S***hole COuntry

Transcript

MATTHEW SHIFRIN: Hey everyone. This is Matthew Shifrin, host of Blind Guy Travels on Radiotopia Presents. You’ve been with me as I’ve gone on a date, learned how to gesture, given a recital, and graduated from college. And now that my show is over, it’s time for me to pass the torch, if you will, to the next storyteller.

The cool thing about Radiotopia Presents is that every couple of months, new storytellers come and give us new shows and tell their stories. And that’s exactly what’s happening now. Here’s Radiotopia’s Mark Pagán, who’ll tell you about Radiotopia Presents’ next show.

MARK PAGÁN: Thank you, Matthew. I'm Mark Pagán. I'm a producer here at Radiotopia, and I'm here with the voice, the person behind the next brilliant show on Radiotopia Presents.

How would you describe the tone of the show?

AFIA: Mmkay. You gotta rock with me here. It's like taking fried plantain and dunking it in ketchup. It seems like maybe it's not going to work, maybe you're not used to it, maybe you haven't really heard of that combo before, but I'm pretty sure it's something you're going to enjoy. You just gotta — you just gotta roll with it.

[Upbeat, bassy music comes in.]

My name is Afia. I created a show called Shithole Country. And it's an eight-part audio memoir about what it means to be African in America, and American in Africa. And achieving the Ghanaian-American dream.

I went on a trip back to Ghana, which is where my family's from. It's me, kind of, sharing this journey that I — I went on. Like an actual true story, with tape from my family, places that we went to, and also archival audio.

What kicks off the story is this decision that Afia has to make. Oh, I guess that's me.

[Music fades out.]

[Laughs.] OK, audience, that is [laughing] not my real name.

I was also recording in the beginning of 2018, end of 2017, a year after Donald Trump got elected. And some of the things that my family shared with me, I realized after talking to people who are… have more expertise in these areas than I do, that it might open them up to some liability, some of the things that they shared. So that's why you are hearing all these pseudonyms.

Of course, it's me. It's molded from my experiences. Like, that's what memoir is. You're getting a snapshot of a time in my life, and a story, a narrative.

[Reflective keyboard music begins.]

One of the questions that I am really sitting with — and you'll hear this in the first episode of the show — is, of course, like the show is called Shithole Country. And there's a good reason for that. It does have to do with, uh, the comment that President Trump made in early 2018. And what that has to do with is this idea of development. Right? Like, what makes a country truly developed? So, that's one of the things that I'm thinking a lot about in this series.

[Music fades out.]

It feels important to offer this kind of project to the audio world. There's types of representation in the audio space that I'm excited to contribute to. Accents — like, we don't hear that as much on the radio, we don't hear that as much on podcasting. Stories from the continent. Like, don't get me wrong, there are, like, fired up, awesome storytellers on the continent of Africa.

I am really excited for listeners to meet my mom. I wouldn't be doing this without her. [Laughs.] You will see why. I'm just — I'm nervous about how some of my family members are gonna… what they're going to think about it. [Laughs.] I've told everybody, like, “We’re recording. I put a mic in your face. Like, you know what this is.” And they're like, “Sure!” But, I think, you know, it's a little different when you actually hear it, like edited together, couched in a point of view that is not your own.

MARK: Are you nervous about: what if people discover they love plantains with ketchup?

AFIA: How did you know, Mark?

[Guitar music comes in.]

Oh, boy, if this hits, then that means a lot more sitting with the things I raised in the series that are hard to talk about. I deeply believe in telling the truth. So if this resonated with people, then they would share what makes them uncomfortable. And then maybe I would see some of my experience in what they're sharing. And it's like this — this replication of truth-telling.

[Music ends.]

My name’s Afia, and here’s a taste of Shithole Country.

[S***hole Country trailer begins. Pensive guitar music comes in.]

AFIA (as narrator): Being in the diaspora involves some extra math, but don’t worry, I’ll do the heavy lifting.

Wake up, and the day’s half over.

Eat a late lunch, and it’s time for bed.

Commute home during rush hour, and it’s officially tomorrow.

And set your alarm — and your Do Not Disturb — as the WhatsApp groups on the other side of the world greet the sunrise.

Got it? Good.

[Music ends.]

AFIA: Hey! Say hi!

AGNES: HIII!

AFIA: Oh, wow.

AGNES: Welcome to Ghana!

AFIA (as narrator): I want to share a story with you about my Ghanaian-American family. OK, well… Correction.

[Airy keyboard music begins.]

I want to share a story with you about my Ghanaian-American family… and me.

You can call me Afia. It’s not my government name. I would have loved to keep things between you and me as simple and transparent as possible. But that seemed like less of an option after I had a little chat with an immigration lawyer about some of the details in this story.

[Airy keyboard is joined by a driving, percussive beat.]

The goal here isn’t for you to figure out who I am. Seriously, don’t set the Reddit hounds after me — that’s not what this is about. This is about choices… the kind that split your life into “before” and “after.”

AGNES: It’s hard. It’s hard…

AUNTIE: I mean, you get to a stage of your life… You must wean yourself from certain things.

AFIA: This is not about me.

TENANT: Isn’t it?

AFIA: This is not about me.

TENANT: This is not about you, but why?

AGNES: Doing this wasn’t easy. But if I have to do it all over again, I’ll do it again.

AFIA (as narrator): We’re gonna keep it moving, but try to keep the time zones straight.

I’m Afia. And this is Shithole Country.

[Music (“Home” by Ria Boss) comes up to full volume, R&B style vocals enter. Lyrics: “Home where my heart goes…”]

An eight-part audio memoir from Radiotopia Presents about achieving the Ghanaian-American dream.

[Lyrics: “Home can be so cold, though…”]

Coming October 13, 2021.

[Lyrics: “Home corrupt officials, oh. Every inch of home to go…”]

[Music ends.]

END OF EPISODE.

Show Notes

Credits:

“Too Late for the Party” by Unheard Music Concepts

“Noodle Opus” by Blue Dot Sessions

“Crisis Averted” by David Hilowitz

“I Kno” by Vincent Augustus

Context:

Washington Post: Trump calls Haiti and African Nations “Shithole Countries”

Sally Struthers doing her thing

“Do They Know It’s Christmas” by Band Aid 1984

“Do They Know It’s Christmas” by Band Aid 30 (the 2014 Ebola update -- don’t worry, it’s still patronizing AF)

Transcript

AFIA KAAKYIRE: My name is Afia. And I don’t know what to do.

Let’s start at the end.

[Curious guitar music comes in.]

I’m 30. The youngest of three, and the daughter of Ghanaian immigrants. Born in New York, currently living in California. If you were to read my Tinder profile instead of just swiping right on the bikini pic — which, hey, that’s what it’s there for — you’d know I stay loyal to Biggie over Tupac. And Sailor Moon over Biggie.

It’s January 17, 2018. Last week, I returned to San Francisco after a month in Ghana. I’d just spent the holidays with my parents and older brothers, all of us celebrating together for the first time in five years.

The very next day, I awoke to some disturbing breaking news out of Washington.

[Music ends.]

[Clip of media scrum at White House MLK event.]

REPORTER 1: Mr. President, will you give an apology for your statement yesterday?

REPORTER 2: Mr. President, did you refer to African nations as shithole countries?

REPORTER 3: Mr. President, are you a racist? Mr. President, will you respond to these serious questions about your statement, sir?

[Aside.] I’m talking to the president, not you, sir.

Mr. President, are you a racist?

SEN. DICK DURBIN: When he started to describe the immigration from Africa, that’s when he used these vile and vulgar comments, calling the nations they come from “shitholes.” I cannot believe that in the history of the White House, in that Oval Office, any president has ever spoken the words that I personally heard our president speak yesterday.

[Media clip ends.]

AFIA: That’s Dick Durbin, a Democrat and Senator from Illinois. And, for our purposes, an earwitness to the presidential scandal du jour. Reportedly, Trump went on to helpfully suggest that the U.S. bring in more folks from places like Norway, instead of Africa.

I know, I know…

[Curious guitar music resumes.]

“Don't feed the troll,” even if said troll is the leader of the free world. And yeah, I usually do keep it moving. When a CNN alert lights up my phone with the weekly reminder that our president has zero respect for large swaths of our nation, I just pray for a quick death in the nuclear holocaust he will likely trigger, and go about my day.

But this time, I paused.

[Music fades out.]

Again, and again…

As I ate breakfast, and waited for the bus, and walked to one of my jobs. “Shithole.” What an ugly word.

An ugly… interesting… word.

I started thinking of all the other words I’ve heard used for African countries: primitive, poor, developing, third world… they’re more polite, and they point to the same thing: Africa as a backwards monolith.

[Exaggeratedly sad piano arpeggio.]

Home of the hollow-eyed villagers crowding those depressing Sally Struthers commercials from the ’90s.

[Piano music fades out.]

There are so many people who think of us that way. Even here in the Bay Area — shoutout to my liberal coastal elites!

[Air horn.]

Some of them, too, consume only one African export: the deeply entrenched “struggle” narrative. I’ve seen a lot of them post pictures with brown schoolkids and call them beautiful, which we all know is code for [whispers], “These people need some help.”

Remember that awful holiday song from back in the day, the one with the starving Ethiopian children on the album cover? Where Boy George and Bono and… Sting — oh God, why did you do it, Sting? — they all say about Africa — these are the actual lyrics:

[Tinny instrumental of “Jingle Bells,” as if from a toy, fades in underneath.]

“The Christmas bells that ring there / are the clanging chimes of doom.” “Nothing ever grows, no rain or rivers flow. / Do they know it’s Christmas time at all?”

[“Jingle Bells” ends, sounding as if the toy it’s playing from has died.]

Maybe Sting was kidnapped and forced to participate…

I’m not really coming for Sting, though, or the liberal elites. I’m not even coming for Trump.

Mostly I'm looking at myself. Yes, me. Dripping in so-called “first-world privilege.” Carefully ignoring faint stirrings of frustration — of contempt — when I’m in Accra and the electricity shuts off three times before noon.

Primitive. Developing. Third World.

But let's be clear. If my family and I are from one shithole country, then we’re actually from two.

[Foreboding electronic music.]

In one, trash is strewn by gaping gutters lining the streets. The craters in the pavement will swallow your car and you’ll never be heard from again.

In the other, you’re smeared by words. Looks. An entire system expertly designed to chip away at your dignity. You can’t quite put your finger on the mess. But if you live there long enough, you’ll pull a Lady Macbeth on your soul, trying like mad to scrub the spots where it’s touched you.

[Music fades out.]

I have an important decision to make. And strange as it is to say, this shithole controversy might help me make it.

What it illuminates gets to the heart of the question I asked myself every day during my month in Ghana. The question that permeated my conversations with my family. The question I’ll pick apart over the course of this podcast: What does true development look like?

Before we go any further, you should know that all of the names you’ll hear — including mine — are pseudonyms. That’s how it has to be if we’re going to be honest with each other.

OK. If all that sounds good by you, let’s rewind.

[Audio of episode begins rewinding. It stops, then music comes in: “I Kno” by Vincent Augustus.]

Shithole Country is written, narrated, and sound designed by me, Afia. This episode was produced by me and Mark Pagán. Julie Shapiro and Audrey Mardavich are our executive producers. Special thanks to Tania Ketenjian. Cover art by Sindiso Nyoni. Music in this episode includes “I Kno” by Vincent Augustus. For additional credits, please check out the show notes on radiotopiapresents.fm.

Next episode: “Home.”

[“I Kno” comes up to full volume for several beats, then slowly fades out.]

END OF EPISODE.

Transcript

AFIA KAAKYIRE: She tricked me. She totally played me.

I stare at my mom Agnes. The dusty harmattan winds, straight from the Sahara, don’t do anything to cool the room. Sweat rolls down my neck. And the huge peacock tattoo curling around my mom’s left shoulder glistens.

She sighs, and says it again. This apartment is yours. Your daddy and I want you to move in.

Mom directs her gaze past the swanky marble floors and recessed lighting to the tropical greenery outside. She sweeps long braids away from her face and reclines in her white plastic chair. The kind that has the ubiquitous gye nyame God symbol twisted into it.

God is everywhere in Ghana. He literally has your back. Especially if you’re my mom.

“What is there for you in America, Maame Afia? Hmm?” She laughs.

[Innocent tinkling.]

Her silver earrings and bracelets jangle merrily. Scratch that. Menacingly.

[Evil-sounding clanging of bells.]

I should have known. When I first graduated from college and moved out to Philly for a job, my parents happily offered to drive. And as they headed back, they happily handed me the receipts for their gas and tolls.

She’s just so good at this. A minute ago we were celebrating. The shiny new apartment complex we’re standing in is hers. She had the plan. She wrangled the builders. She made all of this happen.

My mom, the former seamstress. The Burger King coupon hoarder.

The person making me an offer I’m not sure I can refuse.

[Music (“Home” by Ria Boss) comes in. Jazzy instrumentals, then R&B vocals.]

You can call me… Afia. This is the story of my family and our lives in a quote unquote shithole country.

[The phrase “shithole country” echoes and reverberates.]

[Vocals of “Home” build and grow, then slowly fade under.]

[Jazz music and the low hum of voices.]

December 11, 2017. Kotoka International Airport.

I don’t know why there’s a live jazz band in customs, but I like it.

After approximately a week on a plane, I’ve arrived in Ghana for only the fourth time in my 30 years of life. Burkina Faso to the north, Côte d’Ivoire to the west, Togo to the east, the Atlantic Ocean just a few miles away. Welcomed by the dulcet tones of… yeah, that’s the Backstreet Boys. You would never see this at JFK.

I feel a surge of pride… and the slow exhalation of a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. Kind of like the first time I watched Ghana beat the U.S. in World Cup soccer, back in 2006. The soundtrack to their win was an American announcer’s slightly incredulous reminders of Ghana’s GDP.

[Soccer match crowd sounds fade in, singing and chanting, then fade back out.]

As I shuffle through the final set of airport doors, I’m hit by a wall of steamy nighttime air and jostling crowds.

[Sounds of the crowd outside the airport.]

I’m back. Jollof rice and fried plantain on my lips, diesel exhaust in my nose, shades of my family in every face I see. And the voices — oh, this is the greatest accent in the world. I’m 4 years old and Dad is introducing me to the Berenstain Bears. I’m 12 and buried in Mom’s Estée Lauder scented chest as she says, “Atuuu.” I’m 25, Mom gazing at me and my brothers with murder in her eyes, muttering “wonanymbiahapapa,” and I even miss that. Being back feels like walking into my bedroom after a long day at work. I shimmy out of my too-tight button-down and slacks, and fall onto my bed, into relief.

AFIA (to her mom): Hi! Yay!

AGNES: We don’t even know the flight you’re taking!

AFIA: Yay! Say hi!

AGNES: HIII!

AFIA: Oh, don’t say hi that loudly.

AGNES: Welcome to Ghana! [Laughter.] Oh my goodness.

AFIA: I thought I sent you the flight details —

AGNES: No!

AFIA: Oh, I’m sorry.

AFIA (as narrator): Mom and Dad. Agnes and Kwabena.

AFIA: I have to take a shower!

AGNES: Oh, it doesn’t matter.

AFIA: It’s been a very long time!

AGNES: Doesn’t matter.

AFIA: It matters!

[Agnes kisses Afia with a “mwah!”]

KWABENA: Ah!

[The sounds outside the airport fade out, and we hear a car engine, other cars beeping.]

AGNES: See? He just cut off and [imitates car horn].

KWABENA: We getting out from the airport.

AGNES: So right now, we are at the airport going west.

[Car sounds fade out.]

AFIA (as narrator): Despite the holiday traffic, it only takes a half-hour to drive to my parents’ house.

[Pleasant chit-chat between Afia and her parents.]

I clock chop bars blasting afrobeats and billboards for New Year’s Eve prayer marathons through my window as Mom and Dad paint their own picture of present-day Ghana inside the car. There’s lots of gesticulating and the occasional [sound of sucking teeth].

[Chit-chat fades out.]

Reunions like this one have become a little more complicated since my parents sold their New York house in 2014. They moved back to Accra soon after, settling for good in a modest peach-and-periwinkle three-bedroom with the standard live-in housekeeper.

My older brothers and I are still scattered across the U.S. — Victor in Houston, Sammy in New York, me in the Bay Area. And since I’m not making bank working for Google, I was going to spend another December alone.

Until my mom called with an uncharacteristically generous offer: Come to Ghana.

[Earnest guitar music.]

Let’s spend the holidays together for the first time in five years. Because that’s what Christmas is about: Fellowship. Family. Love.

[Music ends abruptly.]

JOHN: Affections are obscene, and we keep those things indoors and hidden.

AFIA (as narrator): That's one of my cousins. He's reminding me of why it’s so foolish to project sentimentality onto my very practical Ghanaian family.

JOHN: My father, the first time he said to me “I love you” was when he dropped me off to college. I had to call my brother up and be like, “I think Daddy’s dying.” And he was like, “What? Huh? Huh?” And he was like, “Why?” And I was like, “Oh, because he said ‘I love you.’ ” … And there was, like, a dead silence on the phone for like 30 seconds and then I heard “click.” And I was like, “Well, guess someone doesn’t care about our father. He’s going to be out of the will.”

AFIA (as narrator): My cousin, of course, is right. Parents here don’t have time for feelings. They got goals.

And Mom reveals her grand design the next morning, right after she addresses a pressing matter.

AFIA: Hm?

AGNES: Ah?

AFIA: What’s —

AGNES: With your haircut, your this, and the dress you’re wearing, when I’m walking with you, they’ll think you are my maid.

KWABENA: That’s how it is in Ghana, you’d be surprised.

AFIA: Really?

KWABENA: Yeah.

AGNES: Yeah.

AFIA: So this very nice vintage purple dress that I bought in Oakland —

AGNES: Uh-huh.

AFIA: — is not —

AGNES: Uh-huh. Because you know what? All the nice — all the affluent shops in America, when the clothes they don’t buy it, they bring it here. They call it “fose.”

KWABENA: Fose.

AGNES: Nice, nice — when we go to the street, you’ll see, you’ll see how the people are dressed. Nicer than us, they laugh at us all the time. You know what they call it? Johnny Just Came.

AFIA: Johnny Just Came. Johnny Just Came from America?

KWABENA: Or maybe from Europe or somewhere.

AGNES: Johnny Just Came. They laugh at us. That’s how it is.

AFIA: OK, OK, I’m changing, I’m changing.

AFIA (as narrator): 10 minutes and far too much jewelry later, we’re on our way. Mom will finally show me the construction project that’s consumed her life for the past 4 years: her apartment and retail complex. Two stories and 20 units that she’ll officially start renting on January 1st.

This is why I bought a recorder and a microphone: to document my mom’s transformation to a Badass Entrepreneur. But when we arrive at the site, it doesn’t take long for things to go sideways. She and one of her new tenants — who is almost definitely on her payroll — make it clear.

TENANT: Why don’t we stay in our own country?

AGNES: And we have to travel to make life better. And this is a beautiful place. Why can’t you — why wouldn’t you come and live here? Why?

TENANT: Your mom went!

AGNES: Your mother is here, your father is here. Why wouldn’t you come and live here?

AFIA: OK wait, this turned. This took a turn. This is not about me. This is not about me.

TENANT: This is not about you, but why? Why would you not come here, then?

AFIA: Because I have a life in California.

TENANT: Wha —? You can have a life here too.

AFIA (as narrator): OK. Point, counterpoint. I’ve got great friends in the Bay. Half the year I wake up to perfect weather. Avocados are delicious and — even though it kind of killed me a little to admit it at first — so is the vegan food.

And… I’m definitely single. Juggling freelance copywriting jobs. Living paycheck to paycheck in a city where rent is a more predictable tragedy than an episode of The Handmaid’s Tale.

But in Ghana, I feel like an imposter. Here’s a preview of a conversation I’ll have in 10 minutes with one of the plumbers.

PLUMBER: So you can’t speak Twi?

AFIA: Nope.

PLUMBER: Why?

AFIA: My Mom and Dad didn’t teach me.

PLUMBER: Oh! Mm-mm, wow.

AFIA (as narrator): My parents wanted us to assimilate. So outside of the necessary curse words, I never really learned Twi or Fante. Here’s another attempt at conversation I’ll make two weeks from now.

REVEREND: What is the feminine of Kodwo?

AFIA: Adwoa.

REVEREND: Good, good, good. [Praising Afia in Twi.] Good, good, good.

SAMMY: That was very good.

AFIA: [Mispronouncing a Twi phrase.]

SAMMY: No, [corrects Afia’s pronunciation].

AFIA: [Laughing.] Oh, I keep forget— I keep messing it up.

AFIA (as narrator): Is it lowkey kind of nice to be celebrated for operating at a zero-grade reading level? Of course. Brings me back to a better time, when there were juice boxes and hugs on demand and Peter Jennings anchoring the evening news. But that’s not real life.

Real life is getting laid off from my copywriting job. Real life is running out of unemployment money in a month. Real life is obsessing over these facts and not noticing that I’ve passed my mom her ringing phone with my culturally unacceptable left hand, which she promptly smacks into oblivion.

My mom takes the call outside the apartment we’d been standing in. And I watch her pace through the window.

She did this. Did something even bigger. Moved from Accra to New York in her twenties knowing almost no one… I think. Something like that. And then uprooted her life again, 40 years later. How did she do it?

[Airy keyboard music begins, then is joined by funky bass and guitar.]

Shithole Country is written, narrated, and sound designed by me, Afia. This episode was produced by me and Mark Pagán. Julie Shapiro and Audrey Mardavich are our executive producers. Special thanks to Tania Ketenjian. Huge thank you to my family.

Cover art by Sindiso Nyoni. Our theme song, “Home,” was created by the amazing Ria Boss. For additional credits, please check out the show notes on radiotopiapresents.fm.

Next episode: Mom.

[Music fades out.]

END OF EPISODE.

Transcript

[The sound of the inside of an apartment.]

AFIA KAAKYIRE: I’m in Accra, standing in the apartment my parents want to give me. And I feel… white. Like Blair Waldorf in Gossip Girl levels of white. Don’t get me wrong, some of my cousins are living large. I just never really thought generational wealth was in the cards for our twig of the family tree.

But apparently, the second my risk-averse father finally retired, my mom Agnes sat him down. Gave him some real talk on one of her favorite subjects: money. As in, “You know how you drove a taxi and I sewed wedding dresses for crazy brides and we scrimped to buy land in New York and Accra in the ’90s? Guess which real estate market is burning up, and which investment will sink us before we can force Afia to give us grandkids?”

Now here we are, five years later, melting in the dusty heat on the outskirts of Ghana’s capital. On a dirt road lined with bustling shops made from shipping containers, where diesel trucks and stray goats do their best to navigate the deep divots.

I walk out to the street to get a better look at the purple 20-unit apartment and retail complex.

[The sounds of the street.]

The worn carpeting and cracked tiles of our small suburban home, born again into the entrepreneurial high life. Traded in for skylights and stately ceiling fans and wainscoting and damn… Mom gets results.

[Music (“Home” by Ria Boss) comes in. Jazzy instrumentals, then R&B vocals.]

You can call me Afia. This is the story of my family and our lives in a quote unquote “shithole country.”

[The phrase “shithole country” echoes and reverberates.]

[Vocals of “Home” build and grow, then slowly fade out.]

[Bouncy electronic music comes in.]

COUSIN 1: Like she’s different. She — she’s not like a typical Ghanaian. She’s different. And I like that, yeah. She lives her life.

COUSIN 2: She lives her life.

AFIA (as narrator): My cousins speak truth. My mom Agnes is a peculiar sort of Ghanaian woman. Endlessly stylish, makeup perfectly applied to her heart-shaped face. Doesn’t take shit from anyone.

But that description could apply to 80% of the aunties in Ghana. Where my mom sets herself apart is in the lengths she will go to in order to be seen.

[Bouncy Afrobeat music ends.]

[Law & Order percussion sound.]

Exhibit A: That time I got my first tattoo. My mom decided to follow suit, badgering me for months to set up an appointment for her. “Maame Afia. Let them do a picture of my face on my arm. I want to always remember when I was young and beautiful.”

My brothers and I threatened to never again acknowledge her in public if she went that route. She eventually decided on a kaleidoscopic peacock splashed on her left shoulder. And we thanked God.

[Law & Order percussion sound.]

Exhibit B: Recently, my mom got into it with her next-door neighbor. It was over a rooster that shrieked outside her window for hours in the middle of the night.

AGNES: I wringed his neck.

AFIA: You — you broke its neck.

AGNES: Yeah. Twisted the neck. But it didn’t die. It didn’t, you know — it got up. It got up, it was OK. But then the owner saw that, so that was the end. We don’t see any more roosters there.

AFIA: So you were trying to send a message?

AGNES: Yes, that’s what I did. And it worked.

[Bouncy Afrobeat music with swing horns comes in.]

AFIA (as narrator): I was embarrassed of my mother growing up. I’d shrink into myself during her regular, all-too-public showdowns with Costco cashiers over savings she’d allegedly been denied. Why was — is — everything she does so extra?

[Music fades out.]

Clearly I have trouble taking my mom seriously. But there’s no point in me weighing the pros and cons of a transatlantic move if I don’t trust her. I need to understand what her angle is. Why did she build these apartments in the first place?

So, that evening, after a healthy serving of goat meat, fuufuu, and season five of 90 Day Fiancé, I ask her.

I don’t know a lot about Mom’s life before Dad. She likes to roll her eyes and wave away those kinds of questions. Not because she wants to keep secrets… really feels more like she doesn’t think anyone would care about the answers.

I once stumbled across an answer. I was 12, digging through the fireproof box in my mom’s closet. I needed my birth certificate for a school project.

When Mom came home from work that night, I cornered her in the kitchen, steeling myself for the task ahead by channeling the spirit of my favorite show: Dawson’s Creek. They always handled secret revelations with such style.

[Dramatic drum roll solo begins.]

“Mommy, I know about Mensah. I saw the divorce papers. You were married before Daddy?”

Mom looked at me blankly. I swallowed my heartbeat: once, twice.

[Drum solo ends. Gospel chords on the organ come in.]

Father God, I know now I’ve made a terrible mistake and pray for you to deliver me from this imminent ass-whooping. I promise to never again follow Dawson Leery or any other false American teen idols who disrespect their parents, and I will never —

“Yes,” she said.

[Gospel chords fade out.]

It was as if I’d asked the most obvious question in the world. I stared at her. She turned back to a pot of yams on the stove. They weren’t going to cook themselves.

[Old-timey music comes in.]

UNIVERSAL NEWSREEL, 1957 ARCHIVAL AUDIO: Citizens of the new state of Ghana gather for the celebration marking their day of freedom from colonialism. What was once the Gold Coast, a British colony, now becomes an independent commonwealth. Vice President and Mrs. Nixon represent the United States at the three-day festivities. Native dances and games mark a day of historic importance, since Ghana becomes the first Negro colony in Africa to gain its freedom. Premier Kwame Nkrumah [inaudible] with Representative Adam Clayton Powell of the U.S., as Ghana’s new army passes in review before the American-educated premier, and Deputy Secretary Ralph Bunche of the United Nations. Another feature of the occasion is a beauty contest, in which the fairest…

[Archival audio and old-timey music fade out.]

AGNES: I was the last-born of 10 children. The second, third, fourth, and fifth, they all passed away. So that’s why I became me. If they didn’t pass away, I wouldn’t have been born. So I was grateful for them bringing me to this earth.

I was very privileged.

[1960s Highlife music comes in.]

My father opened a lot of stores, selling flour, selling rice, big bags. My father was doing import and shipping. I had a maid. You know, I went to good schools, preparatory school. And in my household you don’t speak — we called it “vernacular.” Vernacular means your native language. You speak English. Most of the parents that were exposed to the white man felt like, hey — if you understand the white man’s language, you’ll be favored.

[1960s Highlife music fades out.]

When Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown that’s where everything went bad. I think it was 1966? My father had money, and the government took everything. Everything, everything. We packed our things, and we all went to the village. And he was never the same…

From the city, straight to village — when you go there, it was so dramatic because nobody understands you.

AFIA: You didn’t speak Fante?

AGNES: No. Parents, they so happy that their children are speaking English. So when you come home, they speaking with you in — in English. Even my mother was speaking to me in English. And she wasn’t educated. She never went to school.

Yeah. And everyone calling you “oburoni, oburoni.” They all surrounded you, listening to you.

[Kids yelling and laughing, the sounds echoing and bouncing around.]

AFIA (as narrator): Mom tells me that’s how it was for most of primary and secondary school. Until she met a young man.

AGNES: When he was very quiet, and wouldn’t even look at me, something tells me to explore it. That’s — that’s the way I am. [Laughing.] The resistance attracts me.

[Palm wine guitar music begins.]

That was my first love. I really, really did love him.

We would go to concerts with no money, and jump the wall, you know… so many stupid things, yeah.

[Palm wine guitar fades out.]

When I look back, that wasn’t good for him, because he took it to the extreme. Yeah, you know… He even stole people’s money so we could go out with. Which is not fun.

He wanted the baby. I didn’t want the baby.

I dropped out from college, and I — they took me to learn how to sew. So I finished my sewing, I had my kiosk. I — you know — so…

AFIA: You had your what?

AGNES: Kiosk.

AFIA: Your kiosk.

AGNES: Yeah. I had an apprentice… you know, things were going fine for me. Why should I have a child? You know… But then he felt insecure. And my parents wouldn’t — didn’t want to see him.

AFIA: So your parents didn’t approve and you had to listen.

AGNES: Yes, I have to listen. I have to listen.

AFIA (as narrator): As my mom says the words, she visibly deflates, her eyes not meeting mine. It doesn’t square at all with the woman who raised me, who always makes people listen to her. It’s like I’ve accidentally walked in on her changing. And I want to cover her up until she’s decent again…

Those fights she’d have with Costco cashiers. All the dramatics. I was embarrassed. But I’d be lying if I said a small part of me didn’t deeply appreciate it. How she stuck up for us.

I’m invested in my mom being this ultra-fierce protector. My protector. But she’s more than that, she’s more than my mom…

So. Agnes collects herself, and continues her story.

AGNES: When I had the baby he was never there. And after I finished having the baby, I left the baby for my mother, I left it with my mother, and I came back to Accra.

AFIA (as narrator): That little boy? My oldest brother, Sammy.

AGNES: And when I came back, he did something very bad to me. I had a big chest that I put people’s clothes in there. He took all the clothes away and burned them. I called the police, he went to jail.

AFIA (as narrator): Thanks to Joseph, Agnes — who had a brand new baby to take care of — was now $400 in debt. Big money in the ’70s, and even bigger in Ghana, where at the time, the price of the cocoa crop was cratering and the economy was falling apart. But what choice did she have other than to start all over?

AGNES: I was in my kiosk sewing. And this guy had a Thunderbird. American car —

AFIA: A Thunderbird?

AGNES: Yeah.

AFIA: Oh, OK.

AGNES: White! And everybody looking at this car. This guy was looking at me. I was very tall, skinny, nice shape. And that was it. That evening, he sent somebody to come and pick me up so we can go to a club. And so I said, “No, I have a little baby. What can I do?” You know? He said, “No, no no, I’ll get somebody to babysit.” So he was here for two weeks, only two weeks. And that’s where — that’s where it started.

AFIA (as narrator): Mensah. Aka the dude from the divorce papers? Yeah. This is him.

AGNES: Right away he wanted to marry me. It was so fast. I was in a relationship that was going sour. And here comes somebody, wants to marry me and take me to America. Why would I say no? And, I mean, he wasn’t my ideal person. But he was a good — OK man. And he had the money.

AFIA: Were you attracted to him?

AGNES: No. He came back in a year’s time to marry me and start filing the papers for me.

AFIA (as narrator): Agnes was going to New York, leaving Ghana and her unstable ex-boyfriend behind. But what about the baby? He was barely 2 years old. She’d leave him too?

AGNES: I didn’t feel guilty at all. For what? Not even one guilt. No. I have a new life. I’m going to make life for me and my child. It’s a new adventure. What did I have here? Nothing. And I didn’t know what he would come to do to me. You know. This is a mad man, walking around, I don’t know what he would do to me and my child.

AFIA: So you saw it as a way to provide —

AGNES: Oh, for all my family. For my relatives, everybody. Going to America those days? It’s like, it’s like, it’s like, you know, a pot of honey dripping into your mouth. You’d do — it’s beautiful. You have to focus.

[Low, muddy bass music.]

AFIA (as narrator): So she did.

In 1978, Agnes packed her bags and left her kid with her sister. Boarded her first ever plane, destination JFK. And settled in with Mensah’s sisters in the Bronx, waiting for a man she barely knew to return from an international business trip. She waited for months, scraping together money to send to her family in Ghana, from a job taking care of elderly white women.

[Bass music ends.]

But she would never see Mensah again. He called one day to tell her he’d gotten caught up in some shady business that somehow led to his denaturalization and deportation.

Luckily, Agnes had just gotten her green card. But without Mensah’s money, her place in America felt a lot less secure.

Until she went to a party and met someone new.

AGNES: I want somebody to build a life with. This guy had a good job. So I said, "OK." It wasn't love at first sight. No, no, no, because he was skinny like this. I felt sorry for him.

AFIA: Skinny like what?

KWABENA: I wouldn’t say skinny! I wasn’t — I wasn't all that skinny.

AGNES: No, you know what I mean…

[Conversation continues underneath narration.]

AFIA (as narrator): My dad Kwabena. By that point, he’d been living in New York for a decade and loved the disco scene.

AGNES: He was a womanizer.

KWABENA: No, not womanizer —

AGNES: He was a womanizer.

[Funky guitar comes in.]

KWABENA: I wasn’t even that at that point, actually. I would see one or two friends. But those years were, like we said… party.

AGNES: Daddy throws party all the time, and daddy would give them what they want. OK?

AFIA: Sex?

AGNES: No, no, no. Drugs.

AFIA: Sorry — OK.

AGNES: Drugs. So when he's having a party, the place is filled up.

AFIA: Daddy, drugs? How did you get the drugs?

KWABENA: Those days, it’s not like today…

AGNES: Those days, it wasn't harmful.

AFIA: [Laughing.] What are you talking about? It's not like in the ’70s and cocaine doesn't kill you. What are you talking about?

AGNES: No. In the late ’70s…

KWABENA: Yeah, late ’70s.

AGNES: It was OK. Yeah, it was in the house. I didn’t care for it.

KWABENA: That's all people were doing. There were a lot of disco things where people out there having fun.

AFIA (as narrator): It wasn’t all fun for Kwabena though.

[Funky music fades out.]

He was always working. In a bottling factory, as a data clerk, at a bank. He was on his hustle and tried to keep his head down because, as Agnes would soon learn, he was stuck in the U.S. His immigration status had been dicey for years and he had a hard time opening up to new people. Even a good friend might rat you out to the authorities if you pissed them off enough.

KWABENA: You’d lose everything. Your mind would be shattered. All your dreams… You have to start over. Where you going to start from?

[Muffled sounds of disco.]

AFIA (as narrator): Distrust emanated from his eyes as he leaned against a wall in a dim, crowded apartment, tapping a foot to Donna Summer and sizing up Agnes.

AGNES: And then he start questioning me. Oh my goodness. Questioning me like, you know, I was in court.

AFIA (as narrator): Because papers — who had them, who didn’t — were all that mattered.

[Disco fades out.]

AGNES: I think I had three Jamaicans that they were fighting over me because they knew I had papers.

AFIA: How —

KWABENA: Papers were… number one.

AFIA: But then you must've felt so used.

KWABENA: What?

AGNES: No. You know what it is? You were grateful. I was grateful that I had — that I had papers before I came here. Because I didn't know how much it's worth.

KWABENA: Yeah, unless you get —

AGNES: Yeah, so you don't — you don’t — because you know people are suffering. He was in America for how long? He hasn't seen his father, his mother. I mean you can't travel.

AFIA: It was like 10 years by that point, I think.

KWABENA: Yeah.

AGNES: So I felt sorry for all of them. If I could have done it for all of them, I would have done it. I felt sorry because I didn't know what I had was that powerful.

AFIA (as narrator): So Agnes decided to help him get a green card. It was only after they actually started getting to know each other that their relationship evolved from a business arrangement into something more.

AGNES: He was not serious at all. I remember — you know, let me tell you the song that I knew that he was serious. That's how I — [singing] “Make that move right now, baby.” He was singing it all the time, he even bought me the record. I said, “What is it?” That means he wants to make the move right now.

KWABENA: Oh, you liked that song?

AGNES: No, you are the one. He used to sing it all the time. [Singing.] “Make that move right now… ” I don’t remember —

KWABENA: “Right now, baby.” I listened to it all the time.

AGNES: Yeah.

AFIA (as narrator): Things were on the up-and-up for Agnes. A good man, a nice apartment. She started filling the paperwork for her little boy to join her in New York. And then she snagged the job she’d have for the next thirty years.

AGNES: Grand Hyatt hotel was reopened by Donald Trump and his wife, July 1980, and I was one of the first people to start working there.

AFIA: So, uh, Trump gave you a job.

AGNES: Yeah, unfortunately. [Laughs.] It was on 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue… Everything was high and with blue glasses all over. There was no — there was no concrete. Every day reporters come to the hotel. It was very dramatic.

I remember being in the room with Ivana, his wife, Ivana. Yeah! When he come there, he goes to the management side. But the wife is the one who oversee the rooms. So believe me, we were sitting there talking and everything, she was telling me — yeah.

I was proud to be a New Yorker. I was proud to be a Grand Hyatt employee. And I was proud to be an immigrant that has made it.

AFIA (as narrator): But the feeling of security didn’t last long.

AFIA: So ICE would come to your work?

KWABENA: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

AGNES: Yeah!

AFIA: Or not ICE, but the… immigration —

AGNES: Immigration, yeah.

AFIA: Do you remember one time? What happened?

AGNES: One time — and you know, this is a big hotel here. You know where I used to work. The locker room was there, three Ghanaian girls coming down. I say, "Oh, can I talk to you?" No, no, no, no, no, no you don't know what is going on. They got dressed and run away. People were coming down in droves, picking their things and going.

[Beeps of an elevator passing floors.]

Security don't know what is going on. Human resources don't know what is going on…

[Sound of elevator doors opening. Lounge music begins playing.]

Immigration came to concierge.

AFIA: To the concierge.

AGNES: Yes. And so one of the concierge lady sent somebody to go tell all the housekeepers… And if you see the dishwashers, the waitresses… People were going through the front door hitting themselves.

[We hear echoey footsteps, then lounge music and footsteps fade out.]

AFIA (as narrator): Agnes had made it as an immigrant in America. Which, in that moment, meant that her past, present, and future boiled down to a tiny box, and her ability to check it.

The all-important box would change over the years. Single or Married? Renter or Homeowner? Agnes worked hard to check them off and access the life she knew she deserved.

But at some point, she began to tire of the boxes that were presented to her. She needed something bigger. Because, as she tells me the next morning at the apartments, nobody wants to dream small.

AGNES: It’s hard. It’s hard. Doing this wasn’t easy. But if I have to do it all over again, I’ll do it again.

[Gentle, shimmery music comes in.]

Because it makes you feel a part of society. I was in America working, but I could never do this in America. Where would I get the land? And this would cost me a fortune. I don’t have the money. So I’m in somewhere that the people see me as a rich person. In America, who the hell am I? I’m nobody. Nobody even cares. You know?

And it’s like they said in Shakespeare. We are all on the stage. Everybody wants to perform, everybody wants to get an Oscar. I can’t get it there, but I’m getting it here. And I’m smiling. Because I perform.

[Music ends.]

You know that we retired. We are here. And unfortunately, I don’t have anybody here — all my children are all in America. So, what is it, having all this and I don’t have anybody whom I can rely on to take care of it if — in case I’m gone today?

I have this big store downstairs. I was thinking you can use it any way you wanted, to build an empire, business, store. You can — you can — you can have a school there to educate people about journalism, you can… anything your heart desire.

AFIA (as narrator): A chance for me to be a player on the stage. To be somebody. To be seen. Who wouldn’t want that?

[Jazzy instrumentals from “Home” by Ria Boss come in.]

And what would a stage for me, in Ghana, look like?

Shithole Country is written, narrated, and sound designed by me, Afia. This episode was produced by me and Mark Pagán. Julie Shapiro and Audrey Mardavich are our executive producers. Special thanks to Tania Ketenjian.

Cover art by Sindiso Nyoni. Our theme song, “Home,” was created by the amazing Ria Boss. Thank you, thank you, thank you to my mom and dad for letting me just excavate your entire life [laughs] in this episode. I really appreciate y’all.

I know I only gave you a taste of Ghana history in this ep, but there are so many great rabbit holes you can fall into. Go onto the website and you can get additional context and credits — radiotopiapresents.fm.

Next episode: The Olympics of Clubbing.

[Instrumentals fade out.]

END OF EPISODE.

Transcript

[The sound of the parking lot fades in.]

AFIA KAAKYIRE: The officer with the AK-47 should have been our heads-up that it would not be a normal night.

My mom Agnes sees him first, at the edge of the parking lot. Cloaked in shadow and just chilling, as the well-armed are wont to do.

Then we walk into the jazz club, and this happens.

[Parking lot sounds fade out. Opera music begins.]

Yup. We come for Duke Ellington and get Figaro instead.

Turns out the first lady of Ghana — who’s sitting front row, center — loves opera. And what we’ve stumbled into is an evening of high cultural exchange sponsored by the executive branch.

By the polite but glazed looks in my parents’ eyes, and the half-empty rows, it would seem that Pagliacci is perhaps a few years out from overtaking Sarkodie at the top of the Ghana charts.

But that’s the thing about being in a country of 29 million versus 327 million. The circles of wealth and influence are cozy as hell. Everyone with money — from the moderately well-off to the mega-rich and powerful — occupies the same physical spaces. East Legon. Cantonments. Osu. There’s a path to the center of it all, even for an outsider like me.

[Opera music builds, then fades out to applause.]

[Music (“Home” by Ria Boss) comes in. Jazzy instrumentals, then R&B vocals.]

You can call me… Afia. This is the story of my family, and our lives in a quote unquote “shithole country.”

[The phrase “shithole country” echoes and reverberates.]

[Vocals of “Home” build and grow, then slowly fade out.]

Breakfast is a generous helping of pineapple, mango and Agnes’s sweet talk from the day before.

[Agnes’s voice is distorted and echoey, as if from a dream.]

AGNES: Store downstairs… empire… business.

AFIA (as narrator): So maybe she was laying it on a little thick with the whole empire idea. But it’s true that opportunity is literally growing on the cocoa trees.

GIPC VIDEO: A West African giant… Ghana.

WORLD BANK VIDEO: The Greater Accra Metropolitan Area is one of the fastest-growing city regions in West Africa and a major engine of economic growth.

CGTN TV: … to Ghana now. The country could become the fourth largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa by 2020.

GIPC VIDEO: … with a communications and internet infrastructure that is backed by fiber-optic backbones.

GHANA TOURISM VIDEO: Ghana, often referred to as the island of peace, prides itself as one of the most thriving democracies…

VOA ‘IN FOCUS’ REPORT: … democracy and good governance in a continent that is often associated with political instability.

BARACK OBAMA: I’ve come here to Ghana for a simple reason. The 21st century will be shaped by what happens not just in Rome or Moscow or Washington, but by what happens in Accra as well.

AFIA (as narrator): After Kwame Nkrumah, the first president, was pushed out in 1966, Ghana grappled with decades of military coups, bouts of corruption, and a near-economic collapse in the ’80s. But by the early ’90s, the country was on the come-up. Yes, taking that IMF and World Bank money. But also making tough structural reforms, creating a new constitution, re-establishing political parties, freedom of press, the whole nine yards.

[We are inside of a moving car now.]

KWABENA: Look over here.

AFIA: Yeah.

GPS: Continue on Achimota road for 2 kilometers.

[We hear the car’s turn signal click-click-clicking.]

KWABENA: Achimota.

AFIA (as narrator): My dad Kwabena and I drop in on his sister, who works for a federal agency.

[Driving sounds end, and we are now with Auntie.]

KWABENA: Hello. [Laughs.]

AUNTIE: Hey! Who is this? [Kwabena laughs.]

AFIA: How are you doing, auntie?

AUNTIE: Welcome! Fine, fine!

AFIA (as narrator): In between updates on family gossip, she puts a finer point on the government’s strategy for us.

AUNTIE: Ghana beyond aid, Africa beyond aid… It’s inevitable. I mean, you get to a stage of your life, surely… you must wean yourself from certain things. And nobody is going to give you enough money to be as developed as they are. The president feels very strongly about this. It’s not like… “I don’t want your penny.” Or — if you have help to give, yes, we’ll take it, but we’re not coming knocking on people’s doors to get help. We must find a way of developing based on the resources that God has been gracious to give us.

AFIA (as narrator): In 2011, the World Bank upgraded Ghana from low to middle-income status. The same year, Ghana was the fastest growing economy in the world.

AUNTIE YEMA: For those who really have a heart to see people make it in life, Ghana is a place of struggle. And it’s not in just the very rural areas. In relatively large towns, you’ll find people who — who will say a big thank you for five Ghana cedis, about a dollar or two.

[Rhythmic clapping comes in.]

You wonder if you couldn’t have done more for them.

AFIA (as narrator): Primitive. Third World. Developing.

[Clapping ends.]

[We are back in the car.]

On the drive back home, we pass a sprawling shantytown in Nima. Piles of garbage line the gutters. It’s not a stretch to imagine that some of the people sleeping underneath the corrugated tin roofs are living hand to mouth.

And yet… Every few minutes we see another towering concrete skeleton of an estate under construction. GDP doesn’t lie. Ghana is developing, to the tune of $47 billion last year. Beyond the patronizing influence of foreign aid. Beyond a sad story about British colonization.

And I am so tired of living in sad stories. The high life is calling.

[Car sounds fade out, and smooth, languid music comes in.]

Even as a kid, I wanted nothing more than to answer that call.

When I was little, Agnes and Kwabena saved up enough to move us out of our gritty New York City block. They then bought the worst home in a good suburban neighborhood and immediately went all Flip This House: Immigrant Edition on the property.

[Music kicks up the energy, horns come in.]

And that winter, as we crowded around space heaters in the two rooms that weren’t getting gutted, I started pestering my parents.

“Why can’t we buy real butter?” “What is evaporated milk? Why does it taste so bad?” “Can we go to Disney World? Can we go to Disney World? Can we go?”

[Music fades out.]

WALT DISNEY WORLD COMMERCIAL: Walt Disney World invites you to be our guest! Call 407-W-Disney!

AFIA (as narrator): I’ve seen this commercial so many times. I would have called that number if I hadn’t just gotten in huge trouble for accidentally-on-purpose dialing 911.

ANNOUNCER 1: Michael Jordan and the Bulls, you just won your first NBA championship. What are you going to do next?

MICHAEL JORDAN: We’re going to Disney World!

THE BULLS: Yay!

AFIA (as narrator): What is the NBA and why is this grown man going to Disney World before me? Make it make sense.

[Smooth, languid music comes back in.]

I felt like an outcast at school. The only one in my class who didn’t have her own set of Mickey Mouse ears and tales of hobnobbing with The Goofy himself.

[Music ends, with an echoey reverberation of the final note.]

I didn’t know it until much later, but someone else in my family felt the exact contours of my despair: Agnes. She knew who Michael Jordan was. And she understood that the people who went to Disney World were people who had made it in life.

Her coworkers at the Hyatt were working class immigrants just like her. Yet almost all of them had managed to squirrel away enough coins to make the pilgrimage from New York to Florida. So… why was she the odd one out? Why was she failing?

Agnes found more sewing jobs to do on the side, late into the night. She pored over the finances. And every year she asked herself… [Sound cascades and reverberates.] “Can we go to Disney World? Can we go to Disney World? Can we go?”

[Keys jingling, sounds from inside Agnes’s apartments. A door opens.]

AGNES: Hello?

AFIA (as narrator): Agnes and I are back at the apartments, here to take a family of prospective renters on a tour of the property.

AGNES: This is your second option. I have four options for you.

RENTER: OK, which are the other two?

AGNES: OK, now, this one here is the most expensive. This is a thousand. That one is a thousand five. This one is non-negotiable. That one is negotiable. Now, when we go there, because of the street…

[Agnes fades under narration.]

AFIA (as narrator): Agnes shows the would-be renters balconies, master bedrooms, second baths, marble accents.

AGNES: That’s what life is all about. When I did — some people come and say, “Are you crazy? Why are you putting all this in? Why is the stone — kitchen stoned? Put some dry wood — regular wood, let them polish it.” Life is not about that, you know? Life is about, you play hard, you live comfortable. That's how it is, yeah.

RENTER: I'm so impressed. Frankly speaking…

AFIA (as narrator): Yeah, I know the feeling.

AGNES: Yeah. Thank you, thank you.

RENTER: Most of these, we feel the men are to do such things, but a woman doing this—

AGNES: [Laughing.] No, I have a husband too.

RENTER: I'm proud of you.

AGNES: I have a husband, me and my husband.

RENTER: I'm proud of you. [Laughs with Agnes.]

AGNES: Yeah, thank you, thank you. I really appreciate that, thank you, yeah. So, try to enjoy it, you know, if you can afford it. That would be nice.

RENTER: Yeah, that’s the issue…

[Conversation fades out.]

AFIA (as narrator): We say our goodbyes, Agnes and I sliding into her navy blue Porsche SUV. The perfect embodiment of “you play hard, you live comfortable.”

In San Francisco, as of January 1st, my health insurance will consist of checking both ways before crossing the street. My unemployment benefits run out the week after. I get that the freelance lifestyle works for thousands of people. For me, it looks like never fully sleeping. It feels like never deeply breathing.

I can hear the disappointment and concern in my parents’ voices every time I WhatsApp them. They’re thinking, “We borrowed from our 401(k) to send you to college. How is this happening?”

I don’t know. Why am I fighting to make it in a city of billionaires when I can really be a somebody here?

[We are inside a car.]

AFIA: So your instinct is that they're going to take the place.

AGNES: Yes. That's what they all do.

[Rhythmic clapping begins.]

Ghanaians want nice things. They really do want nice things. But people underestimate them and they don't give them what they want and that's the problem. That's why some people are so rich here. They supply the demand.

[Clapping ends, and car sounds fade out.]

VICTOR: Hey!

AFIA: Hello!

VICTOR: This is my first time back in Ghana in about 11 years. Looking forward to reconnecting, hanging with my family, and enjoying myself.

[Upbeat afrobeats music comes in.]

AFIA (as narrator): Victor is here! My older brother — a consultant by day and DJ by night — is determined to get us out of the house and into these streets.

The next day, Vic and I jump in an Uber to hang out with our cousin Kweku at his parents’ place in East Legon. The neighborhood could be a Hollywood studio set, with its 15-foot-tall wrought-iron gates, mega mansions and pristine palm trees.

Except for the potholes, of course. Even in this rich neighborhood, the road is ravaged.

[Music fades out.]

When we’re shown into the living room, I fight the urge to take a picture. Gold busts, gold-lined portraits, gold-threaded couches. We’re pretty much standing in an antechamber at the Palace of Versailles.

VICTOR: We’re looking at Monopoly, the Accra edition… I mean, honestly, all these places are Greek to me. So this is a nice place, the Kempinski Hotel?

KWEKU: Mmm.

VICTOR: So are you disrespected if you’re one of these over here? This is a —

FRIEND: Yeah — this is a slum. [Laughter.] It’s a slum.

KWEKU: But in terms of actual location, these places are incredible.

FRIEND: They are.

AFIA: They’re just underdeveloped.

KWEKU: So then maybe this is just a representation of the wealth —

VICTOR: That’s what I’m thinking.

KWEKU: Like, the wealth of the residents.

FRIEND: This is a market here.

VICTOR: OK. That’s a market…

[Conversation fades out.]

AFIA (as narrator): A few hours later, Vic and I are swept up in a crush of bodies.

[Club music fades in.]

We’re at the entrance of a beachfront megaclub hemorrhaging afrobeats, LED light displays and the smell of beef kebabs on the grill.

A bouncer on my right shouts, “How many girls do you have?” before four women in neon rompers squeeze through a newly formed gap in the security blockade. [Sighing.] I just want to get in. We’ve been packed in like sardines for the past 15 minutes.

Screw it. I lock eyes with a bouncer. “You say you are looking for pretty girls?” — wow, where did this accent come from? — “What is this, oh?” I grab my boobs and then, for good measure, my denim booty shorts.

We’re in. And it only takes 150 Ghana cedis and an undisclosed settlement with the patriarchy.

Vic and I submerge ourselves in the crowds and the pounding bass, coming up for air at last on the second floor balcony. Our cousins are holding down a sticky table topped by bottles of Moët and Hennessy, underneath a sky that is all-black everything. It’s like the stars have fallen to the horizon, pinning our city into place, and each of us to this moment of ultimate, glittery being.

“Hey, can you mix champagne and cognac?” The words spill out of my mouth, and… hold up — did I just hear Kweku yell the exact same question? He laughs and pours the answer into a broken glass that I’ve scavenged. What can’t you do here?

[Club music fades out.]

[We hear the sounds of the Accra Polo Club — the chatter of guests and steady thrum of afrobeats.]

ANNOUNCER 2: Umpire is telling the players to line up properly. He’s still instructing them to line up properly, and he throws the ball in. And… the black team are trying to steal the ball. Joel hits the ball, and the black team are getting very aggressive. Come on black!… And the ball is rolling towards the goal… Come on black! Come on black!… And the ball goes wide.

AFIA (as narrator): First opera night… and now a polo match. Brought to you by luxury French champagne producer Veuve Clicquot.

AFIA: OK, yeah, so you can introduce me to your horses.

TRAINER: That is Vivan.

AFIA: This is Vivan.

TRAINER: She’s Vivan, she’s a female.

AFIA: OK. Hi, Vivan! She’s very quiet.

TRAINER: Yes. And she’s Layla. Layla, 4 years.

AFIA (as narrator): Before me is a masterclass in African Excellence. Professional photographers weave around Instagram-ready stone fountains, silk cherry blossoms, $70 bottles of imported bubbly, and… holy shit! That’s the actress who plays Molly on Insecure!

This might be one of the bougiest moments of my life. And I went to an Ivy League school.

SPECTATOR: Um, I’ve traveled the world. I’ve — I’ve, I mean, I’ve been around America, I’ve been places. And, I mean, the way they talk about Africa, especially in Ghana — I’ll talk of Ghana, because, I mean, I’m — I’m Ghanaian. We are very comfortable in Ghana and we are happy. And so be it. [Chuckles.]

AFIA: Right, yeah, I mean — ’cause we hear, all the time, people say, “Oh, there are starving children in Africa.”

SPECTATOR: You know, that’s what I’m saying. And, and — people are living on the streets in America and — and struggling. You understand? Here we have upper class, we have middle class, and we have the poor. But they are very comfortable. We go to the villages, they are comfortable in their villages, eating their grains and living healthy…

[Spectator fades under Afia’s narration, and rhythmic clapping begins.]

AFIA (as narrator): Wait.

[Simple guitar music — strings being plucked — comes in.]

OK, yeah, the struggle narrative can go straight to hell. But I’m standing here at a garden party sipping on a Bellini, talking about poverty while watching a sport that requires thousands of dollars just for the privilege of stepping onto the field.

Mixing champagne and Hennessy is one thing. This combination is harder to swallow.

[Clapping and guitar ]

AGNES: … can’t be satisfied with what you have. You always have to have more. You know, this is how the Ghanaian dream is. You always want to have more to show off with.

AFIA: But isn’t that — is that really just the Ghanaian mentality? Isn't that in America, too? You didn't see that in America?

AGNES: No, it's in America too. I even saw a movie with Michael Douglas saying, “Greed is OK. Greed is not bad.”

AFIA: No, he said, “Greed is good.”

AGNES: “Greed is good.” That's why, you know, I said, “OK. If that be the case, then let me be greedy too. Let me just focus on what I'm doing and do it right, and maybe — maybe I can be in that circle. Maybe.”

AFIA (as narrator): Primitive. Third World. Developing...

Into what? A country with trillions of dollars in GDP? Into America?

San Francisco is the most expensive city in one of the richest countries in the world. It, too, has an entire section of the downtown that functions as a giant homeless encampment.

[Music fades out.]

A Ghana beyond aid. I don’t want to hear about our victimhood. I want to think about how we make it.

[Dreamy, orchestral music comes in.]

DISEMBODIED VOICE (muffled and distorted): Well Afia, you’ve made it! What are you going to do next?

[Music ends.]

AFIA: I don’t know… Go… to Disney World?

AFIA (as narrator): But… I did go to Disney World. When I was 15. That’s when Agnes finally got enough money to send her youngest kid to the happiest place on Earth. But just me. She didn’t have enough for her plane ticket, so the plan was for me to tag along with her coworker’s family. She delivered the news precisely, proudly, on a random summertime evening. And I was so confused. Hadn’t I stopped asking for this like three years ago?

The trip was fun. Not all-caps fun. Lowercase f, lowercase u, lowercase n. That kind of fun.

It bothered me a little, how miniature everything felt. And that “It’s a Small World” ride bothered me a lot. I mean, obviously a bunch of animatronic dolls singing in unison is grade-A nightmare fuel. But what really stayed with me, as our boat meandered through a tiny Thailand, and a tiny Italy, and a tiny Mexico, was the peeling paint. The layers of dust. The cracks in the dream. The reality of making it.

VICTOR: So, there’s, like, you know — there’s the haves and then there’s the have-nots. And I feel like the haves in Ghana, I mean they really have. I think materialism, in general, you’ll never have enough, so.

[Slow, music box version of “It’s a Small World” comes in.]

It’s just funny because you realize that though places can be millions of miles apart, at the end of the day, there’s just certain things that are just common in life, whether you’re at a third world country or you’re in a more developed country, it’s the same thing.

[“It’s a Small World” ends.]

AFIA (as narrator): Being a somebody in Ghana is complicated. [Laughing.] Just like it is in America.

What else is living quietly in my mind, waiting to be recognized?

[Jazzy instrumentals from “Home” by Ria Boss come in.]

Shithole Country is written, narrated, and sound designed by me, Afia. This episode was produced by me and Mark Pagán. Julie Shapiro and Audrey Mardavich are our executive producers. Special thanks to Tania Ketenjian.

Cover art by Sindiso Nyoni. Our theme song, “Home,” was created by the amazing Ria Boss. For additional credits, please check out the show notes on radiotopiapresents.fm.

And of course, a huge thank you to everyone who shared their voices and stories with me.

Next episode: Merry Christmas.

[Instrumentals fade out.]

END OF EPISODE.

Show Notes

Credits “Think Ghana” by the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC)

“Enhancing Urban Resilience in Ghana’s Greater Accra Region” by the World Bank

“Ghana Oil Outlook” by CGTN Africa

“Visit Amazing Ghana” by Ghana Tourism Authority

“President Obama Goes to Ghana” by VOA Africa

“President Obama’s Visit to Ghana” by The Obama White House

“Matamoscas” by Blue Dot Sessions

Walt Disney World Commercials

“Michael Jordan and the Bulls Are Going to Disney World”

“It’s a Small World Music Box” by klankbeeld via freesound.org

Additional music found on Splice

Context World Bank: Ghana Looks to Retool its Economy as it Reaches Middle-Income Status

Financial Times: Ghana: Top for GDP Growth in 2011

NYTimes: Opposition Leader Is Declared the Winner of Ghana’s Presidential Election

Michael Douglas scene in Wall Street

SFGate: United Nations report: SF homeless problem is ‘violation of human rights’

Transcript

[Phone buzzes.]

23-YEAR-OLD AFIA (to herself): Yes, yes, I get it, I’m late for work. But I’m also almost ready.

Got my laptop, keys… OK, one last mirror check. Suit looks good. Hair… huh.

OK maybe a little more shea butter will help. And if I just pick out this part of my afro and then that part and — and that part…

AFIA KAAKYIRE: When I was 22, I stopped using a relaxer. Even though the chemicals had left me looking and feeling like a scarecrow, it had been, shall we say, a slow burn to get to the point of giving them up.

I hadn’t seen my real hair since I was a baby. What kind of curl pattern did I have? Probably a 4C. But who knows, maybe a 4B… or even a 4A.

After a year and a half of keeping my new growth in braids, I decided to finally take them out. I woke up early the next day to wash and condition my fro. It would be the first time in my life that I’d step outside of my house fully natural, the hair on my head just as God intended.

That morning, I dawdled in front of the mirror, picking at the thick black halo around my head. Definitely 4C.

23-YEAR-OLD AFIA (to herself): OK, don’t know how to do cornrows but I can kinda twist back the front and then… Oh, I have this big clip. I can hold it back. Yeah, now it’s like a little distraction from the afro.

[Phone buzzes.]

Almost ready...

[Music (“Home” by Ria Boss) comes in. Jazzy instrumentals, then R&B vocals.]

AFIA: You can call me… Afia. This is the story of my family, and our lives in a quote unquote “shithole country.”

[The phrase “shithole country” echoes and reverberates.]

[Vocals of “Home” build and grow, then slowly fade out.]

To be an American child of Ghanaians is to be continually introduced to family members you’ve never heard of before in your life.

AGNES: I think this neighborhood is changing, so…

VICTOR: So who is this person?

AFIA: Are we here?

AGNES: That’s Professor.

VICTOR: Who are we visiting?

AGNES: Professor.

AFIA: Yeah, can we get names?

VICTOR: No, who, who, who, who?

AFIA: We need names.

AGNES: Professor.

VICTOR: No, who?

KWABENA: No, they don’t know him.

VICTOR: We don’t know the person?

KWABENA: No. You don’t know him.

VICTOR: OK, thanks.

AGNES: All of them are Daddy’s —

AFIA: Oh, it’s great.

VICTOR: I just want to know if I know him or not.

AFIA (as narrator): My dad Kwabena has arranged a little Christmas kickback at his friend Professor’s house. It’s in a beautiful compound, all airy patios and well appointed verandas. The gates are dotted with gleaming brass adinkra symbols. And there’s even a little pond. That’s where we post up — me, Agnes, Kwabena, my brother Vic, and the two Professors.

Yes, there are two academics here who have lived and taught in America, and yes, we are referring to both of them as “Professor.” Because conversational clarity is overrated.

PROFESSOR A: We lived in — what’s the place? Hotel Alexandria, was it?

KWABENA: Yeah, 103rd Street.

PROFESSOR A: Very close to the subway. In the middle of the night, man, I couldn’t sleep. [Imitates the sound of the subway.]

[Conversation fades under.]

AFIA (as narrator): Neighbors set off celebratory fireworks as we sip beer and trip down memory lane, though in very different directions. My parents and the Professors voyage to 1970s Harlem. My journey is much shorter. I’m thinking about my first Christmas in California, when I had perhaps the most San Franciscan introduction to San Francisco that could ever be had: a Buddhist took me on a hike and taught me how to meditate.

Meditation isn’t exactly a tool in my box of life skills that I reach for often. But I still need to give my parents an answer about moving to Ghana. And if the polo match and opera night are any indication, I’m not thinking deeply enough about the realities of living here and in America.

So, OK, be like the Buddhist. Let’s get quiet.

[Conversation fades out.]

What am I hearing?

PROFESSOR A: I remember me and my wife in Philadelphia, we used to go out in the — to the suburbs. Right? Shopping. And the moment you enter the mall, everybody would be looking at you like, “Who are these niggers here?”

AFIA (as narrator): [Laughs.] Oh no. The answer to this meditation exercise, the thing I need to pay more attention to — it’s not race. I am always thinking about race. Like, can’t stop, won’t stop. Even if I wanted to.

This might sound like a bit of a left turn, but what happens for me is just like that thing that U2 did a few years ago. Yes, the best-selling, Grammy-Award-winning Irish rock superstars who, on at least one occasion, may have slightly overplayed their hand. Remember? That album that was automatically jammed into every single iTunes account on the planet? The one that many millions of people did not ask for?

Being in the U.S. is like getting an LP called American Racism: Greatest Hits piped directly into your brain as soon as you’re born, or the moment you clear customs at the airport. My personal favorite is track four: “You Are Less Than.” It’s this wonderfully beachy bossa nova tune — like, a true siren song — and it’s on an infinite loop in my mind.

[Beachy bossa nova guitar comes in.]

AFIA’S INNER MONOLOGUE: Should I leave my wallet out so the bartender knows I can pay? Did that woman look at me funny when they called up Business Class customers and I stood? Is everyone in this room white? Why does this person keep talking about how great my English is?

[Ocean waves come in.]

COMPETING VOICE: It’s because you’re Black.

INNER MONOLOGUE: No. I’m overreacting.

COMPETING VOICE: No.

INNER MONOLOGUE: I’m being sensitive.

COMPETING VOICE: You are not good enough… It’s because you’re Black.

INNER MONOLOGUE: OK, shhhh. You’re at a 9. I’mma need you back at a 2.

[Guitar music ends.]

COMPETING VOICE (whispering): It’s because you’re Black.

INNER MONOLOGUE: Thank you.

[Ocean waves fade out.]

COMPETING VOICE: You know you’re not good enough…

PROFESSOR B: One day, I was asked to interview a leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

VICTOR: Face to face.

PROFESSOR B: No, not face to — on the phone. I’ve forgotten the name. Something something Duke. Something…

AFIA: David Duke?!

PROFESSOR B: I don’t remember the full name, but it was something Duke. So when I called, this guy asked me from what newspaper. I said, “The Guardian.” So he said, “A communist newspaper?” I said, “Well, the Guardian, the Guardian weekly of New York. I don’t know about anything communist or liberal or capitalist, but it’s a newspaper.” “What do you want?” “I want to interview Grand Duke something something.”

PROFESSOR A: Yeah, Grand Master.

PROFESSOR B: Grand — yeah. Something —

AFIA: Grand Wizard.

VICTOR: Yeah, Grand Wizard.

PROFESSOR B: Something like that. Yes. He said, “Where are you from?” I said, “Well, I’m calling from New York.” And he said, “No, you have an accent.” I said, “Yes. I’m an African.” He said, “Oh, OK. OK. Then I will talk to you.” [Laughter.]

I said, “Oh, but why would you talk to me, and who wouldn’t you talk to?” He said, “If you were American, I wouldn’t talk to a nigger.” And I said, “Oh, but if I’m African, am I not a nigger?” He said, “No way, you’re going back home!” [Laughter.] “So I will talk to you.” So for them, the Ku Klux Klan, for as long as I’m — I’m an African, I am not indigenous to America, so they don’t have a problem with me. I’ll go back home, so they don’t have any problem with me, for as long as I’m not staying there. You see, so… [laughs] America.

And those things, if you are politically conscious, you don’t want to deal with them. People like me, they don’t — they make my blood boil unnecessarily. But here, nothing like that will happen.

AFIA (as narrator): Last year I watched a video of Philando Castile’s murder and I closed my eyes.

[Sounds of a large protest fade in.]

I opened them, and found myself sitting on asphalt in front of a dozen police officers in riot gear. The straightness of my back was a lie. Something I saw other people doing and copied. I wasn’t a real protester. I was a child, playing with things she didn’t understand.

[We hear the protesters chanting “Black Lives Matter.” Then, protest sounds fade out.]

PROFESSOR A: And there are not so many places like Ghana in terms of walking free as a human being, and not fearing — you know, not having to look behind your back and so on. And so, whether day or night, and so on…

AFIA (as narrator): Walking free…

When was the last time I thought about my Blackness? It’s always when I’m thinking about America. Every face I see here in Accra, I’m not thinking they’re Black. I’m thinking, you remind me of my actual cousin, my actual aunt.

If I move to Ghana, the infinite loop…

[“It’s because you’re Black” whispers fade out.]

Stops.

[Afia sighs in relief.]

I know I’m lucky. I can do what some of my Black friends back home can’t. That always-on anxiety and second-guessing and looking over my shoulder — gone.

No more texts from friends asking, have I seen the news, am I doing OK?

I’d be free.

[Sounds of Agnes talking with the Professors.]

Wait. That’s not entirely true. I know this. My cousin Isaac was talking about this the other day. He lives close to me in the Bay Area but spends a lot of time in Ghana. He says Blackness doesn’t mean the same thing here that it does in America. But whiteness…

ISAAC: So I don’t know if these Ghanaians are colorstruck or something like that, because that is one thing that I’ve found very, very interesting here, is that if you are lighter, or if you’re Caucasian, if you will — the treatment you get here is always, you know, markedly different. Like, we’re almost to the point of obsequiousness.

I’ve been sort of seeing this girl. She’s Swiss. So that means she’s not Black. Everytime I drive with her and the police stop us, they’ll be like, “All right, come along.” But then sometimes when I’m driving by myself and the police stop me, I know what time of day it is. It’s like, “All right, do I have a 2, do I have a 5, do I have a 10? How much do I need to give them for this part of the stop?” Because it’s the holiday season and I need to give them my quote unquote “gift.”

[Sounds of Agnes talking with the Professors.]

AFIA (as narrator): There are all these contradictions to who gets to be free. And the biggest one is sitting right in front of me.

So after we wrap up with the Professors and head home, I sit down with my mom Agnes to confront her about it directly.

AGNES: It — it have its pros and cons, you know. It — it makes you feel like, OK, I'm different, I'm beautiful. But at the same time, it makes you have enemies.

AFIA (as narrator): There’s something I haven’t really told you yet about Agnes. I’ve said she’s statuesque. Endlessly stylish, makeup perfectly applied to her heart-shaped face. The last of 10 children, born right as Ghana was declaring its independence.

UNIVERSAL NEWSREEL, 1957 ARCHIVAL AUDIO: Native dances and games mark a day of historic importance, since Ghana becomes the first Negro colony in Africa to gain its freedom. Another feature of the occasion is a beauty contest, in which the fairest of the land compete…

AGNES: You see people bleaching themself to become white. They were bringing in bleaching creams like hell from England.

I didn't have no friends because my — my girlfriends were all jealous of me. If a man approaches, they will approach me. It’s like I’m on the market for sale, something like that.

I was the lightest person in my secondary school. My father's father was a Scottish person.

AFIA (as narrator): That’s right. Agnes is a quarter white. Which means I’m one-eighth white. Though, unlike my mom, you’d never know just by looking at me.

After I found out about this wayward great-grandfather in elementary school, I peered into every reflective surface I encountered to search for him.

[Elements from the bossa nova “You Are Less Than” song come in.]

He wasn’t in my hair, most likely. I’d been relaxing it since I was a baby. Not in my nose or lips. And definitely no sign of him in my —

Ahem.

[Music ends.]

In my skin.

I’ve always wondered about this part of my heritage. I’ve always wanted to uncover the truth. Agnes was terrible about giving up answers when I was younger, but now I’m standing in the country where everything went down. And I’ve got resources at my disposal — a microphone, recorder, and way too much time on my hands.

Oh my God. I’m going to solve a mystery.

[Old-timey mystery music comes in.]

I’ve read dozens of Nancy Drew books. How hard could it be?

AFIA: Your father’s father was a foreigner. He was a white Scottish man?

AGNES: Yes, yes, yes. He — the Scottish guy had two children and you could see, they were very, very light.

AFIA (as narrator): You can call me Nana Afia Drew. And this is The Case of The Missing White Man.

[Old-timey mystery music ends.]

Agnes is a striking woman. And it’s not just the makeup and hair and clothes.

[Guitar and beach sounds from “You Are Less Than” song gently fade in.]

All my friends would tell me so in middle and high school when she came for band performances or parent-teacher nights. I — excuse me.

[Music fades out.]

OK, I don’t think this is how that meditation thing was supposed to work…

Anyway, I wanted to know: Where did it begin for her?

AGNES: My father, he started favoring the lighter ones. Just three of us have the lighter skin. So we got the best education. The rest, you know, dark. They were farming. And they had — they had blemishes, they had cuts and all that, and I didn't have any. And I realized what that has made me. It made me beautiful. That's why somebody married me and took me to America.

AFIA (as narrator): Agnes’s story checked out. The World Health Organization reported in 2011 that 40% of African women use skin-lightening products.

Now that I had the context, I needed the man behind it. The Scotsman.

AFIA: And what was his name?

AGNES: I don’t know. I don’t know. Because those days, he wouldn’t even name — put his name on my father. They would come here, sleep with the women, have the children, then they would bring their wives. They don’t want anybody to know. No, you can’t even go near your father.

[Old-timey mystery music comes in.]

But if the father, you know, likes you, secretly they will give you education. They will take care of you. He really set my father up with money.

AFIA: Did you meet your grandfather?

AGNES: No. I never met him. I never saw him.

[Old-timey mystery music ends.]

AFIA (as narrator): So my investigation was already hitting a dead end. No names or identifying info meant very few leads. I was going to have to get creative. And an opportunity to do just that was about to fall right into my lap.

My oldest brother Sammy and his wife Lisa, fresh from spending Christmas with Lisa’s parents in New York, had just arrived. And because it was Lisa’s first time in Ghana, my family wanted to take her to all of the must-see spots.

We planned to drive out to the Fante region, land of Agnes’s tribe. First stop: Cape Coast Slave Castle.

Now, the Scotsman himself wouldn’t have a direct connection to the Castle, of course. He likely would have been in Ghana around 1900, long after the British government was shamed into shutting down the transatlantic slave trade. But the Scotsman’s grandfather… well, that’s a different story. He might not have had an alibi. And there could be some trace of him there.

[We are inside a moving car.]

AFIA: Wait, so which highway is this?

SAMMY: George W. Bush.

AFIA (as narrator): In the morning, we set out for the coast, driving along George W. Bush Highway as Agnes explained that the former U.S. president does care about some Black people after all.

AGNES: Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. They came here about 10 times. Him and, uh, Condo. Condo went to —

SAMMY: It’s Condi, Mom, and they did not come 10 times.

AGNES: Candy went to Amenhyia about 10 times.

[Laughter.]

AFIA: Mom, do you think Ghanaians respect George Bush? Because this is a nice highway, there’s no potholes or anything.

AGNES: Yeah.

SAMMY: Yeah, why not —

AGNES: No, Ghanaians like white men, period.

SAMMY: Why, I don’t know, because the white man has pretty much… well, let me stop.

AFIA (as narrator): Whenever someone says “the white man,” you know something spicy’s about to drop.

SAMMY: Could you stop it?!

AGNES: Oh, that thing is there? I’m driving!

[Sounds of the inside of a restaurant.]

AFIA (as narrator): We made it to the Castle — a massive white-and-cream structure, perched right on the edge of the shore — around noon. Just in time to grab some jollof across the street.

[Restaurant chatter.]

Sammy noticed Lisa gazing off into the distance.

SAMMY: You look bored. We’re speaking in Fante and you can’t understand.

LISA: No, no… I’m just looking at this.

AGNES: No, we’re not speaking in Fante, we’re speaking in English.

SAMMY: Oh, the Castle? Just wait, don’t cry yet. Wait till you go inside.

KWABENA: Wait till you go inside.

LISA: It’s just so ridiculous.

KWABENA: Yeah, the emotion will come to you.

LISA: Just the arrogance of even building this thing. Like, we’re gonna be doing a lot of business here…

SAMMY: No, it was built as a fort. So it wasn’t meant for, originally…

AFIA (as narrator): Sometimes the question is sitting right there. And you just have to ask it.

AFIA: Do you feel guilty coming here?

AGNES: Huh?

AFIA: Do you feel guilty coming here? Do you feel complicit?

SAMMY: [Laughs.] Complicit! Because of the slave trade and everything that went on, do you feel guilty that your ancestors did what they did?

AGNES: I didn’t know until I went to America.

KWABENA: So, Mom, you didn’t know before you went to America?

AGNES: No, but, you know, to tell you the honest truth, they don’t teach us that —

KWABENA: They do, in Ghana. I knew so many things about it…

AGNES: I didn’t have that much education like you here.

KWABENA: Oh, yeah.

AGNES: Remember, you went to — you went to full college here, I didn’t. So I didn’t know.

AFIA (as narrator): Yeah, she told me about this yesterday. About how little she knew of slavery until she started working in Manhattan. She was shoulder-to-shoulder with descendants of the enslaved who had been fighting their whole lives for America to recognize the other two-fifths of their humanity.

AGNES: Before I would be proud — yeah, yeah, you know. My father was light, yes — no, I didn’t say that anymore. ‘Cause there was one guy, he loved to read. And he came and he said, “Oh, you Fante. You a — you a sellout.” [Laughs.] So I kind of brushed it off and I said, “No, no, no, no. If you come to Ghana, you’ll see a whole bunch of me.” He said, “Yeah. A whole bunch of you are not Ghanaians. You are not Africans. You are sellouts. The white man always want to divide us. That’s why he makes you feel superior than somebody who is dark.”

It made me feel very guilty. And that's why I filed for all my siblings to come and join me, because I didn't understand why my parents didn't love them the same way they loved me. Their self-esteem was low...

[Ocean sounds come in.]

COMPETING VOICE: Your self-esteem was low —

AGNES: Because of me.

COMPETING VOICE: — because of her.

AFIA’S INTERNAL MONOLOGUE: Hey! You need to rein it in.

COMPETING VOICE: It’s true. Agnes is beautiful…

INTERNAL MONOLOGUE: Oh my God, how many times do I have to do this?

COMPETING VOICE: … and you’re not.

INTERNAL MONOLOGUE: Agnes is light skinned. Agnes is also beautiful.

COMPETING VOICE: You hate your big nose…

INTERNAL MONOLOGUE: Two things can be true. Correlation does not equal causation.

COMPETING VOICE: And your hair… Oh, that 4C hair…

INTERNAL MONOLOGUE: Mmkay. Fuck you very much. You had your time. Back to a 2, please.

COMPETING VOICE: [At a whisper, then fading out.] You’ll never be beautiful. Not really. Not like her…

[Ocean sounds fade out.]

AFIA (as narrator): As I was saying, Agnes told me she learned to love her Blackness in America. Looking back now, I can see the evidence. Like when I was 6 and extremely invested in Miss Hawaii winning the Miss America pageant, due to her hula dancing and pretty eyes.

MISS AMERICA 1994 PAGEANT: … the place is falling apart here. And we are down to two, now. Hold tight everybody. The winner of the $20,000 scholarship and first runner up — Kara Martin, Miss Georgia. And the new Miss America, Kimberly Clarice Aiken, Miss South Carolina!

[“There She Is, Miss America” plays underneath.]

AFIA (as narrator): Miss Hawaii was robbed. I burst into noisy sobs as the Black woman from South Carolina was crowned.

“Oh, Afia,” Agnes cooed, over and over again. “Black is beautiful! Black is beautiful!”

[“There She Is, Miss America” comes up to full volume: “There she is, your ideal…” Then fades out.]

[Footsteps.]

TOUR GUIDE: Ladies first.

AFIA (as narrator): We squeeze into another section of the stone dungeons, tasting dampness as we do. Nature is taking back the chambers, peeling paint and spreading green mold.

The tour guide just… said it. He was talking about how the white men preyed upon the captured women and gave the children their names. And then he said Agnes’s maiden name. The Scotsman was here.

TOUR GUIDE: Step down… one step down.

[Footsteps.]

Right. Here was the exit of the tunnel. The tunnel ended here. The men were going this way. They joined the women at the Door of No Return. They sat on small boats into the bigger ships for the deadly voyages.

The bigger ships — the slave ships — were also called “floating coffins.” And some of these floating coffins had wonderful names, very ironic names — names like “Jesus,” “Liberty,” “Glory of Africa,” “Hope,” “God is Able.”

Let’s continue.

AGNES: [Sighs.] It is — you want to throw up. It’s really sad.

TOUR GUIDE: This is the infamous Door of No Return. Our brothers and sisters, our forefathers, went through this door and never came back. And the moment they passed through the door, they lost everything.

[Door of No Return creaks open to ocean waves.]

[We hear a phone ringing, as though it was recorded through the phone.]

UNCLE: Hello?

AFIA: Hello? Uncle?

UNCLE: Yes.

AFIA: How are you doing?

UNCLE: Doing quite well.

AFIA (as narrator): I didn’t need Agnes to solve the mystery of the missing white man. I already had a direct line to an ace-in-the-hole. Her older brother. He’d give me names and then I could do my Nancy Drew thing and dig into some kind of, like, records database. The University of Ghana is pretty close by; I bet they’d have what I need.

AFIA: I wanted to ask you something about Mom… She said that her grandfather — your grandfather — um, was Scottish. And so, you know, I was thinking maybe I could try and, like, track him down. So you — you met him?

UNCLE: Of course. Yes. Light-looking complexion person. So you can name it Scottish. You can name it British. It's OK.

AFIA: But were they actually? Like, was — was your grandfather actually a white man? Or was he Ghanaian?

UNCLE: Well… well. If you say a white man, looking at the color, I would say yes. But he was a Ghanaian.

[A pause.]

AFIA: Wait. So he wasn’t… ‘Cause my mom was thinking — my mom says that she… her grandfather was a Scottish merchant. That he was born and raised in Scotland and then came to Ghana...

AFIA (as narrator): I think I asked Uncle the same question at least five different ways. But he didn’t waver. Mom was wrong. There was no Scotsman. Uncle said it was an understandable mistake for a little girl who had never met her grandfather to make.

After we hung up, I walked outside and sat slowly on the veranda.

[The sounds of the veranda — a breeze, carn horns.]

Very slowly. I had to wait for my entire body to settle into its new reality. Could not leave even one molecule behind in the old, wrong world.

Huh. Wow. I’ve lost a story I’ve known for over half of my life. I didn’t realize how comfortable I’d gotten with it.

No. I wanted the whiteness.

[Veranda sounds fade out.]

Not just the freedom. I thought… I thought it made me… special.

[A shaky breath.] OK, well that’s a horrific thing to realize. And there’s nothing I can do about it.

I’ve got a return flight back to San Francisco in a few days… where I will still be a person who wanted whiteness. And I can move here, and I will be a person who wanted whiteness.

Yeah. No going back either way.

[The sound of Cape Coast ocean waves comes in and grows. It becomes loud, overwhelming. Then, slowly, it wanes and fades to nothing.]

[Jazzy instrumentals from “Home” by Ria Boss come in.]

Shithole Country is written, narrated, and sound designed by me, Afia. This episode was produced by me and Mark Pagán. Julie Shapiro and Audrey Mardavich are our executive producers. Special thanks to Tania Ketenjian.

Cover art by Sindiso Nyoni. And our theme song was created by the one, the only, Ria Boss. For additional credits and some suggested reading, please check out the show notes at radiotopiapresents.fm.

Thank you, as always to my family, and especially my mom, for sharing your stories. And the biggest thank you this time around goes out to Black listeners. Thanks for sticking with me in this episode — I know it was heavy. And thank you for being my family, too.

Next Episode: Amen.

[Instrumentals fade out.]

END OF EPISODE.

Show Notes

Context

“The Quiet Part” touches on some particularly thorny topics.

On Fante “sellouts” and “complicity”: This claim is broader than the interlinkages between white colonizers and enslaved African women. A number of Africans (not just the Fante) “became both victims of continuous violence and successful brokers of enslaved human beings.” The slave trade would have looked different without African cooperation. That truth prompted this apology from Ghanaian chiefs, presented as a plaque at Elmina Castle in the 1990s.

• Racism may not be a thing in a Black country like Ghana, but ethnicity and class division definitely are.
• Saidiya Hartman’s Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route is part beautifully written memoir, part exhaustively researched historical accounting. It’s anchored by Hartman’s fieldwork at slave castles in Ghana and was on my mind as I wrote this episode.

Moar context!

NYMag: U2’s Songs of Innocence Has Haunted Me for 6 Years. Until Now.

Black people stay chatting up David Duke: BlacKkKlansman: The True Story of How Ron Stallworth Infiltrated the K.K.K. (Vanity Fair)

UN: Paying a high price for skin bleaching

Good times with Ye

Transcript

AFIA KAAKYIRE: How long can you stay still? Like, try it now. Stop whatever you’re doing and just… hold.

Can you feel it? Those little brush fires of energy that are starting to break up and down your entire body? But that’s just your mind being silly. Don’t let it win.

[The sound of a ticking clock.]

I laid like that on an ordinary weekend afternoon when I was 7 years old, draped on a scratchy brown couch. The rest of my family went about their usual Saturday business downstairs: watching MTV, playing Super Nintendo, cooking some kind of stew. But I, the nerdiest of nerds, was giving myself this extra credit assignment.

I watched a second hand glide around a wall clock with gold Roman numbers. Around, and around, adding minutes, just like I’d learned about in Mrs. Brown’s class a year before. The smallest stick on the clock, though, barely budged.

I can do this. There are no little fires in my body.

The stick moved. A little. A little more.

I kept myself still for an entire hour, just to prove that I could. Mom and Daddy and Vic and Sammy were always saying I talked too much. Maybe they were right. Maybe I was too loud.

But look, I won. Stayed on the couch the whole time. I — I could be quiet. I could behave. I was great at being good.

[Ticking continues for a few seconds, then ends.]

[Music (“Home” by Ria Boss) comes in. Jazzy instrumentals, then R&B vocals.]

You can call me… Afia. This is the story of my family, and our lives in a quote unquote “shithole country.”

[The phrase “shithole country” echoes and reverberates.]

[Vocals of “Home” build and grow, then slowly fade out.]

[Sounds from inside a moving car.]

We are officially in 2018. And I’m going home to California in a few days. But only if my mom doesn’t kill us all first.

[Horns honk all around.]

AGNES: Beep, beep, beep! [She honks, then laughs.] Beep! [Laughs.]

AFIA (as narrator): It’s New Year’s Day and the fam is heading back from a day at Bojo Beach. About a third of the city had the same idea, so naturally Agnes is dealing with the awful traffic by living her life a quarter mile at a time. She just baited a school bus next to us, full of grown men, into a high-speed game of chicken.

AGNES: I don’t think he wants to stick this school bus in my face.

SAMMY: No but whose school bus is being used as a taxi right now? This is truly the OK Corral here.

[Loud honking.]

AFIA (as narrator): I suppose the upside to dying horribly in this completely unnecessary drag race is that I would be forever released from making any more major life decisions. I still don’t know what to do about this whole “moving to Ghana versus staying in America” thing. I’ve talked about it with at least a dozen family members, but it feels like each conversation just raises more questions. Like that nasty little realization after the phone call with my Uncle about the Scotsman and how much racism I’ve internalized as I’ve gotten older.

[A long, loud honk, followed by laughter.]

AFIA: Literally nothing about this is amusing.

[More laughter.]

[Car sounds fade out and churchy organ music comes in.]

AFIA (as narrator): Father God, I know my mom isn’t actually trying to run us into a ditch right now, but she might do it by accident. I really want us to live, please. Thank You. Amen.

[Churchy organ music ends and car sounds come back in.]

That emergency prayer is a far cry from the devotionals I used to do when I was younger. Which makes sense — I’m not really a Christian these days.

[Agnes laughs.]

SAMMY: All right, stop. Get out of there, Mom. Come and sit — come and sit over here. [Laughter.] I’m driving.

AGNES: By the time I get out, they will be gone.

AFIA (as narrator): And sure, it does feel a teensy bit hypocritical to only touch base with God when I need Him to deliver me through plane turbulence or a first date with someone who looks nothing like their profile picture. But that’s just where we’re at right now.

[Car sounds fade out.]

REVEREND: Afehyia pa!

AFIA: Afehyia pa! Afe nko meto yen bio.

[Laughter, gentle mockery of Afia’s pronunciation.]

AFIA: Wait —

SAMMY: See? I told you.

AFIA: Wait, what’d he say?

SAMMY: Your accent was way off.

AFIA: But you understood what I was saying…

AFIA (as narrator): We’re with the Reverend, a cousin of Agnes’s, for one of my last family visits on this trip.

[Afia attempts to speak Twi again.]

SAMMY: That means ‘your butt.’

REVEREND: [Correcting pronunciation.] Meto.

AFIA: Meto.

REVEREND: Meto.

AFIA (as narrator): Predictably, my attempt at a proper New Year’s greeting is coming up short. After he finishes roasting me, the Reverend tells us that he presides over a church that has 2,400 followers.

REVEREND: You need to visit my society before you go. Will you?

AFIA: I hope so.

REVEREND: You should, you should. Next Sunday will be…

AFIA (as narrator): And I was good. Said the right thing. But it’s an ongoing problem. Anytime someone asks me about my relationship to Christianity, I freeze. The searchlight has found me and there’s nowhere to run.

It’s a lot easier to fly under the radar, religion-wise, in the den of unmitigated sin that is the Bay Area. The only things people will quiz you on are the finer points of your astrological birth chart.

But here? In the 30 seconds that it will take you to drive down one stretch of road, you’ll see: [Nollywood surprise sound] five huge billboards of graying men in well tailored suits advertising yet another “Festival of Miracles”; [double Nollywood surprise sound] three trotros driving down the street, emblazoned with the words “Allahu Akbar”; [triple Nollywood surprise sound] [in a gospel singsong] multiple stores with praise-themed — I said praise-themed — names like “By His Grace Beauty Shop” and “Jesus Is Lord Auto Body Repair.”

[Nollywood surprise sound.]

The most recent census says that 71% of Ghanaians are Christian and 18% are Muslim. But unofficially, you 100% better pray to somebody’s God.

And I’m not the only one who feels like I’m in no-man’s land. Agnes also doesn’t go to church.

AGNES: I look at church as an organization.

REVEREND: The church is more than an organization.

AGNES: The way church is here, it’s like a burden. You have to do it. You have to do this. You have to do this. You have to do this.

[Agnes chanting fades in.]

AFIA (as narrator): She’s more spiritual than religious. Case in point: that time in her 20s when she was a chanting Buddhist.

[Agnes’s chanting comes up to full volume, then ends.]

AGNES: I believe that we have reincarnation. And I believe that we should use a mirror as a model.

[Churchy organ music with gospel vocals comes in.]

AFIA (as narrator): I, on the other hand, used to be about that Christian life in high school, when I joined my brother Victor’s church. At first it was just a way to stay close to Victor. He wore Marithe + Francois Girbaud and beat Final Fantasy 9. He was the coolest person I knew. And I felt his absence when he went to a college several states away.

But then the church itself became the draw. Have you ever been in a train station and then gotten a pamphlet from a Jehovah’s Witness? And the cover looks like the United Nations singing kumbaya in front of a waterfall next to a docile tiger? That was the exact vibe of the congregation at Victor’s church. Kids, adults, and elders of every shade mingled and laughed together. In jeans, no less. Jeans!

[Organ music fades out.]

The teen ministry leaders even remixed songs so you could drop it low and praise God all at the same time.

[“Hot in Herre” instrumentals come in, with church-appropriate lyrics: “It’s getting hot in hell (so hot), / So wash off all your sins. / I am getting so hot, / I wanna wash my sins off (oh)…” The song ends with lots of reverb.]

I loved it. I loved knowing exactly who I was supposed to be in this life. And I loved knowing that that person was good.

[Slow, legato, melancholy piano music comes in.]

I wanted the whole world to feel what I was feeling. My parents, however, were less enamored of my constant attempts to save their souls. They thought that church was a cult and forced me out.

[Piano music slows and distorts until it’s just a few ominous bass notes rumbling under narration.]

By the time I hit my 20s, doubts about what was right and wrong whispered into my ear, snaking into my heart. I still believed in God, but as it turned out, I wasn’t so great at being good.

[Music fades out.]

REVEREND: Have you ever heard of a covenant?

AFIA: Yeah, it’s like, um… an agreement.

REVEREND: A contract between us and God. God is always faithful.

AFIA (as narrator): Even when you feel terrible about yourself and all the ways you keep failing. When you think you don’t deserve anything, when all you feel is fire and you can’t keep yourself still anymore no matter how hard you try, He still loves you. Unconditionally.

REVEREND: So we celebrate that.

AFIA (as narrator): That’s what the Reverend is referring to. That belief.

REVEREND: Statistics say that 70% of the population of Ghana are Christians… nominal Christians. They only come and warm the pews or they don’t even come to church at all. But they don't live according to the Christian standards. Some will not even come to church throughout the whole year.

AGNES: I think this is really hitting me.

REVEREND: [Laughing.] Then repent.

[Laughter all around.]

SAMMY: Hey, here's the pastor so…

AFIA: Yeah, this is your chance, Mom.

REVEREND: Yeah, it is your chance, ma'am. Sunday, I'm inviting all of you to come — to worship with us for the covenant…

AFIA (as narrator): Agnes is sighing so hard right now.

REVEREND: [Mimics the sigh, to lots of laughter.] Is that a sigh of relief or a sigh of grief?

[Laughter slowly fades out. Church service fades in, with gentle music tinkling in the background.]

PASTOR: God bless you. Lift it up high. God bless you. It’s the first Sunday of the year 2018. God has organized you and brought you to church so that you can get close to Him…

[Service fades down and continues to run underneath narration.]

AFIA (as narrator): [A sigh.] No, I didn’t make it to my uncle’s service. It would have taken me over an hour to get there in this holiday traffic. So instead, I’m tagging along with my parents’ housekeeper, Ama, to her church, a 20-minute walk away. But this’ll be great for research purposes. If religion infuses as much of Ghanaian life as Agnes says it does, then I can’t return to California without going to the source.

Ama’s church is a simple but cavernous concrete building, several stories tall and hollowed out to make space for at least a thousand worshippers. When was the last time I sat in a pew for anything other than a friend’s wedding? My body has collected years of memories. Of slouching against the unyielding design. And then, being held by it.

[Church service comes back up to the forefront.]

PASTOR: … guide them in their ways. The good in Ghana, you will enjoy some.

CONGREGATION: Amen!

PASTOR: Those of you who say…

AFIA (as narrator): Wait, what did the pastor just say?

PASTOR: “Unless I go to America, my life will never work,” and so on. It is good to go to America, but…

AFIA (as narrator): [Laughs.] No effing way.

PASTOR: Your life is not dependent on that.

[Churchy organ music comes in.]

AFIA (as narrator): Father God, You — are speaking to me through this pastor, God — I think that’s what’s going on, I don’t know, I’m very confused… What — what is happening? Amen.

[Organ music ends. Now we are outside and hear music playing on the street, chatter, footsteps, activity.]

AFIA (as narrator): 90 minutes later, the service wraps up. I weave along dirt roads back home with Ama and her friends, half-listening to their conversation, half-musing through a sense of anticlimax. I used to highlight my Bible in neon yellows and greens and pinks like it was a freshman year coursepack. And now, my first church service in years and… I still feel like I don’t belong and I don’t know what to say.

Or, to be more accurate, I know what I can’t say.

SUITOR: Can you give your number to me?

AFIA: You want me to give you my number? [Laughs.]

SUITOR: Yeah. Let’s talk. A phone call.

AFIA: What are you — so what are you going to do with my number if I give it to you?

SUITOR: Just “hi,” maybe. “How are you?” Just give your number to me.

AFIA: Um… I think I’m probably OK. But thank you so much for asking.

SUITOR: Why?

AFIA: Why? Because… I don’t — yeah, I don’t live here.

AFIA (as narrator): Wow, this dude is really trying to shoot his shot.

SUITOR: You are leaving tomorrow?

AFIA: I — yeah… No, Tuesday. Yeah, I’m leaving on Tuesday.

SUITOR: Tuesday.

AFIA: Yeah, I know.

SUITOR: Cool. Leaving here Tuesday. Ah… You know, it’s just that I love you.

AFIA: Oop! I’m sorry, what?

SUITOR: Is this — is it a crime to tell someone you love them?

AFIA: Is it a crime to tell someone that you love them?

SUITOR: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

AFIA: I mean, I think if you — no, it’s not a crime, but if you don’t mean it, then what's the point?

SUITOR: [Inaudible.] Yeah. Stop it.

AFIA: [Laughing.] Oh, you want me to stop recording now?

SUITOR: Yeah. OK.

AFIA: OK.

AFIA (as narrator): And that’s when he pulls off his aviator sunglasses… looks me in the eye… and says… “Marry me.”

[Worship music comes in.]

Father God, is this supposed to be some kind of test? You know what’s in my heart. You know I’m trying. Or do You want me to say something? Please give me a sign. Amen.

[Worship music fades out. Gentle keyboard music comes in.]

As I receive this… marriage proposal, the thing that floods my mind is every instance during this trip of a relative asking me if and when I plan to give up spinsterhood and settle down. Like the other night out on the veranda, when one of my aunties stopped by for a visit.

[Music ends, and we hear the sounds of the veranda — cars driving by, silverware on dishes, people laughing.]

AUNT: You look young. Oh, wow.

AGNES: Then you have to. You have to…

AFIA: Have — have to what? [Laughter.] What do I have to do?

AGNES: You have to — you have to.

AFIA: Wait, what is that? What do I have to do?

AUNT: You have to commit.

AFIA: Commit to what?

AUNT: To a relationship.

AFIA: What if I — what if I like being independent and free?

AUNT: For the rest of your life?

AGNES: Independence means you selfish.

AFIA: OK.

UNCLE: From 25 to 30, within that period you have dated, gotten all the ins and outs. Thirty you should be ready to get married. Then you start making babies. So that is, by 35, you’re finished. Then life continues. Mm-hmm.

AFIA: Everyone in favor of being in a serious relationship now, can you all raise your hands?

AUNT: Yeah.

[Laughter.]

AFIA: What? [Laughs.] OK, the 9 year old just — sorry, the 7 year old. The 7 year old just raised her hand. You’re a traitor. [Laughs.]

[Gentle keyboard music comes in.]

UNCLE: Yep!

AFIA: What about our independence?

[Veranda sounds fade out.]

AFIA (as narrator): So, I don’t relish being laughed at, but hey — marriage was my life’s mission when I was her age, too.

[Music ends.]

And then you grow up, sweetie.

Don’t worry, I didn’t say any of that out loud to my family. I know how to keep my mouth shut.

[Sounds of the walk home from church come back in.]

After I finish laughing at my would-be suitor’s indecent proposal, I say goodbye to him forever.

[Street sounds fade out and the sounds of family chit-chat fade in.]

Ama and I walk into my parents’ house to find my cousin Isaac — the one with the Swiss girlfriend who lives just a few minutes from me in the Bay. He’s on the couch, in a deep discussion about the slings and arrows of online dating.

[Everyone talking over each other, no one quite finishing a thought. Then: ]

SAMMY: [Laughingly.] Yeah, what’s your love life like?

AFIA: [Laughing.] I thought you were gonna ask me what my name is.

SAMMY: No.

[The others in the room laugh and react.]

AFIA: What about it?

SAMMY: Huh?

AFIA: What about my love life?

AGNES: Everybody wants to know. When are you going to bring Mr. Right? Daddy wants to know how the wedding dress will be.

[A long pause. We can hear a quiet techno beat building in the background.]

SAMMY: The sounds of silence.

[Laughter.]

[A phone starts vibrating, and then keeps buzzing under narration.]

AFIA (as narrator): I’m tired of all of this. Everyone’s always got jokes or something to say. There are things I can say. What’s the point of holding still, of being good?

[The vibrating phone and techno beat suddenly go silent.]

I’m going to tell them the truth.

[The sounds of the room come back in.]

AFIA: What’s up?

ISAAC: Check your phone.

AFIA: Um, my phone is the one that’s closest to the r— oh, that’s the phone that’s been blowing up!

ISAAC: Yeah.

AGNES: What’s going on?

AFIA: It might be just the family WhatsApp group.

AFIA (as narrator): Isaac is asking me to check my phone for some weird reason. Oh. It’s a text… from Isaac?

AFIA: Um…

AFIA (as narrator): It says…

AFIA: Uh…

[The sound of the room cuts out. We hear a ticking clock. Then…]

AFIA (as narrator): “Don’t do this.”

[The clock ticks for a few more seconds.]

[Jazzy instrumentals from “Home” by Ria Boss come in.]

Shithole Country is written, narrated, and sound designed by me, Afia. This episode was produced by me and Mark Pagán. Julie Shapiro and Audrey Mardavich are our executive producers. Special thanks to Tania Ketenjian.

Cover art by Sindiso Nyoni. Our theme song, “Home,” was created by the wonderful Ria Boss. Big thanks to my family.

Show notes. There are definitely show notes for this episode — and also for the one before this, too. So go to radiotopiapresents.fm, fall down a couple rabbit holes, and then ping me. Let me know what you think about what you find.

Next episode: The truth.

[Instrumentals fade out.]

END OF EPISODE.

Show Notes

Credits

Music and additional sounds by Splice

The inspiration for the teen ministry’s remix: “Hot in Herre”

Context

Reuters: Faith, hope and prayers in Ghana. A photo essay documenting the ubiquity of religion in Kumasi, another major city in Ghana

Ghana Statistical Service: 2010 Population & Housing Census

Visions of paradise via Jehovah’s Witness pamphlets

DW: Preachers of prosperity: faith as business Didn’t get into it in this ep, but it’s worth noting that the “prosperity gospel” -- a controversial approach to Christian worship that emphasizes material success -- is a huge part of the conversation around Christianity, especially of the charismatic or pentecostal variety, in West Africa (and the US). Not all of God’s earthly representatives are in it for the right reasons.

Transcript

[The chit-chat of a family enjoying each others’ company.]

AFIA KAAKYIRE: I'm in my parents’ living room in Accra, and I’m watching my family joke around with me and my cousin Isaac about our disappointing dating lives.

[Chit-chat continues at a low hum.]

Every single one of my senses is online. Poking and prodding the conversation for anything related to a truth I’ve locked up inside me like a bull in a pen.

[Everyone talking over each other, no one quite finishing a thought. Then: ]

SAMMY: [Laughingly.] Yeah, what’s your love life like?

AFIA: [Laughing.] I thought you were gonna ask me what my name is.

SAMMY: No.

[The others in the room laugh and react.]

AFIA: What about it?

SAMMY: Huh?

AFIA: What about my love life?

AGNES: Everybody wants to know. When are you going to bring Mr. Right? Daddy wants to know how the wedding dress will be.

[A pause.]

SAMMY: The sounds of silence.

[Laughter. A phone starts vibrating and then keeps buzzing as the family chats.]

AFIA (as narrator): This is so stupid. I’m gonna tell them.

AFIA: What’s up?

ISAAC: Check your phone.

AFIA: Um, my phone is the one that’s closest to the r— oh, that’s the phone that’s been blowing up!

AFIA (as narrator): My cousin Isaac, who’s on the couch, is asking me to check my phone.

AGNES: What’s going on?

AFIA: It might be just the family WhatsApp group.

AFIA (as narrator): It’s a text from… Isaac? Why is he texting me? He’s sitting three feet away. All right, well, it says…

AFIA: Um… Uh…

[The sounds of family chit-chat cut off suddenly.]

AFIA (as narrator): “Don’t do this.”

[The sound of a ticking clock fades in.]

How did he know exactly what I was going to do?

Duh, Afia. He lives in the Bay. He knows your secret. And he knows how foolish it would be to reveal it.

My chest relaxes. And I hold myself still.

[The clock continues ticking, a little louder now, then stops. Music (“Home” by Ria Boss) comes in. Jazzy instrumentals, then R&B vocals.]

You can call me… Afia. This is the story of my family, and our lives in a quote unquote “shithole country.”

[The phrase “shithole country” echoes and reverberates.]

[Vocals of “Home” build and grow, then slowly fade out.]

[The sounds of a crowd — dozens of people speaking indistinctly, hustle and bustle, a whistle — then J-pop, “Lovely My Prince,” fade in.]

I’m 20 and my study abroad semester in Japan is just getting started. Whoever said Paris is the City of Lights has clearly never set foot in Tokyo.

I dodge salarymen in suit-uniforms who spill out of fluorescent rooms lined with slot machines. And the music — oh, you feel it before you hear it. Take the Rainbow Road stage of Mario Kart, add a dash of ecstasy, snort the concoction up your nose, and you’ll get close to the sensation.

Or so I imagine. I don’t drink and have never done drugs. I’m a Christian. But, like, the cool kind that twerks and sometimes wears low-cut tops and makes references to ecstasy.

[Crowd sounds from the outdoors turn into the sounds of a bar — a bit more muted, but still high-energy.]

I meet up with the other kids from my study abroad program at a pub called the First Bar. Which is perfect because it actually is the first time I’ve ever been in a bar. Twenty isn’t legal in the States but it is in Japan, and I like doing the right thing. 1 Corinthians 10:23. “ ‘Everything is permissible,’ but not everything is beneficial.”

I flag a bartender and exchange a thousand-yen bill for a… let’s see here: ホワイト ロシア. I carefully sip from the glass that the bartender slides towards me. It’s sweet. And warm.

Soon I’m cupping another glass between my hands. I don’t feel anything strange except more warmth, radiating from the hollow of my throat.

[Time warps jarringly, the bar sounds disappear, and we hear the video game-esque instrumentals of “Lovely My Prince.”]

What? Are we going back to the dorms already? Chilly night air rushes into my lungs.

[Heartbeats fade in.]

What’s wrong with my legs? And my chest? My heart is fighting to escape. It’s pounding, reverberating in my ears. Too slow, I’m moving too slow.

I only had, like, four drinks. And shots are like half a drink, right? Like, I’m not drunk. I don’t lose control.

[Time warps again and the music cuts out. We still hear heartbeats and the sounds of a train platform.]

Whoa, when did I get to this platform?

Somebody’s grandma is standing in front of me… pulls out a cell phone with large, sparkly charms dangling from it. They’re so sparkly. She thumbs the phone, shaking the charms… [narration grows distorted and disorienting] shaking my heart, shaking my whole body. [Back to normal again.] Oh God.

[Bright, sparkly, carnival-esque music — the jingle announcing the closing of the train doors — begins.]

Concentrate, concentrate! You can make this go away. Get it the eff together. You haven’t crossed the line yet. Stand up straight. Because you’re not drunk. This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening.

[Music stops. Then, a conductor announcement in Japanese.]

CONDUCTOR: Ichiban sen, doa ga shimarimasu. Go-chui kudasai.

[Heartbeats and platform sounds hiccup and syncopate, slow down, then morph into an electronic beat and the buzz of a crowded bar.]

AFIA (as narrator): I’m 25, visiting San Francisco for the weekend from D.C. And I’m in a different kind of bar, jockeying for space between lipsticked femmes and tattooed butches. My new friend of exactly one hour looks up at me with stars in her eyes. And I can no longer rationalize away the glow of hope in her face. Just do it, Afia.

“It’s — it’s so hot in D.C. these days, you know? And my AC is broken. I have to sleep over my boyfriend’s house just to get a little relief.”

Her eyes flash. The stars are snuffed out. “So… you’re not queer?” Her voice crests along the faintest of edges.

The truth tumbles out of my mouth. No, I’m not. It’s Pride and I’m staying with my queer friends, and they said we needed to party with as much glitter and alcohol as possible. But I’m straight.

Well, it’s most of the truth. I am straight. But the part about the boyfriend is a total lie, designed to soften the “it’s not you, it’s me” death blow. Which clearly isn’t working, because this girl’s still looking at me like I just canceled Christmas.

“Let’s get you a drink,” I announce brightly, dragging her to the bar.

I buy her whiskey cocktails to apologize for being oblivious as hell. And smile and joke with her until she’s laughing again. It’s a great laugh.

Until my friends melt away, and the music surges. Until her eyes rest on my profile.

Maybe we should dance. New friends can dance together. I face her and drape my arms casually around her shoulders. Her fingers brush the skin on my elbows. Such tiny, shallow movements.

[We hear the conductor announcement from Tokyo chopped up and mixed into the beat. “Ichiban sen, doa ga shimarimasu.”]

Something inside me is winding tightly. Too tight.

[“Go-chui kudasai.”]

It’s going to snap. We level our gazes at each other and my ears throb with the music.

[“Go-chui kudasai.” The music gets louder and louder. We hear the sound of a train approaching, building.]

This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening. This —

[All other sound abruptly cuts out.]

“Hey,” she whispers. “Just do what you feel like doing.”

[A pause. Then the music stutters back to life, and that’s all we hear for several seconds. Eventually, the music ends.]

Yep, I’m… um… bisexual? I mean, have you seen Jason Momoa? But, like, what is gender, even? So maybe… queer? No, that word feels so political. All right. What I can confidently say is that I am not finding labels very helpful at this point in my life, and I am definitely not straight.

I was in denial for years. What could be gay about a teenage girl who’s into watching the Playboy Channel?

But you know what eventually happened: bar, San Francisco, glitter, Pride. I kissed a beautiful girl and — surprise — really liked it, and her. So, not straight. ’Course I wasn’t going to go public with my discovery or tell my family. And I did genuinely have a lot of lust for men. So I’d just focus on that part. Forever.

And then last summer I met up with an acquaintance for what was supposed to be a quick coffee.

[Gentle, tinkly music enters, a reprise of the San Francisco bar.]

Three hours later I stood outside her house, in shock, my center of gravity shifting towards a voluminous flower in my hands. A flower she’d just bought me. She asked me out on a date.

[Music ends.]

The eventual breakup was gracious. The aftermath: grisly. I couldn’t eat or sleep for days, and turned to prose poetry to try to exorcise the feelings. When I realized that I had essentially recreated the opening chapters of the second Twilight book, I knew I needed help. I needed my mom.

[Drum solo slowly fades in.]

I swallowed my anxiety, called up Agnes, braced for impact, and just said it: “I had my first relationship with a woman.”

[Drums end.]

Silence. She said: “I was waiting for you to tell me. Is it your roommate?”

[Drum solo re-enters.]

OK, yeah. I — I see what I did. OK. That dinner we had last year with my roommate’s whole family, when Agnes came to visit: totally suspicious. Yeah, OK.

“No, I’m not dating my roommate.”

Agnes immediately countered…

[Drumroll ends.]

“Why not? You don’t think she’s pretty?”

AUNT: Your mother, we got on very well. And, um, she’s a good sister-in-law.

AFIA (as narrator): When I first got to Ghana this trip, my dad and I went to visit his sister at the federal agency she works for. After I asked all my questions about Ghana’s GDP, we reminisced about how much I loved books as a kid and how I had no patience for fashion or makeup, just like her. I was a carbon copy of my aunt and the opposite of Agnes.

AUNT: For my wedding, she sewed my wedding gown. She wanted to. But because of who I — I was, or still am, she couldn’t do for me what she would have loved to do, like sew the styles [laughing] that she loves so much to do. To see herself and everybody she loves wear. Even you, you know. So…

AFIA: Are you telling me that it was a — you chose a more conservative style than —

AUNT: I’m more conservative. You and I are! You know that, I know that.

KWABENA: Mommy always says that.

AUNT: She — she was frustrated with us. So… it’s always fun, you know. But I’m always — I’m always happy to say, “The joke is on you.” You know? “You wanted to change me, now you’ve got a daughter like me.” You know? [Laughs.] “So you have double me to contend with.”

AFIA (as narrator): No one’s going to sentence me to death for dating women. At least, not in this country.

But Section 104 of the Ghanaian criminal code does say that quote “unnatural carnal knowledge” unquote is a misdemeanor. Super vague, but widely interpreted to refer to homosexuality.

Most of the churches here say that queerness is an abomination. Whenever the subject comes up, people’s faces twist into cruel shapes and they spit laughter. Even though that part of the criminal code was copy-pasted from colonial-era British law and later fervently supported by some American evangelicals, they think the queerness is the Western perversion.

Would my aunt still be proud of me if she knew I wasn’t straight?

And what about my dad? When he has feelings about something, it’s not always obvious.

[Sounds of the veranda — the outdoors, birds chirping — and ’80s-era exercise music fade in.]

Kwabena is outside on the veranda, crunching his way through his daily workout. He’s the kind of person who does not disturb his ways of being, even as they start to accumulate fine layers of dust. I mean, he’s been doing leg lifts with Jane Fonda since 1982.

T-minus 36 hours until I leave Ghana, and he’s still in the dark.

[After a few seconds, veranda sounds and exercise music fade out.]

I know what will happen if I tell my dad the truth. He’s not Agnes. Agnes is a fucking tattoo-sporting-former-Buddhist-Ghanaian-mom-unicorn.

If I tell him, his face will twist into cruel shapes and spit disgust.

He sacrificed for me. Never complained. All the shit he went through to stay in America. All the shit I gave him growing up. You don’t know how many times a week I missed the school bus. And he never got mad, just stopped doing his chores and quietly ferried me back and forth and back and forth. You don’t know how many times he nudged me awake so that I could finish the algebra homework I’d fallen asleep on.

I can sacrifice a little too. I can find another way to be. I know how to be disciplined.

[The sound of a clock ticking comes in.]

Even when I was 7 and on that couch, I could hold myself so still. I did it for an hour. That’s like years in little kid time.

I can do it. I can.

[Distorted Japanese train platform music fades in, and the clock continues to tick. “Go-chui kudasai.” Then, all other sound stops.]

No, this is so stupid. I am so much more than who I choose to make out with. I am a whole person who has lived this whole life that he has witnessed. And we are making gay mountains out of gay molehills, and I’m just over it.

I’m telling my dad the truth. Today.

AFIA: OK, so, I’d love for you to tell me, um… I’m curious, how come… How come… Let me think… Why — why do you want me to be married so badly? ’Cause you guys have made a lot of comments about it in the time that I’ve been here.

KWABENA: To marry? Oh. We just look at it this way: that society… you can’t force anyone to do it. But we figure it’s good if you see, why don’t you have a partner that you can share life with?

AFIA: Yeah, I guess I’m curious, like, do you understand, like, why I say, like, “Eh, you know, marriage is not my priority”?

KWABENA: Oh, no, we don’t.

AFIA: Hm. Yeah. I mean, for me, I think it’s more just, like, my career is so up in the air right now, so, like, all of my energy is focused on trying to figure that out. So, yeah. I mean, I’m not anti-marriage or kids, you know, I just think that if I’m gonna have a partner, I want to be a little more sure of where I am in my life before I bring somebody else in and complicate things. But, yeah. Um… Yeah, I’m curious: did you know that I date women as well as men?

KWABENA: No. When did you do that?

AFIA: For a few years.

KWABENA: Yeah? When you moved to Washington?

AFIA: Yeah.

KWABENA: No, I didn’t, because when… that never occurred to me to ask. I never…

AFIA: I had my first relationship with a woman earlier this year. And when we broke up — that was like, uh, a few months ago — I called Mom. But, yeah. I mean, I hadn’t talked to anybody in the family about it before this year. You didn’t have any idea at all?

KWABENA: Nobody said anything to me. If you talked to Mommy, Mommy never tell anything to me.

AFIA: Oh, but it’s not about someone saying something to you. You didn’t have any idea at all?

KWABENA: No, that — that would be the least, you know, thing I would think about. That you would have… a relationship with a woman. [Laughs.] It won’t even come to my mind.

AFIA: How does it make you feel to hear this?

KWABENA: Very, very sad.

AFIA (as narrator): There it is. I knew it.

KWABENA: And it will be a tough thing.

AFIA (as narrator): I knew it, I knew it, I knew it.

KWABENA: But it’s part of life. I — you know, I can’t force any — any of my offspring to do whatever the person don’t want it. But —

AFIA: Why are you sad?

KWABENA: Because… for growing up and being a Ghanaian, too, and… that thing is set in way, way, way… It doesn’t come to our vocabulary, to any Ghanaian society. No matter who the person is, it never come close to their — to their thinking that their offspring will be this way, or… I don’t know. That’s something that we figure, “No, that’s not — that’s not part of our life.”

AFIA: Do you think it’s wrong for me to do this?

KWABENA: Yeah! But we can’t change you. Nobody can —

AFIA: Why do you think it’s wrong?

KWABENA: Because I —

AFIA (as narrator): Shit, the recorder stopped.

AFIA: OK, check 1-2, 1-2. All right, so Dad, yeah, um… Yeah. I was asking you: why is it — why is it wrong?

KWABENA: Oh. I have nothing against them. But —

AFIA: Against “them”? I mean, technically, “them” is your daughter.

KWABENA: OK, but you are not one of them. You said you just started. So I don’t know whether you are with them, or — you just told me that you just started.

AFIA: Yeah, I just had my first relationship with a woman, but I’ve been attracted to women for a long time. So, you know, I would say one word, maybe, that’s useful in describing might be, like, bisexual. Um… Would you be willing to meet that person? If I had a partner that was a woman?

KWABENA: Uh, that would be a very tough thing, too, but what can I — let me see. I think that would be a very tough thing. Very, very tough. But, again, I don’t want to let you down, so…

AFIA: Would you be ashamed of me if I got married to a woman?

KWABENA: No, I wouldn't be ashamed of you. But I — it’s what you want to do. Nobody can change you. Going back to your career, that thing gets to me a lot. We try our best but it seems like — you relaxed a little bit…

AFIA (as narrator): I don’t know how exactly this happened, but two minutes later we’re talking about remittances and how my generation is the worst.

KWABENA: … “Auntie is waiting for her gift.” I said, “Oh, not these children that we have.” She said, “Oh!” Yeah, everybody. Not you alone, but everybody in your generation, when we talk to people —

AFIA: I think — I think sometimes I feel like — like — like I’m being set up to fail.

KWABENA: Why?

AFIA: Because I can see that you’re disappointed that — that your kids don’t live up to this, like, standard of respect in Ghanaian culture, but you have to tell someone, “This is what I need.” You can’t expect them to — to read your mind. You know? And I feel like, you know, if you told us, “Hey, can you bring this for the aunties and uncles? It’s really important.” Then I would do that. But nobody asked me to do it, and now you feel like, “Oh, I wish my kids were more like — more like my sister’s kids.” And that doesn’t make me feel good. I feel terrible hearing that.

KWABENA: Yeah, like I said —

AFIA: I feel like you didn’t give me a chance.

KWABENA: I said I don’t think we did a good job on that. Remember I said that?

AFIA: I know…

KWABENA: We should have explained things earlier on during the years and let you all know. And that’s why — it’s over.

AFIA: But that’s exactly what I’m trying to say, is that…

AFIA (as narrator): I know Dad has moved on from talking about my sexuality, but when the recorder stopped, I guess my brain did, too. It’s just… stuck.

AFIA: I think it is sad. It reminds me of how — how you were talking about, uh… you know, homosexuality and how, like, that makes you sad. And it’s just a way of thinking that, you know, you’re not going to change your mind. It’s — it’s like, here is a way in which our two generations can’t connect. You know, it’s over these remittances, it’s over, you know, idea of lifestyle, yeah. And that, to me, feels sad, because I — I think we could, if we tried harder. Maybe. I don’t know.

KWABENA: Yeah. That’s how it — there’s nothing that you — you could change or I could change. It’s — it’s the lifestyle that people live in. Life have to go on.

AFIA: OK.

[Recorder clicks off.]

[The sounds of the street slowly fade in — people talking, children playing, a rooster crowing, a speaker playing some music. We can hear footsteps.]

AFIA (as narrator): Everything’s packed. And we’ll drive to the airport after sunset.

I just wanted to get a little air first, go for a walk around the neighborhood. Maybe say goodbye to the roosters my mom hasn’t marked for death yet.

The evening light is long and the air’s a little less thick. Easier to breathe.

Good for me. I did a hard thing. Came clean with Dad. And now it’s all out in the open.

And it went pretty well. He didn’t threaten to stop speaking to me or call me disgusting, and he could have…

He could have…

[We just hear footsteps and the street for a few beats. Then, a clock begins to tick.]

What the fuck am I saying? I’m grateful that my own father didn’t call me disgusting? [Street sounds fade out.] In what universe is that OK? It isn’t!

I can’t stop him from being disappointed in me. If that’s how he feels, I’m not going to change his mind. No amount of restraint or holding myself still is going to work.

He is where he is. And I’m good where I am.

[Ticking clock speeds up, morphing into a metronome and a beat.]

INTERNALIZED HOMOPHOBIA (singing): (Yuh, yuh, yuh…) Dad was good to you. (You, you. Whoop, whoop.) You deserve worse. (Worse, worse.)

AFIA (as narrator): Oh, hello there. Let me guess. Homophobia: The Mixtape.

INTERNALIZED HOMOPHOBIA: Chart-topping all over the world. Except Sweden.

INTERNALIZED HOMOPHOBIA (singing): (Worse, worse.)

INTERNALIZED HOMOPHOBIA: That girl Robyn is crazy with it, though. She took all that market share.

INTERNALIZED HOMOPHOBIA (singing): (Dang.)

AFIA (as narrator): I recognize that something extremely problematic is happening right now, but I have to say… this beat is fire.

INTERNALIZED HOMOPHOBIA (singing): (You know.)

INTERNALIZED HOMOPHOBIA: You have excellent taste in self-hate.

AFIA (singing): You deserve worse, you deserve worse…

AFIA (as narrator): Where were you before?

INTERNALIZED HOMOPHOBIA: Been here. But you was doing all the singing. I appreciate you though.

INTERNALIZED HOMOPHOBIA (singing): (Let’s get it.)

INTERNALIZED HOMOPHOBIA: So, are we still doing this collab or what —

AFIA (as narrator): No! No. That’s over. How long are you sticking around?

INTERNALIZED HOMOPHOBIA: Rest of your life.

AFIA (as narrator): Hm. We’ll see.

[Beat fades out.]

[At the airport dropoff in Accra, outside. We can hear cars and buses going by and pulling off to the curb to drop off passengers.]

AGNES: Put it — put it in your future and think about it.

AFIA: Think about — think about living here long-term.

AIRPORT ANNOUNCEMENT: May I please have your attention? All passengers…

AGNES: And if you could, that would be nice. We will help you do everything.

SAMMY: Safe trip. Give me a call when you get in.

AFIA: All right.

AGNES: Buh-bye.

AFIA: Bye.

[Afia and Agnes hug. Agnes gives Afia a kiss on the cheek.]

AGNES: Be good.

AFIA: Bye what?

AGNES: Mommy loves you. Don’t let the bedbugs bite you.

AFIA: OK… OK. I love you even though you’re very stubborn.

AGNES: I know. Likewise!

AFIA: Yeah. OK, bye Daddy.

KWABENA: OK. Be good.

AFIA: OK, you too.

KWABENA: Just fight for yourself.

AFIA: OK, I will.

AGNES: OK, and if you’re sad, just give me a call.

AFIA: What?

AGNES: If you feel lonely and sad, just give me a call.

SAMMY: Oh, get in the car, no one’s giving you a call.

AFIA: OK. OK.

AGNES: Oh, get outta here!

[Laughter.]

AFIA: Thanks for that, Mom.

AGNES: Buh-bye!

AFIA: Bye!

SAMMY: Call when you get — when you get a layover in between. Give us a buzz.

AFIA: Buh-bye!

AGNES: Buh-bye!

AFIA: Bye.

[Accra airport dropoff sounds fade out. Then, we hear the sounds of the food court at Atatürk Airport fade in.]

AFIA (as narrator): There is a blonde teenage girl in the middle of this food court at the airport in Istanbul. She’s wearing an orange hoodie with the name of a high school on it. I grew up a few minutes from that town.

How did we come to share this sliver of infinite space, thousands of miles away from home?

Sorry for the unnecessary poetry. iTunes is on shuffle and Sting just came up. This song is all violins and cellos and evocative-ass lyrics and gorgeous storytelling. And now I’m fucking crying in the middle of the food court of the airport in Istanbul.

I remember being so cold in San Francisco that the tips of my fingers seemed to be permanently tinged blue.

I remember being awake at 2 a.m., when nothing moves or even has a shape. It’s just darkness.

I remember Mom calling at the crack of dawn to ask if I was depressed. “Because I will cheer you up!” she said.

How many more parts of myself can I feel when I’m not forcing everything still?

I don’t want to cry anymore. I squeeze my eyes shut.

But it isn’t dark.

[The sounds of the airport fade out, and all we’re left with is the sound of chirping birds.]

It’s green.

[A beat longer with just the birds, and then some traffic sounds fade in.]

I see tropical greenery, and a hazy sky. The view from the second story of an apartment building.

Fried plantain on my lips, diesel exhaust in my nose, shades of my family in every face I see.

[The sounds of the airport slowly re-enter. An announcement: “Your group number is located at the bottom of your boarding pass. We wish you a nice flight.” Then, everything fades out.]

[Jazzy instrumentals from “Home” by Ria Boss come in.]

Shithole Country is written, narrated, and sound designed by me, Afia. This episode was produced by me and Mark Pagán. Julie Shapiro and Audrey Mardavich are our executive producers. Special thanks to Tania Ketenjian.

Cover art by Sindiso Nyoni. And our theme song was created by the incredible Ria Boss. For additional credits and context, please check out the show notes at radiotopiapresents.fm.

Huge thank you to my dad for letting me record our conversation. And if you’re listening and you’re part of the LGBTQ+ community, I hope you know that you are good as you are.

Next and final episode: The beginning.

[Instrumentals slowly fade out.]

END OF EPISODE.

Transcript

[Music (“Home” by Ria Boss) comes in. Jazzy instrumentals, then R&B vocals.]

AFIA KAAKYIRE: You can call me… Afia. This is the story of my family, and our lives in a quote unquote “shithole country.”

[The phrase “shithole country” echoes and reverberates.]

[Vocals of “Home” build and grow, then slowly fade out.]

[Electronic press conference music comes in, then we hear the shutters of cameras clicking. Music slowly fades out under Managing Director Character’s opening words.]

MANAGING DIRECTOR CHARACTER: Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to this press conference on behalf of the International Monetary Fund. I’m Managing Director Campbell. We’ve just completed the 2019 Article IV Consultations with Ghana, which, as you know, is the annual economic assessment we do for our member countries. It looks like you’re eager to ask questions so we’ll get right to it. Yes, you in the front.

REPORTER AFIA CHARACTER: [Microphone reverberates as though in a large room.] Hi, yes, thank you. Afia Kaakyire here. Ghana underwent an IMF recovery program in the ’80s when their economy was in shambles. The richest 20% in Ghana now hold almost half of the country’s income as inequality grows and the rate of poverty reduction slows. Does this sound like success to you?

[Camera shutters click.]

MANAGING DIRECTOR: Um… I’m not sure that’s how we would characterize our efforts. And we’d really like to stay focused on the 2019 Article IV Consultations.

REPORTER AFIA: Uh, yeah — quick follow up. Why are you all so obsessed with free-market solutions?

[Gentle coughing, camera shutters clicking.]

MANAGING DIRECTOR: I — I’m sorry, are you — [Quiet mic feedback as Managing Director Character goes off-mic.] Is she an actual journalist?

REPORTER AFIA: I’m sorry, are you even British? Your accent is terrible.

[Plucky, staccato string music comes in, with the air of suspense.]

MANAGING DIRECTOR: I beg your pardon.

REPORTER AFIA: Oh, hey — I actually really like this song. Can we pause for just, like, a minute?

[String music ends. Whooshing sound as we fall out of Afia’s daydream.]

[Afia sings Cherrelle to herself on the bus.]

MUNI BUS ANNOUNCEMENT: Doors closing.

AFIA (as narrator): Hello from 2019 — where I’m not in Ghana, not at an IMF press conference…

[Mexican music blares loudly through open bus doors.]

MUNI BUS ANNOUNCEMENT: Doors closing.

AFIA (as narrator): … and I’m also not in Mexico. Though we did just pass one of the best taquerias in this part of the world.

I’m in San Francisco. On the 49 bus heading north through the Mission, up towards the main library.

Today’s trip has me in a reflective mood, thinking about where I was in life almost two years ago. You remember — the big, potentially life-altering Ghana visit?

A month after I got back to the Bay, one of my freelance gigs offered me a full-time position. And I took it. I didn’t move to Ghana.

Well, that’s a touch misleading. I never actually turned down my mom’s invitation. In the weeks after the trip, I woke up feeling both the warmth and weight of a new life in Accra.

[Bus hydraulics squeak.]

And since that’s a lot to deal with at 7 a.m., I focused on making other decisions.

[Old-timey smooth lounge music comes in.]

I decided to try the new vegan place for lunch. I decided to take a samba class after work. I decided to rewatch You’ve Got Mail instead of going to bed at a decent hour, because it is always a good time to rewatch You’ve Got Mail.

I looked up from all these micro-decisions, ready to maybe take a chance on a bigger one.

[Music ends.]

And, somehow, over a year had gone by.

[Gentle traffic sounds that slowly merge into gentle library sounds.]

So OK, I’m still standing at the edge of the pool, psyching myself up to take the plunge. Maybe it’s more accurate to say I’m not moving to Ghana today. But tomorrow… who knows?

And it’s not like this year and a half has been one endless marathon of You’ve Got Mail.

I started digging a little deeper into some of the things that came up during my last Ghana trip.

AFIA: Hi. Uh, 338, is that the third floor?

LIBRARY ATTENDANT: Oh, 338, is that economics?

AFIA: Uh…

LIBRARY ATTENDANT: Because that would be on the fourth floor.

AFIA: Thank you.

LIBRARY ATTENDANT: OK, yeah.

AFIA (as narrator): I’m usually at the libraries in Oakland or Berkeley since they’re closer to my apartment. But the San Francisco branch is the one that has what I need available to check out: Neo-colonialism, by Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah.

I’ve been… radicalized. Which was probably only a matter of time, as I do live in the Bay Area. But still. It’s finally happening for real.

And guess what? I love labels now! Label me up, Scotty! Call me an IMF and World Bank-skeptic! Call me a capitalism shade-thrower! And since those are probably no one’s go-to labels, you can pick one that everyone recognizes. You can call me… queer.

[A little ditty from Afia: “Q-q-q-q-q-queer. Queer queer.” And so on.]

I have a new partner now, and they are nonbinary! Our relationship is queer as fuck. Does the word queer sound political? I hope so. Queer queer queer queer queer! That is… pretty hard to pronounce, but you get the point!

[Afia’s ditty wraps up with a final: “Queeeer!”]

I have come a long way from barely being able to come out to my dad two years ago. And in fact, I’m gonna have myself a good ol’ queer time when I go back to… yep, you guessed it.

[Afrobeats come in.]

[Singsongy.] We’re going going back back to Ghana Ghana…

VOA AFRICA: … Ghana’s 2019 Year of Return campaign. It’s a massive marketing push to persuade African Americans and the diaspora to come home…

CULTURALLY LIT: To commemorate the 400th anniversary of the transatlantic slave trade…

AL JAZEERA: Ghana’s parliament welcomed the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives to West Africa…

NANCY PELOSI: It’s a privilege, it’s an honor being here with the Congressional Black Caucus…

IT’S IVEOMA: Social media flooded with pictures of Black Hollywood celebs enjoying themselves in Ghana…

STEVE HARVEY: Your soul is here. You gotta go home, though. Eventually, you gotta go home. Yeah, it pulls at you.

VOA: If you’re — if you’re from Africa or you have African descent, Ghana is open. Come home, explore the culture.

AFIA (as narrator): The universe is giving me the best Christmas gift ever: a perfectly timed work trip to Nigeria.

[Afrobeats fade out.]

Which means I can swing by Accra and ring in 2020 with my close personal friends, Cardi B and Beyoncé’s mom.

OK, most likely it’ll just be me and my mom and dad. But! I’m not playing it safe anymore. I’m doing things differently this time.

[Old-timey mystery music comes in.]

Super-sleuth Nana Afia Drew is on assignment once again. The case? Find the biggest queer New Year’s party Accra has on deck.

Because Ghana is going to see a whole new Afia.

[Old-timey mystery music ends.]

[The sounds from inside a moving car.]

AFIA: If you’re not careful, you hit these rocks and you’re gonna fly out of the car.

ELECTRICIAN: And you will also follow me, because I’m driving. So anywhere the car goes, I follow.

[Afia laughs.]

AFIA (as narrator): I’ve been back in Accra for less than a day and already Agnes has us knee-deep in a life-threatening activity.

We’re climbing higher and higher into the night sky, driving up a rocky path with a steep dropoff to the city lights blanketing the ground, far below us now. Agnes’s friend, an electrician who helped her build the apartment complex, is at the wheel.

They say they want me to show me something. A surprise.

[Driving sounds fade into walking sounds.]

It’s so dark up at the top of this — what is this anyway? Like, an oversized hill? A small mountain?

It is nice being up here though. The air feels great. And it’s a break from what I had been doing, which was getting absolutely nowhere analyzing dozens of cryptic social media posts for clues on where to find gay parties in Accra.

I amble after Agnes and the electrician, leaning into the cool breeze that wraps around the concrete shell of a half-built mansion.

AGNES: This is yours.

AFIA: What?

AGNES: Yeah.

AFIA: [Laughs.] I don’t understand.

AGNES: No, oh, don’t go! This is your room. Yeah, this is it. Your bathroom is at the back.

AFIA: Is this a joke?

ELECTRICIAN: This is your mommy’s house.

AFIA: You bought this house?

AGNES: He’s building it.

AFIA: [Laughing.] What?

AGNES: Mm-hmm. This is your room.

ELECTRICIAN: It’s just a year now.

AGNES: This is yours.

AFIA: What?

AGNES: You’re going to live here. Let’s go upstairs.

AFIA: [Laughing.] Oh my gosh.

AGNES: That’s the surprise.

AFIA: Wow!

AFIA (as narrator): Seriously, Mom? Again with the real estate mind games?

ELECTRICIAN: This is rooftop bar.

AGNES: This is where we will party.

AFIA: Wait, really?

AGNES: Mm-hmm.

ELECTRICIAN: You can see side — both side of Accra. All around.

AFIA (as narrator): And if that weren’t enough — because of course it’s not — please direct your eyes to the gazebo, swimming pool, jacuzzi, and three-car garage, also under construction.

AGNES: You know Aburi, right?

AFIA: Yeah, yeah.

AGNES: Where the president lives. This is the opposite.

AFIA: So you’re trying to build a house to rival the president.

ELECTRICIAN: Yes. To feel the natural air. [Afia laughs.]

AFIA: How much did it cost?

AGNES: Oh, where’s my… Why are you asking me those things, like a woman’s age? Nobody asks us for a woman’s age. [Laughter.] It’s a lot of money.

AFIA: So you’re really trying to have us, like —

AGNES: Finishing this —

AFIA: Roots, rooted — rooted in Ghana?

AGNES: Oh yeah, that’s — that’s my mission.

AFIA: [Laughs.] What’s — what’s — so your mission is — is, in your words —

AGNES: To come back home. Everybody come back home. Because America is not a place for us.

AFIA (as narrator): Wow, she’s really never going to give this up. But, why should she? What she’s saying about America was true when she said it two years ago and it’s true now.

[Whooshing sound as we fall into Afia’s daydream, then the sound of camera shutters clicking.]

REPORTER AFIA: Afia Kaakyire here again. Managing Director Campbell, a follow-up question about the impact of ballooning systemic racism and corporate greed on the U.S.’s economic potential. Won’t this trend inevitably lead to a brain drain as the country’s best and brightest leave for greener, less racist pastures?

MANAGING DIRECTOR: This is a press conference to discuss the economic assessment of Ghana, not the U.S.

REPORTER AFIA: I feel like they’re connected, though. Given the legacy of U.S. imperialism all over the world, seems like the fortunes of the Global South are directly connected to what happens in America.

MANAGING DIRECTOR: Hi, yes, Washington Post, you have a question? Please? Anything you want to ask? Anything at all?

REPORTER AFIA: Actually, I think I’m still — I — it’s still my turn. It’s still my turn. Still me.

[A whoosh as we fall back out of Afia’s daydream.]

AFIA (as narrator): Back in Ghana, New Year’s Day 2020. And Nana Afia Drew has cracked the case.

I came across a promising Instagram post, reached out, and got directions to a queer party on the other side of town.

Agnes agrees to drop me off, and we zip along a road a half-mile from the ocean. Which, if we’re just taking stock, is kind of amazing. ‘Hi mom, I’d like you to drive me, your one and only daughter, to this random address in the middle of the night for a secret-ish gathering with total strangers in a country I don’t really know.’ She’s treating this like I asked her to take me to the post office. So much chill!

I know what you’re thinking. ‘Duh, Agnes is a fucking tattoo-sporting former-Buddhist Ghanaian mom unicorn.’

And she is… And she’s more than that.

Something not-great happened this summer between me and Agnes.

[Italian mandolin music comes in.]

Right before she was supposed to fly to San Francisco for my cousin’s wedding and meet my partner, right as I was in the midst of a beautifully basic Eat Pray Love bucket list vacation with my best friend through Italy, she called me up to ask if my partner and I… wouldn’t mind going back into the closet.

Just for the wedding. Just for a little bit.

[Italian mandolin music ends.]

My partner and I traded transatlantic voice memos, trying to figure out what to do about Agnes.

AFIA (voice memo): I'm sorry. Somebody came by. I think I have to get off their stoop… OK, I’m off their stoop

AFIA (as narrator): I recorded this pathetic one at the crack of dawn in a Rome alleyway.

AFIA (voice memo): You were saying to me, like, why aren't you standing up for us? And I'm sorry, I'm sorry that… I know this is hard for you too.

[Low-key electronic music comes in.]

AFIA (as narrator): My partner, who is somehow still my partner, came to the wedding weekend as my friend. Let’s just say that the agenda for our next few couples therapy sessions was pretty full.

[Electronic music fades out. Afrobeats come in.]

So as my mom pulls up alongside a building on a well-lit street, with lots of partygoers milling around, I wonder what she’s really thinking.

[Music transitions to new afrobeats.]

This place is packed. Red, green, and white holiday fabric encircle a courtyard with a twirling disco ball and dance floor at its center. My teeth and throat are vibrating, and I’m pretty sure I’ll come home with 10% less function in my ears. And yet everyone is sitting down in gye-nyame plastic chairs around tables like literally every other Ghanaian function. Like this is a simple family outdooring and not, as some of my relatives might call it, Sodom and Gomorrah.

This is wild. I’m sitting next to a queer mom who is here with her queer daughter. What?! What are those words that I just said?

The mom says she comes here often and shows me a picture of a woman in military fatigues, her girlfriend. No one knows they’re queer, she says. It wouldn’t be easy if they were out, she begins —

I finish her sentence. But no one would sentence her to death for dating women, at least not in Ghana. We’re right next to four giant speakers and talk in efficient machine gun bursts, me feeling self-conscious about my American accent. More than ever, I just want to blend in, feel like part of this community.

[Music transitions to new afrobeats.]

By now, people have taken over the dance floor. The DJ spins Beyoncé over afrobeats and men dance up on each other and everyone is just… happy. Having a good time. I can feel how tense my body is with arguments and justifications and proclamations of queer queer queer queer queer. But what is there to shout about anymore tonight, except your joy?

I still need help believing what I’m seeing. “What would happen if I moved here with my partner?” I ask my Party Mom.

She smiles. “You would be fine.”

[Afrobeats end.]

PERSON AT LGBT+ RIGHTS CENTER: You guys, I just got to the office, I was going to see Alex, and look — there is police and there is a car. What are we going to do? Oh my God, you guys. This is getting really serious. I’m sitting at the church, I don’t know if I should go there or not. Like… what are we going to do?

AFIA (as narrator): I was hoping this story, this podcast, could end with that party. Well, because it’s me, I probably would have forced you to listen to a little more of my singing in some form or another, and you would have rolled your eyes and said, “Oh, Afia” — or maybe that’s just what Agnes would have done. Then we would have ended our multi-year journey together on a high note.

But as they often do, things took a turn.

It’s May 2021. A year and a half after that queer New Year’s party in Accra. Earlier this year, I saw on Twitter that the LGBT+ Rights Center in Accra was raided by the police and shut down weeks after it celebrated its grand opening.

A few days later, as Ghanaian media overflowed with virulent anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments, President Akufo-Addo made this statement.

PRESIDENT AKUFO-ADDO: I have said this before, and let me in conclusion stress again, that it will not be under the presidency of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo that same-sex marriage will be legalized in Ghana. It will never happen in my time as president. [Cheering and applause.]

AFIA (as narrator): We are not fine. We are in the crosshairs. And I wanted… needed to do something about it.

SILENT MAJORITY, GHANA MEMBER 1: Do we want to be a formal or informal organization? Do we need to register as an NGO? Um, how do we support the work that is currently being done in Ghana?

SMG MEMBER 2: I think it's really, really important that we are making sure that we're seeking consensus and we're aligning, uh, our messaging with those most directly affected.

AFIA (as narrator): Back in the Bay Area, I joined a newly formed organization called Silent Majority, Ghana. It’s this group of people in Ghana and the diaspora — lawyers, public health advocates, media experts, and regular Joes like me — supporting the rights of queer and trans Ghanaians.

I’m not just a radical, I’m an activist now. All… fist in the air and fear in my stomach. Hard to breathe sometimes. Yeah.

Our group circulated a petition after the LGBT+ Center was raided, and I was scared to sign it, lest it somehow put my parents at risk.

It was the middle of the day and I sort of just wanted to go back to bed and sleep until I woke up in a world that was better.

I don’t even live in Ghana, but it’s funny how this fear of rejection and condemnation feels more alive and urgent to me than the protests in America last year over George Floyd’s murder.

I guess because here in the States, I can see my community all around me. If you’re Black and not named Candace Owens, you have literal skin in the game.

Before 2020, I was the only queer Ghanaian I personally knew. I was on my own.

So, finally being connected to that community and learning how to fight for us feels like such a relief. Though there are a ton of activist concepts like ‘praxis’ and ‘collectivist identity’ that, despite all my library books, I keep looking up and instantly forgetting.

AFIA: I don't know if it's just the way my brain works, but sometimes this language feels inaccessible.

SMG MEMBER 3: I know. I am, you know, I've been in this a little longer, but I'm always, I have to read it like four times. [Afia laughs.] So then, yeah, it’s…

AFIA (as narrator): But there are other ways I can contribute. I’m lending my audio production skills to a Silent Majority media campaign for Pride Month in June. We’re asking queer Ghanaians to share stories of family love and acceptance.

AFIA: Kids, uh, grandparents. Uh, well, I mean, that would be amazing.

SMG MEMBER 1: Oh, I think grandparents are way more accepting.

AFIA: What? Really?

SMG MEMBER 1: Yeah, yeah.

SMG MEMBER 2: Yeah. Yep.

AFIA: Aren’t they more conservative?

SMG MEMBER 1: Yeah, but they also have more love in their hearts and haven't been touched by Christianity in the same ways.

SMG MEMBER 2: Yup. And also they are old and so they are free to have their opinions because nobody can check them.

SMG MEMBER 1: Mm-hmm, yup. [Laughs.]

AFIA: Wow.

SMG MEMBER 2: Yup.

SMG MEMBER 1: Yeah. Like, I know that if my grandmother were alive, she would be happy to do this. Which is also a good point, is that we should be open to different languages.

AFIA: Ooh!

SMG MEMBER 1: Like the voice notes don’t — like, this doesn’t all have to be in English.

AFIA: Yes! Yes, absolutely. Um, I don't speak anything but English and some bad Japanese. [Laughter.] So for that part, I would — I would need help. Like, a lot of help. [Laughs.]

[Sound of two WhatsApp beeps.]

AGNES: Hello maame.

AFIA: Hi, how are you doing?

AGNES: I'm OK. Yeah, I had to — I had to turn off the Wi-Fi. I turned it off, and I put data — different data and put it on. It’s crazy here… [Agnes fades out.]

[We hear a voice recording of a man speaking Fante. It starts at full volume, then fades down under Afia’s narration.]

AFIA (as narrator): I roped Agnes into translating the Fante recordings for the Pride campaign. The one I sent her was from a man who had been beaten and arrested for being gay. His family rushed to the jail to give him food and bail money.

[The man speaking Fante continues his story, which slowly fades out into Afia’s conversation with Agnes.]

AFIA: Like, what was your reaction to the audio that I shared with you from that… [Agnes sighs.] From that person that got arrested?

AGNES: I was not surprised. But what can I do here? Because you have to fight with the whole community. You can’t fight with one person. I think 98% of Ghanaians have that mindset, that homosexuality is dirty. Homosexuality is abomination. Homosexuality is not good. It’s up to the government to start educating, to — even the radio station —

AFIA: The government is never going to do that. [Laughs.] Why would they do that? So then, why — I mean… Why would I move to Ghana?

AGNES: Well… I really, since you came out, I haven’t asked you to come and live here. [A pause.] I just said, “Oh, come and visit.” I’m sorry to say that, but, you know —

AFIA: So you don't want me to live in Ghana?

AGNES: Of course! Of course. I would love for you to come here. Of course! You’re my daughter. But only if you can live in the closet. And for me to push you in the closet is not fair. I am not going to help to push you in the closet. You have to be happy with who you are.

AFIA: But you did. You did that when you came for the wedding two years ago. You said I have to go back in the closet.

AGNES: Yeah, among all of them. I told you why. I can't fight 98%. I can’t. I can’t. They can even burn this house down, and I'm too old to do that. At least, if I have 10% on my side, yes. It’s like a broom. When it’s together, you can sweep with it. When you take one piece of broom, you can’t sweep with it.

AFIA: I don’t think it’s that many people.

AGNES: Oh, yes. You’ll be surprised.

AFIA: I think it’s a lot of people, but I don’t think it’s all of them.

AFIA (as narrator): There’s one more thing Agnes wants to make sure I understand about Ghana before we hang up.

AGNES: Don’t — don’t even — don’t even — don’t even think there’s no homosexuality in Ghana. Everybody is in the closet. [Afia laughs.] Of course! Who? Who? Who said — who said married to a woman — a man married to a woman or a woman married to a man is the best way to go? There are so many miserable people married. Miserable. And that’s why they’re cheating. Half of the people are cheating. Thank God that you can live freely in America.

[Whooshing sound as we fall into Afia’s daydream, then the sound of camera shutters clicking.]

REPORTER AFIA: Living freely in America? People only stopped using the word “gay” as an insult like yesterday! Do you know how many anti-trans bathroom bills are currently working their way through state legislatures? Why is the bar so fucking low? But no, all you want is to talk about ‘current account deficits’ and ‘debt-to-GDP ratios’! The minute someone says, “Hey, I’d like to live with some dignity and be respected as a human being,” it’s all, “Hashtag first world problems”!

MANAGING DIRECTOR: You need to find a different forum to air these grievances.

REPORTER AFIA: Excuse me, no, I’m not — hey. Hey! Did you cut my mic?

MANAGING DIRECTOR: May I suggest therapy?

REPORTER AFIA: Whatever! This press conference is a figment of my imagination anyway. Hashtag radical honesty. I’m out!

[Electronic press conference music comes in. Then, a whoosh as we fall back out of Afia’s daydream.]

AFIA: Yeah, let’s do it, I guess.

AKUA: Let’s do it!

FRIEND 1: OK.

[Upbeat electronic music comes in.]

AFIA: OK. Um, what did we write for [inaudible] that was kwasiasem?

AKUA: Kill the bill. Kill the nkwasiasem bill. [Laughs.]

FRIEND 2: Kill the bill. Kill the bill. Kill the bill.

AKUA: Kill the nkwasiasem bill!

AFIA: Yes! Yes, yes!

FRIEND 2: Kill the bill!

[Music fades out.]

AFIA (as narrator): So, fun development… the kind that’s not at all fun. It’s October 2021 now and it looks like the Ghanaian Parliament is on the verge of passing one of the harshest anti-LGBTQI bills in the world.

Remember the super vague misdemeanor I said was currently on the books in Ghana back in 2018? Welcome to your second-degree felony. Simply saying you’re queer or even being an ally can land you in jail for five to ten years.

Which is why my friends and I are at Lake Merritt in Oakland fighting 30 mile per hour winds to stage a solidarity protest.

[Upbeat electronic music comes back in.]

FRIEND 1: I don’t need a windbreaker, you can put those away. I got this.

AFIA: Ooh, what is this song?

FRIEND 1: See, now I want to dance.

AFIA: I know! What is this? [To the beat:] Like, OK. Oh, oh, oh.

FRIENDS (together): Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh! Hey, hey, hey!

[Music and protest fade out.]

AFIA (as narrator): That’s the thing about being marginalized. You get very good at eking out simple happiness wherever you can. Because there are lots of other moments that are just fucking raw.

Like when you’re in bed, your tear-slicked face illuminated by a phone bringing you status updates on your basic human rights. Aka last night.

AKOTO AMPAW: Being LGBTQ+ is, quote, “a taboo and inhuman” under Ghanaian culture.

AFIA (as narrator): I was watching this press conference of lawyers and professors — distinguished, highly respected people in Ghana — who were defending the LGBTQI community.

AKOTO AMPAW: That statement, with all due respect to our traditional rulers, stigmatizes the very being and identity of LGBTQ+ persons, and denies them their humanity.

AFIA (as narrator): They were telling everyone to back off. They were pushing back.

AKOTO AMPAW: It directly violates article 15.1 of the constitution, that the dignity of all persons shall be inviolable.

AFIA (as narrator): I’ve never seen that before.

See, Mom? It’s not 98%.

AKUA: … introduce myself. My name is Akua. My pronouns are she/her. And I’m a member of the Black LGBTQI Migrant Project. [Cheering.] Also known as BLMP. And I’m also a member of Silent Majority, Ghana… [Fades out.]

AFIA (as narrator): Back at the protest, the wind tosses us to and fro as I listen to my friend share statements from LGBTQI people in Ghana.

AKUA (reading, tearfully): In my heart, I feel alone in this struggle. I look up at all who oppose my existence and I cower in fear. I ask that you say my name and send my — and send me strength. I ask that you stand for me now, when I cannot do that safely. I ask that you show me how to be brave in this moment where my very humanity is being contested. I ask that you not give up fighting, because then I’d be lost.

AFIA (as narrator): I have felt alone in this, too. For a long time. I could have written your statement myself, once.

[Heartfelt, sincere string music comes in.]

Your cry will briefly become mine during the Uber ride home. It will become mine again at midnight, when I turn off the lights and burrow into bed to wait for a better world.

But right now, I don’t feel alone. I’m feeling with you.

Do you need someone to speak up for you? Our activist group will support you. Or do you just need to know that what you feel is valid? Because you know what? It is.

[Music sweeps across narration.]

Here, take this. Bring on the full fucking orchestra! Embrace the emotion! This shit is hard. I am reaching for you and holding you tight. I’m not alone, and neither are you. We’re finding each other, we’re coming together, and it is the beginning of our little broom.

[String music begins to fade out, as protest sounds come back in.]

AKUA: When queer lives are under attack, what do we do?

PROTESTERS: Stand up, fight back!

AKUA: When intersex lives are under attack, what do we do?

PROTESTERS: Stand up, fight back!

AKUA: What do we do?

PROTESTERS: Stand up, fight back!

AKUA: What do we do?

PROTESTERS: Stand up, fight back!

[Protest sounds end.]

AFIA: You know what I’m doing right now?

AGNES: No.

AFIA: You want to see?

AGNES: Yes.

AFIA: OK. OK. I’m gonna show you what I’m doing.

AGNES: OK.

AFIA (as narrator): Two weeks after the Oakland protest, I’m at my brother Sammy’s house in New York. Agnes is here for the month doing her annual physical check-ups.

AFIA: See?

AGNES: Get out of here.

AFIA: Yeah.

AGNES: You’re serious?

AFIA: Yeah, I’m serious. Yeah. I am gonna apply for dual citizenship… That’s what I’m — I’m — that’s why I’m going to the post office. I’m gonna drop off, uh, my application.

AGNES: Wow!

AFIA: I think that life is long, and no matter what I’m always going to have a relationship with Ghana.

AFIA (as narrator): I wish I could tell you that she smiled and told me congratulations, because that would have been a much simpler way to end this podcast. But…

AGNES: One thing that you don’t understand is sometime, sometime, to really get a big load off of your own brains, you have to compromise.

AFIA (as narrator): I shouldn’t be out. She just wants me to be safe.

Agnes is a fucking tattoo-sporting former-Buddhist Ghanaian mom unicorn. And in this moment, the most important part of that title is “mom,” who loves her daughter.

[We hear Afia walking into the post office.]

AFIA: Hi, how are you doing?

USPS WORKER: And you?

AFIA: I am well, thanks. I am… I’d like to get a money order…

AFIA (as narrator): By this time next year, I’ll be a dual citizen of America and Ghana.

AFIA: … for $250…

AFIA (as narrator): I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while.

AFIA: … to make it out to the Embassy of Ghana…

AFIA (as narrator): And like Alicia Keys, [singing] I’m ready.

I think it’s also about time I do some more living, and less talking into a microphone. But before I leave you, how about we wrap up with a little more radical honesty?

To Accra and Oakland: These potholes really are getting to be a bit much. A lot of millionaires in these towns and we should make them help out with that.

To my activist communities: I’m not a huge fan of the word “folks.” [Sighs.] Wow, felt good to get that off my chest. Phew!

To me: Keep striving for and with dignity.

AFIA: [In a car, picking up the recorder, turning the ignition and buckling the seatbelt.] Let’s turn this thing off. OK.

[Jazzy instrumentals from “Home” by Ria Boss come in.]

AFIA (as narrator): As of this episode’s publishing — December 1, 2021 — there’s still time: we can put pressure on the MPs and President Akufo-Addo and let them know unequivocally that they need to kill this bill. Check out silentmajorityghana.com — it’s all one word — for info on how to do exactly that.

Shithole Country is written, narrated, and sound designed by me, Afia. This episode was produced by me and Mark Pagán. Julie Shapiro and Audrey Mardavich are our executive producers. Special thanks to Tania Ketenjian. Cover art by Sindiso Nyoni. And our theme song was created by the Ria Boss.

We’ve come to the end! Aw. And it really took a village! I want to thank the whole team at Radiotopia Presents. Thank you to my partner for being such a patient listener and giving fantastic feedback. And, of course, my family — phew! — just suffering me continually sticking a mic into your faces up until just a few weeks ago. So, I appreciate you deeply.

And, yeah, thank you to you, to the listeners. I… Yeah, I’m just really grateful that you chose to spend time with me and this story and this little world that, um, I wanted to share with you.

And if you’re looking just to get more context on the situation, Afroqueer is a fabulous podcast featuring storytelling about LGBTQI Africans, and they recently did an in-depth episode about Ghana and the bill.

Something else you can check out: The Gold Coast Report. It’s a podcast network in Ghana, and you’ll hear from queer people in Ghana who are living their lives, having a good time, the haters be damned.

And last recommendation: check out The Stoop for more storytelling about the diaspora. Also fantastic, and it’s right here on Radiotopia.

I am going to leave you with the full version of our theme song, “Home.”

Thanks again, and… I’ll see you around.

[Instrumentals fade out. Then, the full version of “Home” by Ria Boss comes in.]

RIA BOSS: Ay ay ay ay ay ay ay-yee-yee-yee-ay-yee-yee.

Home where my heart goes. Home where my mama grows. Home where I ought to go. But home can be so cold, though. Home all sunshine and gold. Home corrupt officials, oh. Every inch of home to go. And home can be so warm though…

How you feel you about the weather? It’s blazing. Touch down, go to Accra, you feel amazing. Reality ain’t hit you yet, it’s crazy.

How you connected yet still so distant? Now you add the dark, and Mama she’s calling you. Oh-oh-ohhh.

Home where my heart goes. Home where my mama grows. Home where I ought to go. Home can be so cold, though. Home all sunshine and gold. Home corrupt officials, oh. Every inch of home to go-oh-oh-oh.

Home? Home where my heart grows. Home where my mama goes. Home where I ought to go. Home can be so cold, though. Home all sunshine and gold. Home corrupt officials, oh. Every inch of home to go-ohhh.

[Music ends.]

END OF EPISODE.