Africa Calling: Portraits of Ghana, A Lesson in Community

By John W. Fountain

ACCRA, Ghana—My heart has crossed this ocean, but there is no Vibranium here. No mythical supernatural people of coal to caramel skin. 

I find here no sign of the fictional Hollywood African nation of Wakanda that spoke to that longing in the hearts of African Americans in the movie, “Black Panther” with visions of hope and serendipity. No utopia. Ghana. No grandiose illusions. Pure Ghana, population 31.98 million.

And yet, there is something here.

Something there is—embodied in the bended emerald branches of coconut trees that speaks to me. Something about the way the white foam waves crash upon these ancestral shores on this side of the Atlantic Ocean in this Gold Coast nation, where W.E.B. DuBois lies buried.

Something that soothes my Black soul. That relieves my searing double consciousness like water extinguishing a flame.

And all around me are lessons in humanity, of my history. Lessons in community, even as I stand on this sandy shore, watching fishermen hoist a giant canoe from blue roaring waters to the dry shore amid their incantations in unison, their bare hands gripping thick rope beneath a searing sun.

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John W. Fountain was a 2021-22 Fulbright Scholar to Ghana, where he conducted research titled, “Africa Calling: Portraits of Black Americans Drawn To The Motherland.” Fountain also was a lecturer over at the University of Ghana-Legon, where he led students in a semester online Mobile Journalism Project titled, “People of Accra.” Additionally, Fountain facilitated a journalism training program for 60 journalists from the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, the West African nation’s public broadcasting network, in a three-day course Fountain created at the request of GBC’s Director General Amin Alhassan. The program was titled, “Humanity and Democracy in Journalism: Telling the Stories of Everyday People.” Fountain will present his stirring interactive multimedia exhibit on his Fulbright year in Ghana at the Fulbright Association's Annual 47 conference in Washington, D.C., Oct. 25-26.

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John Fountain speaks to high school students back home via Zoom from a house where he lived in Ghana during his Fulbright year.

The Door of No Return at Cape Coast Castle memorializes the exodus of millions of Africans who departed slave castles to board slave ships bound for the Middle Passage and who never returned to Africa. Hence the title above the door: “Door of No Return.”

John Fountain captures the faces of children at an orphanage in Ghana, where he was a 2021-22 Fulbright scholar. (Photo: Monica Fountain)

Photo 2: Two little boys watch men pull a fishing canoe to shore in the Lake Volta region of Ghana. (Photos: John W. Fountain)