What Consuming in Ghana Taught Me About My Black American Identification

As I walked via customs, I used to be excited. Not solely was this my first journey to Africa—as a Black lady meals author who focuses on African diasporic cooking, no much less—it was additionally the work journey of my desires. I had come to Ghana to work as co-writer with chef Eric Adjepong on his debut cookbook, Ghana to the World, a set of recipes and essays exploring his Ghanaian American identification and the way each america and West Africa inform his cooking. “You must include me to Ghana,” was a standard chorus throughout our early planning calls, once we’d stroll via the stream of chapters, the potential recipe listing, and images.

I additionally got here hungry. Over two weeks, my predominant objective was to style the various dishes Eric and I had been discussing the 2 years prior: okra stew, starchy swallows akin to fufu and omo tuo (rice ball), and grilled meats offered on road corners, to call a number of. I knew them in idea and through the African eating places I’d visited within the U.S., however Eric needed me to see them firsthand. He was a information holding one hand, whereas my mom, who was becoming a member of me on the journey, held the opposite. A seasoned and avid traveler, my mom mentioned Ghana was considered one of her favourite locations on the planet, and that it reminded her of rising up in St. Thomas, the place we nonetheless have household. She was flying in individually later within the week.

 Within the days that adopted, I settled into Ghana, consuming skewers of grilled beef chichinga on the Aburi Botanical Gardens, fried fish with fufu at a beachfront restaurant in Elmina, and late-night wings after dancing at Bloom Bar. However it was waakye, the tomato-based stew served over rice (and typically spaghetti), with boiled eggs, crispy fried shallots, and a wholesome dose of funk from dried fish, that sped up my coronary heart (in one of the simplest ways), inflicting me to look down at my fork with marvel, considering what I had simply eaten. My mom’s favourite stall was exterior Makola Market in Accra, and waakye there was directly acquainted and stunning, like listening to a music you’re keen on performed by a unique artist; as I ate the heap of maroon-tinged starches, I discovered myself attempting to call the spices. “Is there anise in right here? Perhaps ginger?” I requested my mother. Curious but additionally hungry, she rattled off a number of possible components earlier than shrugging and getting again to consuming.

The sensation of familiarity pulsed in my thoughts throughout my journey. As a Black American, visiting the continent of Africa will be weird: You might be directly a foreigner and likewise probably linked to the very place you might be seeing as an outsider. It’s an expertise that meals historian Michael Twitty wrote about in an essay about visiting Ghana as a Black, homosexual, Jewish man who has traced his ancestry there. “For many African People, slavery forcibly minimize our quick ties to the motherland,” Twitty writes. “Needing to know extra about our roots has grow to be one of many central points in our identification.” 

For me, these edible ties to the motherland have been instantly electrical, however the interpersonal ones left me with a boring ache I’m nonetheless confronting in the present day. There have been many moments when a taxi driver, fellow diner, or resort employee would ask if I used to be from Ghana, or if my household was. “I don’t know,” was at all times my response, eliciting a discomfort that will cling within the air between us. The reality of that historical past (or the dearth thereof) is difficult to broach in on a regular basis dialog. 

I haven’t accomplished DNA testing; I’ve relied solely on the historical past and cooking practices of Virginia and the Virgin Islands (the place my father and mom are from, respectively) to piece collectively the place my ancestors might have originated. My father’s aspect is probably going from Senegal, as a result of enslaved West Africans have been dropped at the Carolinas as a result of their experience in rising rice. Due to the transatlantic slave commerce, many within the Virgin Islands hint their roots to Ghana, the place my mom’s aspect is probably going from.

Within the months after visiting Ghana, as I labored on the ebook with chef Eric, I mirrored on my journey not by way of experiences, however emotions. Though Ghana moored my Blackness to Africa profoundly, it additionally accentuated my Americanness, reminding me that my house is Maryland; the Virgin Islands; Chesapeake, Virginia; and New Jersey, the place I dwell with my husband. That sensation—of roots unearthed but untethered—was, to be frank, deeply uncomfortable. 

But the flavors of Ghana stayed with me like campfire smoke that permeates your garments. Again house, I sought out warmth in shito (a Ghanaian pepper sauce) and habaneros; the dusty, tart style of the nation’s brownish limes; and within the aromatic earthiness of groundnuts. I discovered proximate flavors on the African and Latin grocery store close to my house in Jersey Metropolis, and at Teranga, chef Pierre Thiam’s quick informal spot in Harlem.    

Lately, I used to be testing one of many last dishes for the ebook, a seemingly easy turkey wing stew with bell peppers, tomato paste, and aromatics—the parts of a typical Ghanaian stew—when it hit me. The connection to the waakye I had with my mom in Accra was apparent, however I used to be additionally transported to my great-aunt Vashti’s kitchen in St. Thomas, the place she taught me to make our household’s “gravy,” a tomato sauce that we serve with fried fish. It was thick with sliced onions, aromatic with garlic, and punched up with apple cider vinegar, and my aunt at all times added a touch of floor clove. I keep in mind asking why, because the taste struck me as misplaced. She shrugged and mentioned, “That’s how Mother [my great-grandmother Alice] taught me to make it.” Right here I used to be tasting a model of it in my very own kitchen whereas engaged on a cookbook for a chef with roots an ocean away.

I texted Eric. “Do you know there’s a sauce like waakye that my household makes in St. Thomas!?” Then I shot off a message to my mother to inform her I lastly found out what spice made the waakye style so acquainted: cloves. “That’s humorous!” she replied. “Most likely explains why I find it irresistible a lot.”