In 2025, my erudite friend Londoner Odai Quaye travelled to Accra for the first time to meet members of his extended family. In this interview, he shares his impressions of and thoughts on the country. You can hear him describe the trip in more detail and from the point of view of a neurodivergent traveller on the podcast Audible Autism.
1) What is your connection to Ghana? How has that connection shaped your sense of identity as a Briton?
My connection to Ghana is through my father, who had to flee the country in his teens due to military coup under J.J. Rawlings. It shapes my identity in the sense that I am Jamaican-Ghanaian-British, which is all-encompassing but also a very specific lens to look at the world: it speaks to the connected histories of the countries in terms of colonialism, social values, definitely in terms of class but also cultures.
Growing up, I heard a lot of talk about the similarities and differences between Ghana and Jamaica. I’ll admit I’m more familiar with one than the other but I refuse to downplay either of them. It’s funny cause sometimes I think about how nobody is ever going to question my blackness but once they learn where my parents are from, that’s when questions and certain weird comments start popping out.
It was interesting because for me [the 2025 trip] was as much “returning home” as it was about me being a tourist. I don’t feel embarrassed to say that because it was my first time, but when I go back there it will be more familiar and I won’t be wracked with anxiety.
2) How would you describe the vibe of the country, encompassing geography, climate, culture, history?
Hot climate but more so than the heat it’s a very humid country, but that might be due to the fact that a lot of the places we visited were near the coast. I say this not as a pejorative but Ghana (at least Accra) is a building site so there’s a lot of work being done in terms of the infastructure. While I think that’s good, the issue is they’re doing it all at once so there’s parts that still need work, especially the roads where there were a fair number of potholes and gravel and that was something I wasn’t able to get used to, that plus as I’m neurodiverse in more ways than one I had to mask a lot and especially at night when coming back the lights were overwhelming to say the least.
That said people were very welcoming, good sense of humour, proud people the similarities between there and Jamaica were loud and clear.
3) What were some of the things that interested you most about your trip in 2025?
In terms of destinations I would say the W.E.B. Dubois Pan-African centre and the Aburi Botanical Gardens but on a more personal note it was getting to meet relatives I had never met before and getting to see my father’s home town and what he had been able to do since he returned there a decade ago. Getting to see the compound and mural of my great-grandfather who a couple people said I looked a lot like.
4) Accra’s The Library of African and the Africa Diaspora has been listed in the book 150 Libraries You Need to Visit Before You Die. I am curious to know (1) if you’ve seen it and (2) what ten books you would include in your own
Decolonial Library?
Decolonial Library?
Unfortunately I didn’t go and I should’ve put the Library down as one of the locations that I should’ve visited but as far as the ten books that I’d include in my library would be: The Perfect Nine (Thiongo), Black No More (George S Schuyler) Voyage in the Dark (Jean Rhys, whose sensibility to me is totally Caribbean in ways that some wouldn’t immediately recognise), Black Oot Here (layla-roxanne
hill, Francesca Sobande), Victoire: My Mother’s Mother (Maryse Condé), African and Caribbean People in Britain (Hakim Adi), The Female King of Colonial Nigeria: Ahebi Ugbabe (Nwando Achebe), How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Walter Rodney), Black Disability Politics (Sami Shalk), and Anarchism and the Black Revolution (Lorenzo Komboa Ervin). If I could add one extra it would be White War Black Soldiers (Bakary Diallo and Lamine Senghor).
5) One of the great personalities of the country is Kwame Nkrumah, who led Ghana to independence in 1957. He was also a prolific writer. I’m curious to know how you view him and/or his work and how his legacy is viewed generally by Ghanians. (Also, did you visit his statue?)
I knew of Nkrumah as a deeply significant figure. In fact, while I was in Ghana and visiting the estate of my great-grandfather, I learned that he helped fund Nkrumah’s political campaign so I learnt that I had a personal connection to the man that I didn’t know beforehand. In many ways I feel like his legacy stands strong and while there’s work currently being done now that follows in his footsteps at the same time there’s a lot more that hasn’t been realised and I don’t blame the people for feeling somewhat cynical about those in power regardless of what country they’re from.
On a side note: No I’m not proud about the extents of homophobia within Ghana (same with Jamaica) but what people tend to forget or not acknowledge is how that comes out of reaction politics against western imperialism as well as the influence of the Church, particularly from American Evangelicals.
6) There have recently been an amazing number of books written by Ghanians of the Diaspora. (Some examples: Homecoming by Yaa Gayasi, Harmatta Rain by Ayesha Harruna Attah, Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson). Are you drawn at all to these stories as a point of comparison with your own perspective? Or are you tempted to add your story to the mosaic?
I would say that my interest goes both ways in terms of adding my own story to the overall picture AND as a point of comparison, the problem I have is how do I thread the needle in bringing the different aspects in a way that feels honest to myself and realistic? I’ve thought about doing something more abstract because that does grant a writer certain freedoms than if it was a “realist” novel but at present I’m still undecided but I have a few ideas in mind.
