A Fantastic Summer

Summer 2022 was one of the best summers of my life! I had the privilege of participating in two fantastic educational experiences. I had the incredibly awesome opportunity to travel to Ghana for two weeks with The Witness Tree Institute of Ghana (WTIG), which is an organization based in Massachusetts, and travel to Cody, Wyoming, to study the Japanese internment camps at Heart Mountain.

Six teachers from the United States were chosen to participate in the Witness Tree opportunity. After flying to Accra and meeting up with Ghanaian teachers and members of WTIG, we heard from a variety of scholars, educators, and artists and learned about educational practices in Ghana, the history of the country, and the importance of song and dance in Ghanaian culture. We visited Koo Nimo, the most famous Ghanaian musician, and danced with his band members, as well as the King of Akropong (a region in Ghana), who lived in New York for 18 years before being called back to be king of the area. We stayed in a hotel where guests could pet the crocodiles in residence (if supervised and if the crocodiles agree!). We spent three fantastic nights eating, dancing, and singing at Aunty Mercy’s Shebeen while looking out over the ocean, and we explored Kakum National Park while on the Canopy Walk 100 feet high!

The experience that most greatly affected me was our visit to the European castles on the coast where most of the enslaved persons in Africa were kept until they were taken away from the continent. Both Elmina and Cape Coast castles have unfathomably brutal histories where millions of African people, who were captured or sold into slavery, waited (and often died) under hellish conditions to be transferred to ships that would take them away from their homeland.

At one workshop, we were told that the Ghanaians have a dance where they lean to the right (listening to that person) and then lean to the left (listening to that person), and then go forward (looking to the future). Ghana seems to have embraced that concept in combatting the effects of a very difficult past. Ghana has taken many steps to welcome back the African diaspora in an effort for unity, such as a ceremony at the Assin Manso Ancestral Odonkor River Park and the “DOOR OF RETURN” sign exhibited now on the other side of the original “DOOR OF NO RETURN” at the Cape Coast Castle. This sign is a tangible symbol of reclamation by the people, creating the literal place for “the return.”

Teachers from all over the country were selected to participate in a weeklong workshop to study the Japanese internment camp at Heart Mountain in Wyoming. The Heart Mountain Foundation works to preserve what remains of the World War II Japanese American internment site outside of Cody, Wyoming. It exists to tell the stories of the more than 14,000 people unjustly incarcerated at the site and educate about this shameful chapter in history.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, Japanese people living on the West Coast were rounded up and sent to 10 different internment camps, including the one at Heart Mountain. While imprisoned for up to four years, the detainees lost their homes and businesses, as well as any belongings seized by opportunistic neighbors. As my trip coincided with the Heart Mountain pilgrimage of the family members of these detainees, we were able to meet many of the people whose family members were confined to the camp at Heart Mountain. We attended many workshops and lectures about Heart Mountain and the Apsáalooke tribe (Crow tribe) of native people who had inhabited the area. Several participants also had the opportunity to visit the nearby Yellowstone National Park.