Ghana set to welcome President Obama

President Obama’s trip to Ghana this weekend draws attention to the country’s history as a gateway to American slavery. But Ghana is also a travel destination for many African-Americans. And some have chosen to relocate there. The World’s Laura Lynch has the story.

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LISA MULLINS: President Obama and his family arrive in Ghana tomorrow night. The visit is brief but it has special significance for African Americans who live there now. Some of them made the choice to move to Ghana, to discover their African heritage and in some cases, to escape racism. The World’s Laura Lynch has the story of an American woman who was once on the front lines of the battle for civil rights. Today she’s rising to new challenges in her adopted homeland.

LAURA LYNCH: Laying in new flagstones, whitewashing the walls. Cape Coast Castle, the old slave trading post on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean is a pilgrimage for many who trace their roots right back to here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Briefly I am going to give you a very short history of this castle, after which we’ll embark on the tour. Now, the castle as it stands right now, is about 344 years old, 344 years.

LAURA LYNCH: On Saturday, President Obama will take a tour like this. Starting in the courtyard looking out beyond the row of cannons to the sea, where slave ships used to wait to pick up their wretched cargo. From there, it will be down into the dungeons where the slaves existed in fetid darkness, many dying before they could even board the ships.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now, in the male slave dungeon we have five rooms here, and each of the rooms would house about 200 male slaves on the average, 200 male slaves on the average.

LAURA LYNCH: This is the story of Africans forced to leave their continent for places like America. But just a short way up the road from here, is the story of an American who found a reason to come all the way back generations later.

[SOUND CLIP OF CHILDREN AT SCHOOL]

LAURA LYNCH: The youngest voices of another generation, the kindergarten class at the Ayensudo Akoma academy line up in neat rows. Their song of welcome very nearly a shout.

[SOUND CLIP OF CHILDREN AT SCHOOL]

LAURA LYNCH: Watching over them is Malkia Brantuo, this is the school she built with her own money.

[SOUND CLIP OF A MALE TEACHER SPEAKING]

LAURA LYNCH: There are more than 100 students aged three to 20, learning math, English, science art and other subjects at a fraction of the cost of other private schools. Brantuo opened it in 2004, 31 years after she first came to Ghana from Detroit, where she was born. For the next few years she traveled back and forth, eventually marrying a Ghanaian. She decided to stay for good in 1989.

MALKIA BRANTUO: So I said, if the good lord ever gave me enough resources and enough strength, I would come back and open my own school and let the children know that they are the most beautiful people on earth, and they should be proud to be who they are, and that they should think for themselves.

LAURA LYNCH: Brantuo is almost 79 now.  Her hips are bad, so she often has to use a walker to get to her office in the school. But her pride in her African heritage is strong, a pride paired with the belief that she’s found her destiny in Ghana.

MALKIA BRANTUO: I just feel more comfortable here, I feel more grounded here. And I guess I feel a sense of freedom here that I didn’t have in the US. Because I can do things or say things. Or, I’m just free.

LAURA LYNCH: Freedom means a lot to Brantuo. As a younger woman named Esther Frazier, she was right there in the midst of the often brutal battle for civil rights.  Frazeir was in Selma, Montgomery,  rural Mississippi, and she paid a price.

MALKIA BRANTUO: During the 60′s when we were going back and forth down south by the busloads, I was put in jail a couple of times, mistreated. But I try not to think about that. I try not to keep negative things around me.

LAURA LYNCH: Brantuo has achieved a measure of serenity. She is so beloved here, she was adopted by the local chiefs, and given the honorary title of queen mother. Barack Obama’s visit holds profound meaning for her. She laughs at suggestions her role in the civil rights movement helped make his victory possible. But Brantuo is hoping to meet the president on Saturday, and she has an honor she’d like to bestow on him.

MALKIA BRANTUO: I’ll have to adopt him as my son, I have to sons but they haven’t reached where he reached. So he’ll have to join the family and be the son that got to the top. [LAUGHS] That’s about all I can say to him. I’m just so proud of him.

[SOUND CLIP OF THE OCEAN]

LAURA LYNCH: Not far away, the ocean crashes against the ramparts of the slave castle that symbolizes so much despair. It has a small door leading to the beach called “the door of no return”.  Hundreds of thousands of men and women passed through here as they left their homeland for good. Centuries later, Malkia Brantuo found her own route back to Africa, determined to make a better life for herself and Ghanaians. This weekend marks the moment when she’ll witness proof that the fight was worth it. For The World, I’m Laura Lynch, in Cape Coast, Ghana.

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