CONGRATULATIONSS GHANA!

Dear P:

I am reading through the Ghana material from both you and Danielle right now! Now that the New Year is here, your trip in April (2009) seems so imminent!

First, please forgive me for not mentioning the election in Ghana. Next time something important like that happens, let me know, again, closer to the day. You know how my short-term memory goes. I can hear the headline loud and clear but sometime miss some the text!

CONGRATULATIONS on the election. I hope that the NDP outcome was the one you were hoping for. Also, KUDOS on the celebration of the Ghana's 50th anniversary of Independence from British colonial contol. This is a good year, indeed, for you to take your family to your homeland, your place of birth and growth to adulthood.

As i read (online) the anecdotal experiences of Ghanians living abroad, i see similarities, ancestrally and historically, with my own roots. It left me wondering about the difference between "home" and "homeland" and, of course, my favourite topic - "nationhood".

What is our "homeland"? The country we were born? The place we grew up? The country we live in now? If you were born in China and brought to Canada as an infant - where is your homeland?

When you came to Canada, you were a man (nineteen years old) and had been raised fully in Ghana. My experience is of being from a long, continuing line of immigrants (from the British Isles) but, because of personal experience (ie. i've never been to the British Isles), i must call Canada my "homeland".

Canada and Unites States were, from inception, the new frontier; the New Land for so many who were persecuted and driven hard into poverty with the evolving economies and cultures that came with the looming Industrial Age. The "monied class" often made it clear they could not handle the social and economic needs of the many.

The "New World" (Canada) was hard, practically inhabitable and forced changes in personalities and habits and roles like any other "diaspora". My ancestors left their "homelands". Did they think it was any better? Some, (many?) returned back to their "homeland". Some went back to share what they had learned in the New World. Enough stayed to move the 'great frontier' (as they say) forward.





I have decided that it is the place you grew up. That must be our "homeland". Where we live now is our "home" and i think, everyone who leaves their "homeland", must face a constant process of comparision and pressure to adapt some of the dominant culture of the country they either live in or become a citizen of.

At the same time, IT IS SO VITAL that recent, new Canadians maintain and share the traditions of their "homeland" Canada, because it is also "homeland" itself has My experience of multi-culturalism in Canada is like a slow-moving pendelum, moving between the old and the new, as we have always done.