News

Third bi-annual trip to Ghana scheduled for January

In print | November 1, 2007

This winter, the Black Cultural Center will lead its third bi-annual trip to Ghana. The 10-day trip is open to faculty, students and alumni from the Tri-College community and will take place this January.

The Ghana trip has evolved since students first made the journey in 2002. “The original purpose of the trip was to give black students an opportunity to go to Africa ~~- students who wouldn’t otherwise go -~~ as a way to introduce them to a place that is associated with their identity,” said BCC Director and Assistant Dean Timothy Sams.

This year, however, the trip was open to all interested students.

Sams explained that while the main aim of the trip remains true to the original goal, the BCC wanted to give other students, who are interested in doing social justice work in Africa, a chance to go.

Opening the trip to all students has led to an increase in the number of applicants. With 31 people attending, the trip this year will be the biggest yet.

The travel group is composed of eight Swarthmore students, seven Haverford students, six Bryn Mawr students, one chaperone from each school, and six other people affiliated with the consortium and Sams.

Due to significant interest, the BCC had to select travelers from an applicant pool. Having already picked students, the trip coordinators have had to manage all of the travel plans. The BCC has arranged for student travelers to return to Swarthmore in early January, when the dorms are officially closed.

In addition to passports, the travelers need visas as well as immunizations. The coordinators will spend the time from now until the departure date making sure everyone is prepared and has everything they need before the trip.

For trip coordinator Stephanie Appiah ’10, the trip is a return to her home country.

“I was inspired to go to Ghana to work on the service component of this trip, to work with friends on going to a beautiful country, to reconnect to my people and to add my Swarthmore experience to how people in Ghana are living their lives,” she explained.

The trip will be a new experience for Sherri Lee ’10.

“I am really excited to go on this trip because I have never left the continent of North America before. I have always wanted to travel abroad and this is the perfect opportunity,” Lee said. “I think it’s important for me personally and educationally to get more of an international perspective, to see another society firsthand instead of just getting information through books or hearing from other people.”

Lee has a second reason for going to Ghana. As a member of the Global Health Forum, she has been actively involved in the campaign against the malaria epidemic. Because the disease is prevalent in Africa, Lee hopes to see the continent firsthand to get a better understanding of the conditions that affect population health there.

While in Ghana, the travelers will visit culturally significant locations in the southern half of the country. These sites include the Enslaved Castles and the African American museum. The castles were historically used as dungeons to hold Africans before they were shipped to the Americas as slaves, and the African American museum was built by a Philadelphia – based group which bought the land that had once been used to hold and chain slaves.

Another highlight of the trip is a visit to the Kente weaving villages, where Ashanti Kente, one of the most historically and culturally significant cloths in Africa, is made. They will also visit an Ashanti castle and other historical landmarks.

The trip also includes several Swarthmore-related stops. The attendees will go to NOYAM, a Contemporary African Dance Research Project. The director of the project, Professor Nii Yartey, was a visiting professor of dance at Swarthmore last year. Sams hopes to explore the possibility of working with NOYAM to create a K-12 dance school as a project involving Swarthmore students. He hopes that if students see the needs of young Ghanaian children, they will take action.

While the project’s logistics are still being discussed, Sams hopes the school will be successful, possibly even leading to a summer program there.

One of the other stops in Ghana is Ashesi University College, located in Accra. The university was founded by Patrick Awuah ’88.

After graduation, Awuah worked for Microsoft and then received an MBA from Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.

Ashesi University College opened in 2002 and maintains close ties with Swarthmore. While there has been no formal contact between Awuah and the BCC for this trip, travelers will visit the school to see the fruits of Awuah’s labor.

Overall, the goal of the trip is to give students an inside view of Ghana. Sams hopes that it will encourage more students to study abroad in Africa. “The trip will be educative and we hope [the students] will see a place for themselves and a place to do good work,” Sams said.