For My Son, For Myself: Why Ghana Is Calling Me Back

My son and I on a beach somewhere in Ghana. Paradise

I was born in Ghana and left when I was about six years old. My earliest memories start from around four. I remember vividly where I lived before I left for the UK. I remember vividly who I lived with. I remember vividly the people in the house. Everything that happened, I just remember. My long-term memory is crystal clear.

Now that I have my son, who is almost three, I see memory forming in real-time. He remembers so much—places we go, things we do. It makes me deeply conscious of the moments we create together. I’ve always been a very hands-on mother, but now I’m even more intentional. I understand how these early years shape a person because my own early years, though complicated, have shaped me.

When I first came to the UK, I had this sinking feeling of not belonging here but also not wanting to go back. In Ghana, I wasn’t raised by my parents; I was in the care of my aunts. So, my early memories are layered—some warm, but some also complex. I don’t intend to go into all of that here, but it shaped me.

That feeling of being in-between never left. I didn’t want to be here, but I didn’t want to go back. I didn’t belong here, but I wasn’t sure where I did belong. The one thing that felt like home was my mother. Wherever she was, that was my anchor.

What Does It Mean to Be Ghanaian?

My connection to Ghana is strange. I am Ghanaian in the obvious sense. You look at my face, and it’s unmistakable. I look very Ghanaian. I remember meeting an older man in Tokyo once, maybe in his late 60s or early 70s. He took one look at me and started speaking Twi. He had lived in Ghana for so long that he could recognise a Ghanaian face anywhere.

So, I’m unmistakably Ghanaian. And thankfully, I can speak my mother tongue, because my mother spoke it with me growing up. But when it comes to what it truly means to be Ghanaian, I hesitate. My culture and my understanding of identity come primarily from my mother. And lately, I’ve been questioning if that’s enough.

In the last few years, there’s been an undeniable pull, a sort of tugging to go back home. I’ve lived outside of Ghana for most of my life. I’m in my mid-to-late 30s now, and I have spent more years away from my homeland than in it. Something about that doesn’t sit right anymore.

I lived in Japan for almost two years, and I sometimes wonder how I could have lived in such a foreign country yet never have lived as an adult in the land I call home. It feels disingenuous to say I’m proudly Ghanaian when my lived experience of Ghana is so limited. Yes, I’ve visited. I’ve holidayed there. But that’s not the same. A holiday is fleeting. A holiday doesn’t root you.

Maybe this itchy feet I’m experiencing is connected to my son. Maybe he is the reason this urgency has grown. He needs to know where he comes from. This place, the UK, is not his home. Not in the way Ghana is. He needs an identity that isn’t fractured like mine, a sense of belonging that isn’t clouded by doubt. And that responsibility falls on me.

I am responsible for where he will grow, where he will be educated, and the environment that will shape his thinking. That weight is not lost on me.

I don’t want my son to have ideas about himself shaped by Western values. Nor do I want his view of his own people, people who look like him, and women from his culture to be shaped by Western television and media. He needs to know who we really are and where he really comes from. I want him to have that respect, reverence, and self-awareness that is authentic, not something he has to learn from books. He shouldn’t have to spend years feeling lost, unpicking the narratives that the society he lives in—the one he will inevitably assimilate into—determines as worthy.

I want him to be layered and nuanced, but cultivated from home. Homegrown. Like his father.

Home is calling, and I am extremely inclined to respond. Even if it’s just for a short while. Even if it’s just for a year. The pull is too strong to ignore.