Ghana in Transit: Pt 2- Bmore and the Africa Hustle

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Follow a young woman from D.C to Ghana on her journey of, adventure, love, humor, sadness, and learning how to overcome life’s hurdles.  Stay tuned, a new story will be posted each week.

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Part 2: Bmore and the Africa Hustle

When a decision is made, one must consult with the universe. Whether this consultation is conscious or unconscious is dependent on the consciousness of the individual. Whatever the case may be, when the decision to go to Africa became an obsession, I was tired of waking from my slumber with the smell of salt water under my nose. Waves crashing in my dreams. I began to search for ways to get there. I didn’t always have confidence in what I would find, but I never stopped looking. This journey lasted the better part of a school year. A year I will never forget. one that started in Baltimore and ended on a plane heading to Ghana.  A plane whose underbelly shined gold because it was flying over the Golden Grid. This journey was so extensive that I have broken it down into three parts. The first one is below. Enjoy. <3[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”sandy_brown” border_width=”3″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Fall 2011 to summer 2012, was a whirlwind of transitions, warmth, and sexual exploration. The universe set into motion a chain of events that still baffle and astounds me to this day. I’ve written about portions of them, but I have never been as in depth as I am being now. The truth of the matter is that I manifested everything I wanted that year, and that it’s taken me years to understand the synchronicity of my experiences.

I was starting what was technically my senior year at my HBCU and I still lived with my homegurl across the street. We were still cute and semi ratchet. We still brought loose fuggs from people on the street, and when necessary stole the jumbo rolls of toilet paper from the old student center. Most of my classes were still in the liberal arts buildings, I was still performing original music in Bmore and D.C, music was still life, English majors still had to write fifteen agr papers, lost friends were still lost, and every other day I would go to class high asf, bold asf, and still ready to take my honorable C’s.

Our apartment was a cute little duplex with mad potential, and it’s location was a blessing. Not only were we five minutes from campus, but we could see our friends outside the window when they were rushing to class. We would scream their names out the window, duck out of view, sneak back up, and then giggle when they would look back confused. Rent was mad cheap, and we were able to get a decent cable package. Living there was pretty chill forreal forreal. But for reasons still unknown to us, our landlord, Mr Morrison(o’l bum face ass) didn’t pay his mortgage, and our apartment went into foreclosure. When we found out, we refused to pay him another dime, and swore that we would make money and art in the apartment for the remainder of our time there. The universe must have been in agreeance, because no sooner had we put this desire into the air, we started making bread.

We invested of course. She’s a Capricorn and I’m an Aquarius so it was only natural for us to turn profit over. These hustles included selling “special brownies” and throwing banging ass house parties in our unfinished basement. I convinced my visual artist brother to come up from D.C and to paint all over the walls, and whenever we would throw a function we would put up different colored lights and make a fruity jungle juice. Jungle juice that was made potent by that wretched cheap vodka, the one that starts with an E. You know the one!  It was somewhat reckless, and completely lit! We made money hand over fist, and were able to provide a good time for good friends, some of which we would lose before the year was out, others we would continue to see. These parties were a bright spark in my somewhat routine life. Honestly, the strict confines of university life had started to annoy me.

I was getting exhausted with the repetitiveness of it really, but not tired enough to quit. I never quit. I may not always reach the prize first, but a quitter I am not. I was going to ride the college train until the wheels fell off. And that would only happen after I walked across the stage, bachelor’s in hand, pride intact. But for now, I was struggling with a continental mind and a wandering heart.

I became obsessed with the notion of touching the motherland for the first time, what it would taste like, feel like.

I ate, drank and slept Africa like I had never done before. I started to tread on uncharted university territory, in an attempt to find out about study abroad programs. I became a regular in the international studies building, and a familiar friend at the alumni house. Still unclear as to what part of Africa I was being called to, I believed that my university would make it easy to choose. Being an HBCU and all, I assumed that study abroad programs in Africa were in abundance, girl(or guy) was I wrong! Not only were the study abroad programs scarce, but there were zero based in Africa.

I resorted to looking on the internet for other Universities with consortium programs. Searching for programs geared towards the arts. I looked at South Africa and Senegal, but nothing aligned better than Ghana, which is interesting considering I had been raised deep in Ghanaian culture, and that three out of my four names are Ghanaian. Ghana screamed in my veins. I applied to the program, and I got accepted. Now I had to figure out how to raise the funds. I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but I knew that it was in my destiny to do it. A destiny I aimed to fulfill…..by any means necessary.

To be continued[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]