Ron Claiborne Visits His African Heritage

Landing in Ghana's Capital

Months later -- on March 6 -- the BA flight descended in the darkness. Out the window, I could see a scattering of lights. With a touch of nervousness that I had not expected, I thought, "This is it."

On my first day in Accra, the sprawling, congested capital of 2 million, I was taken to lunch by the daughter of Harruna Atta, editor of the Accra Daily Mail. I had met his older daughter, a grad student at the Columbia University School of Journalism, by chance and she had urged me to look up her family.

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We grabbed a cab. The driver was a man named Isaac, an Ashanti. I told him about my DNA test result. He'd never heard of such a thing.

"I took the test," I explained. "On my mother's side, it said Ashanti."

He glanced over at me. "Is that right?"

"Do I look like I could be Ashanti?"

He took a second look, smiling. "Well, because of your color."

I prompted him: "Many, many years ago?"

"Many, many years ago," he said thoughtfully, still concentrating on the road. "Mixed brown. I think it's OK. So far as you're about to discover, I think it's right."

"So Ashantis are very proud?"

"Yes, because Ashantis are very great people."

In the coming days I would hear variations of that boast, but it always seemed prideful, not arrogant.

I spent two days under the wing of Harruna Atta. he patiently explained the politics, social customs and culture of Ghana and Ghanaians. He took me to meet the tourism minister who told me -- to my shock -- that many Ghanaians are only dimly aware of the slave trade that thrived on their shores centuries ago. He said some might not even connect visiting black Americans to Africa. They would assume that there were indigenous dark-skinned people in America just as there are in Africa. I was told that when "Roots" was broadcast on national television, some people learned for the first time that black Americans originally came from Africa. Ghanaians were stunned and outraged, he said, by the depicted cruelty of the slave traders and slave masters.