Musings on being a NuNative

I've just arrived in Ghana, and the mockery started almost immediately. Upon viewing my passport, the not-so-stumble testing of my Ghanaian heritage begins. Followed by the mocking of the way I speak my native tongue while forcing me to continue speaking in Twi and visibly laughing and commenting. I'm always struck by how insensitive this is. If I were a diasporan black or a person of European descent, the fawning over my "superior" language skills would be applauded. But my passport proclaims I was born of this land, so the result is a relentless shaming I've known since I left this place as a child. A reminder that little Esi is still inside of me, desperate to be just like everyone else. Something I've noticed in my reactions to this standard treatment is how it feels inside my body to be mocked. The way my eyes shift downward in disappointment and discomfort while my feet plant steadily into the ground. They may laugh, but they do not see the countless hours of study I have and continue to do to learn how to read and write languages that forced enslavement ripped from our mouths and colonial rule and nascent independence forbid my parents from doing. I'm literate in a tongue that has been spoken perhaps for over millennia. I seek an understanding of customs and rituals that the everyday Ghanaian does not even consider. I summon ancestral energies that have safeguarded me all of my life. I continuously claim my birthright as a native woman, even if my shoulders slump and my lips purse tightly in restraint as individuals, many of whom are indigenous by geography only, laugh in my face. I simply breathe in the validation of my parents. My father's insistence to pay them no mind, my mother's defense of my linguistic abilities despite only having the immediate family to transform my toddler Twi and Fanti into something intelligible. Their joint insistence that I not only continue to speak these languages but do so without hesitation or fear. And the knowledge that many of my tribe move through life separated from the reality of our lives today. Da recently said, "Some Ghanaians today only know the life they see driving on major, paved roads from malls to restaurants and then home to gated communities, but that's not the true Ghana." AKA, they're living the luxurious fantasy of a modern metropolitan Africa that continuously obscures the harsh conditions many face. (I'm paraphrasing).

What happens when my small support system is no longer on this mortal plane? When the ones who tether me to this home place are gone? Will I become the kind of Ghanaian whose feet are never covered in the red dust of these beautiful lands? A modern person floating through an obsessively "progressive" world? These are the questions that drive my pursuit of more. The development of my latest endeavor NüNative (launching Fall 2023), stems from these kinds of experiences and my personal belief that while being indigenous is a question of geographical birthright, being native is a high spiritual calling that sometimes overlaps but often does not.

This cornucopia of emotions I inevitably feel when I'm here is why there's always a sense of calm and dread when it's time to come back "home" to Ghana. A reminder that my identities are never enough. Although the daughter of a mother who my father proclaims speaks "perfect Twi," she is still a woman who doesn't know where her mother and father originate from or the actual surname of her grandparents. And although my father's Fanti is flawless, he is still an "Andrews" and the son of the first William Andrews, with a child - my brother - who is the third. Clearly, the name of a foreign lineage weaves into our history and bloodlines. I am the descendant of enslaved peoples via both my patrilineal grandparents. One set forcibly repatriated to Sierra Leone from the UK, and another courageous enough to follow the call to return to a home place. I am a culmination of this collective of ordinary people unafraid of forging an unknown path in search of their native spirit.

I have been on my own quest, wandering the earth in pursuit of my eternal mother, the people who hear the language of my heart, even if my tongue can still not yet from the words. I have seen her face represented among other indigenous and native peoples of this planet. I have felt the pulsating rhythms of home underneath my feet when standing on new soil. I have known the ache of reaching for and trying to claim traditional practices ripped away by a modern world with little reverence for the ancient. And there's the undeniable settling that always happens when I'm in West Africa. A comfort that I feel nowhere else. Yet, the sense lingers that I still do not know where I belong.

Recently, while in The Gambia, someone asked me my favorite thing about being there. She was of European descent, an American woman (I promise this is relevant). I took a long pause before I responded by saying that my favorite part about being in West Africa was the sense that I was chosen to bear witness. Let me explain. I am all too familiar with the representations we see of a poor and struggling Africa - a compilation of wayward and corrupt nations who lack the wherewithal to "properly" self-govern. However, that's different from what I see. In that part of the world, I see the delicate dance between human suffering and joy, cruelty, clutter, and pain. I see the manifestations of a dismissive world…most of all, I see myself.

In the faces of the little children, I see a mirror of the child I was—the truth of how my parent's singular decision changed the trajectory of my life. I am not the daughter of chiefs and an African princess. My people have hovered at the edge of access and power for 100s of years. And I recognize that to bear witness is a window to myself. I feel so grateful and fortunate to be here, to still look upon my people's suffering, and to feel something. My time and work in this region are deeply personal. It's more than just wanting to help others. It's about reclaiming my personhood in the collective. It humbles me and connects me to every frequency that can and will exist. My favorite part about West Africa is the Grace I am when I am here. The auntie with the quick laughter and silent wink, the elder sister who sits to speak with the little cousins, the haggler at the marketplace, the native cook with the family recipe, but most of all, the little girl with oversized liquid pools for eyes nestled inside of a long face and a shy smile. She's who I lost and who I'm trying to reclaim.

I will always be a foreigner in my native language. No matter how adept I speak it, I'll never shake the accent that declares "she is not truly one of us" in any place I go. But maybe that's ok because my ancestors, too, spoke a foreign tongue in a native land with a strange accent. Perhaps I am their seed, borne fruit.