“You are Ghanaian?” “Your name is Yeboah and you can’t speak Twi?”
It’s been interesting to see the conflicting emotions and reactions that I’ve experienced here regarding my nationality and cultural identity. Having not grown up here I’m considered “not really Ghanaian.” Another curiosity is that Yeboah is originally an Ashanti name, and it is so common especially here being in the heart of the Ashanti region. I hear it around me all the time. It’s almost like Smith or Johnson. My family however, are not Ashanti, but Ga, a smaller tribe that live in Accra. So I have an Ashanti name but I’m Ga, and I don’t speak Twi and didn’t grow up here. My family lived in UK, Nigeria, Botswana and now the US where I have now naturalized. The struggle third culture kids face when asked the question “where are you from?” This is often difficult to answer. The author Taiye Selasi offers us a solution. Proposing the concept of “locality” instead of “nationality.” See her TED talk here:
I agree and do identify with some aspects of her assertions. I am a multi-local and perhaps do have multiple identities from the different “localities” I have lived in, but I also feel though an innate need to identify with one nationality and with one culture that I can claim as my own. Experiencing the Ghanaian culture now first-hand on this trip I feel is just the beginning of this journey for me…