Following the guide we proceeded across the massive courtyard and down another passage way to the Women's Dungeon, a smaller version of the Men's Dungeon but not so deep underground, it had held over 300 women at any given time.

As we entered that dark, musty, damp room, the sound of the crashing waves was like muffled, rolling thunder.  A dimly lit, uncovered light bulb hung from the ceiling on a thin, frayed wire.  After standing silently for a time in this tomb, the Guide began to lead the group out.  I was the last person left in the room when the Guide turned and said he was continuing the tour. 

"Please,” I said, “I'm not ready to leave, just turn off the light for me and I will join the group shortly.” 

As the group walked silently away, the tears would not stop flowing. I dropped to my knees, trembling and crying even harder.  With the light off, the only light in that dungeon came through one small window near the very high ceiling, reflecting down as though it were a muted spotlight. Darkness hung in every corner.  As I rocked back and forth on the dirt floor, I could hear weeping and wailing...anguished screams coming from the distance.

Suddenly the room was packed with women...some naked, some with babies, some sick and lying in the dirt, while others stood against the walls around the dungeon's walls, terror filled their faces. 

"My God, what had we done to wind up here, crammed together like animals?" 

Pain and suffering racked their bodies, a look of hopelessness and despair on their faces...but with a strong will to survive.

"Oh God, what have we done to deserve this kind of treatment?” 
.
.Cold terror gripped my body.  Tears blinded me and the screams wouldn't stop.  As I sat there violently weeping I began to feel a sense of warmth, many hands were touching my body, caressing me, soothing me as a calmness began to come over me.  I began to feel almost safe as voices whispered in my ears assuring me that everything was all right. 

"Don't cry,” they said. “You've come home. You've returned to your homeland, to re-open the Door of No Return.” 

Gradually the voices and the women faded into the darkness; it was then that I realized that some of the screams I'd heard were my own.  The eerie light beaming down from the window was growing dimmer as day began fading into night.  As I got up from the dungeon floor I knew that I would never be the same again! 

“After years of wandering and searching, I have finally found home.  And one day, I wouldn't be leaving again.” 

The book that you hold in your hands, "Returning Home Ain't Easy But It Sure Is A Blessing,” speaks to the visions of our ancestors and demonstrates the efforts both positive and negative, the humor, the tears and the frustrations of a Diaspora Afrikan family diligently working and struggling within the blessings of being back in our ancestral homeland. It faces the startling realities plagued by those of us who are trying to return home.  Realities of the fact that many of our continental Afrikan born brothers and sisters have very little knowledge of the Afrikan people born and raised in the Diaspora that resulted from the Trans-Atlantic (European) Slave Trade. 

Ironically, every Ghananian we spoke with wanted to go to the United States. We were coming and they wanted to go.  We were like ships in the night, passing each other unseeing and uncaring.

My story contrasts these with those realities of life on the other side. Brothers struggling to survive were being killed on a regular basis while driving taxis in New York City.  A few years before we repatriated to Ghana, two men held up my husband with a shotgun, while he was working his taxicab.  When they entered the cab and sat down, the man with the gun, who spoke no English, put it to my husband's head, as the other man announced in broken English 

"Dis es ah stickup, don' turn roun' or jew dead, Mon." 

They then tied and bound him, before throwing him in the trunk of the taxi. Riding around the Bronx and Manhattan they ended up dumping him on a dark street in the early morning.  At a deserted Terminal Market in the Bronx, they ordered him to stay still and not move for 15 minutes. Thank God, he was unhurt that time, but what about next time?  Certainly no one could doubt there would be a next time the way things were happening in New York City. 

Children were being gunned down playing in the streets and in playgrounds. Safety was a problem even in the school system.  These chaotic conditions, among other problems caused us to run like hell from New York, out of the United States and straight home to Afrika. 

Here we found our family of four could live in comfort on my husband's pension from the New York City Fire Department. We set about pursuing economic empowerment for ourselves and the development and betterment of our Afrikan family on the continent.

However, since arriving here we have found that there are many jobs that are either reserved exclusively for Ghanaians or require certain monetary stipulations designed for big corporations.  My husband, who owned and operated his own taxicab/car service in New York, would have to have a minimum of 10 cars to go into the car service business here.  If we could afford to purchase 10 cars, would we need to open a car service?  We owned our own Travel Agency in the United States but in Ghana we would have needed ($10,000.00) US Dollars operating capital and a Ghanaian partner, or ($200,000.00) U.S. Dollars to do it alone.  In the absence of that kind of up-front cash, we have had to call upon our God given creativity. Returning Home Ain’t Easy chronicles how we maintained ourselves, re-connected with our extended family, developed business interests to secure a good future for our families, while trying to make a worthwhile contribution to our community.

It has been ten years since our family returned to "Mother" Afrika leaving behind mayhem, racism, creeping anarchy, bedlam, etc. (That's not to say things aren’t far from or are perfect here in Ghana).We've been tricked, accused of being racist, called Obruni(White man & foreigner), but we've also been loved and welcomed home by many of our Ghanaian brothers and sisters. They are anxious to learn about us, as we are about them. Each of us wants to know who the other has become. Who, we have become while we were separated from our "Mother" land.

This healthy exchange makes a stronger bond between us.  Together we can set about correcting those wrongs committed against us and remember the strength and greatness of us as Afrikan people.  Just as a two-chord rope is stronger than a one-chord rope, our knowledge of the truth of our separation from one another will enable us to go forward as a stronger, united Afrikan front, a power source to be reckoned with spiritually, economically and politically..

One of our great Afrikan Leaders and Statesman, the late Osageyfo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, 1st President of the Republic of Ghana from 1957 to 1966 said, "All peoples of Afrikan descent whether they live in North or South America, the Caribbean or in other part of the world are Afrikans and belong to the Afrikan nation."

That being so, it is with the blessing & fulfillment of *Prophesy that we have returned home on the **“wings of the wind.

• Genesis 15 verse 13: And he said to Abram, know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them for hundred years.

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