.”
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