Personal and Professional Reflections on a Journey to Accra, Ghana

By Angela Pace-Moody

The Columbia University 2003 Urban Planning International Studio to Accra provided an exciting opportunity to journey to Africa. We engaged in professional and academic planning discussions about the needs and conditions in this disaster-effected city. I knew that a six-day fact finding mission would be subject to numerous constraints and would bring forth many challenges. However, it was not until the day prior to my departure that I had a discussion with a family friend and renowned educator that prompted me to think about what my experiences and challenges would be like in Africa as an African-American woman. She asked me to document my experiences in Accra — the experience of being in a place where the majority of people would look like me — and whether or not I felt a sense of connection to this foreign place that has such a large role in the history African-Americans.

After a day and night of traveling, it was exhilarating to finally land in Accra. Near 100 percent humidity greeted me on the tarmac, and the moment my feet finally touched terra firma, I acknowledged that I was in Africa: "the motherland." Under the cover of darkness, Accra could be mistaken for Jamaica or some tropical vacation destination — the heat and the smell of humidity in the air were familiar. However, our first daylight hours in Accra unambiguously showed that this was no paradise. The visible poverty and the lack of basic services were appalling and distressing. How could a country steeped in centuries of rich civilization and great empires suffer from such a scarcity of resources?

On our third day in Accra, we visited a busy strip of eateries and shops where a man said to me, "Hello, my sister, we share the same blood." I was speechless. His comment punctuated what I had been feeling since my arrival: not to be trite, but he and the rest of Ghanaians are "my people," long-lost relatives separated by space and time and a period of history many just want to forget. In that moment, I had to digest conflicting emotions of joy and guilt. I was joyful to be connecting with a place integral to the history and legacy of my ancestors. Yet at the same time I felt guilt for all of the privileges that I often take for granted, as I navigated a city struggling to serve the basic needs of its residents. Right then I began to see more clearly why people often avoid discussions about race, privilege, and inequality. It can be a bitter and harsh reality to talk about culpability for a history of exploitation and oppression. But if we brush aside these issues, do we really learn anything? Nearly 700,000 Africans were sold into slavery from the former Gold Coast colony. Only 140 years ago, those slaves and their ancestors were emancipated in the United States. This is a crucial part of the history of both Accra and the United States, as inequalities based on class and race are directly related to matters of housing policy and other critical issues of urban development.

Never having traveled to Africa or a developing country, I realize in hindsight that I was unprepared for what I experienced. I was unprepared to balance the my professional and personal feelings and their role my work as an urban planner. The several weeks of research I had completed prior to our departure were no match for the reality of our trip. Since our travel, I have had many conversations with classmates and other colleagues about what could have prepared me for what I saw and felt. Many of these discussions circle back to the issue of diversity. There is a pressing need for greater diversity in many segments of planning education; classroom discussions, curriculum content, interdisciplinary research. This will not be adequately achieved without greater faculty and student diversity across race, ethnicity, gender, class and other categories. Structured programs that establish the classroom as a forum for discussions on diversity will afford students the opportunity to be better equipped to handle them in a more culturally sensitive and equitable manner, as they become planning practitioners.

Angela Pace-Moody is a master's candidate in Urban Planning at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) at Columbia University.