The airplane shook onerous because it maneuvered between slate grey storm clouds on our descent into Accra, Ghana. From my window seat, I scanned the bottom under: Business buildings, properties, and sparse patches of grass dotted the seemingly countless clay of the earth, its colour someplace between turmeric and purple brick.
As I walked by way of customs, I used to be excited. Not solely was this my first journey to Africa—as a Black girl meals author who focuses on African diasporic cooking, no much less—it was additionally the work journey of my goals. I had come to Ghana to work as co-writer with chef Eric Adjepong on his debut cookbook, Ghana to the World, a group of recipes and essays exploring his Ghanaian American id and the way each the US and West Africa inform his cooking. “You need to include me to Ghana,” was a standard chorus throughout our early planning calls, after we’d stroll by way of the move of chapters, the potential recipe checklist, and pictures.
I additionally got here hungry. Over two weeks, my essential purpose was to style the numerous dishes Eric and I had been discussing the 2 years prior: okra stew, starchy swallows corresponding to fufu and omo tuo (rice ball), and grilled meats offered on road corners, to call a number of. I knew them in idea and through the African eating places I’d visited within the U.S., however Eric wished me to see them firsthand. He was a information holding one hand, whereas my mom, who was becoming a member of me on the journey, held the opposite. A seasoned and avid traveler, my mom stated Ghana was considered one of her favourite locations on the planet, and that it reminded her of rising up in St. Thomas, the place we nonetheless have household. She was flying in individually later within the week.
Within the days that adopted, I settled into Ghana, consuming skewers of grilled beef chichinga on the Aburi Botanical Gardens, fried fish with fufu at a beachfront restaurant in Elmina, and late-night wings after dancing at Bloom Bar. But it surely was waakye, the tomato-based stew served over rice (and typically spaghetti), with boiled eggs, crispy fried shallots, and a wholesome dose of funk from dried fish, that sped up my coronary heart (in one of the best ways), inflicting me to look down at my fork with surprise, considering what I had simply eaten. My mom’s favourite stall was outdoors Makola Market in Accra, and waakye there was directly acquainted and stunning, like listening to a music you like performed by a distinct artist; as I ate the heap of maroon-tinged starches, I discovered myself making an attempt to call the spices. “Is there anise in right here? Perhaps ginger?” I requested my mother. Curious but additionally hungry, she rattled off a number of seemingly components earlier than shrugging and getting again to consuming.
The sensation of familiarity pulsed in my thoughts throughout my journey. As a Black American, visiting the continent of Africa could be weird: You’re directly a foreigner and likewise probably linked to the very place you might be seeing as an outsider. It’s an expertise that meals historian Michael Twitty wrote about in an essay about visiting Ghana as a Black, homosexual, Jewish man who has traced his ancestry there. “For many African People, slavery forcibly minimize our fast ties to the motherland,” Twitty writes. “Needing to know extra about our roots has develop into one of many central points in our id.”
For me, these edible ties to the motherland have been instantly electrical, however the interpersonal ones left me with a uninteresting ache I’m nonetheless confronting at the moment. There have been many moments when a taxi driver, fellow diner, or lodge employee would ask if I used to be from Ghana, or if my household was. “I don’t know,” was at all times my response, eliciting a discomfort that will cling within the air between us. The reality of that historical past (or the shortage thereof) is difficult to broach in on a regular basis dialog.
I haven’t achieved DNA testing; I’ve relied solely on the historical past and cooking practices of Virginia and the Virgin Islands (the place my father and mom are from, respectively) to piece collectively the place my ancestors could have originated. My father’s aspect is probably going from Senegal, as a result of enslaved West Africans have been delivered to the Carolinas on account of their experience in rising rice. Due to the transatlantic slave commerce, many within the Virgin Islands hint their roots to Ghana, the place my mom’s aspect is probably going from.
Within the months after visiting Ghana, as I labored on the guide with chef Eric, I mirrored on my journey not by way of experiences, however emotions. Though Ghana moored my Blackness to Africa profoundly, it additionally accentuated my Americanness, reminding me that my house is Maryland; the Virgin Islands; Chesapeake, Virginia; and New Jersey, the place I stay with my husband. That sensation—of roots unearthed but untethered—was, to be frank, deeply uncomfortable.
But the flavors of Ghana stayed with me like campfire smoke that permeates your garments. Again dwelling, I sought out warmth in shito (a Ghanaian pepper sauce) and habaneros; the dusty, tart style of the nation’s brownish limes; and within the aromatic earthiness of groundnuts. I discovered proximate flavors on the African and Latin grocery store close to my condo in Jersey Metropolis, and at Teranga, chef Pierre Thiam’s quick informal spot in Harlem.
Lately, I used to be testing one of many remaining dishes for the guide, a seemingly easy turkey wing stew with bell peppers, tomato paste, and aromatics—the parts of a typical Ghanaian stew—when it hit me. The connection to the waakye I had with my mom in Accra was apparent, however I used to be additionally transported to my great-aunt Vashti’s kitchen in St. Thomas, the place she taught me to make our household’s “gravy,” a tomato sauce that we serve with fried fish. It was thick with sliced onions, aromatic with garlic, and punched up with apple cider vinegar, and my aunt at all times added a touch of floor clove. I bear in mind asking why, because the taste struck me as misplaced. She shrugged and stated, “That’s how Mother [my great-grandmother Alice] taught me to make it.” Right here I used to be tasting a model of it in my very own kitchen whereas engaged on a cookbook for a chef with roots an ocean away.
I texted Eric. “Do you know there’s a sauce like waakye that my household makes in St. Thomas!?” Then I shot off a message to my mother to inform her I lastly discovered what spice made the waakye style so acquainted: cloves. “That’s humorous!” she replied. “In all probability explains why I find it irresistible a lot.”
