There are intriguing festivals all year round in Ghana that you should experience at least once in your lifetime. Traditional festivals erupt with remarkable cultural and historical propensity. Art, food and music festivals come with creative dynamism, outstanding street tastes, and exciting rare rhythms!
About 400 years ago, in the late August 1619, the first enslaved Africans landed on the shores of James River, in Virginia, the United States. There, about 20-something Africans were exchanged for food, before being sold into slavery by English traders. Over the next four centuries, an estimated 12.5 million Africans would be chained to a similar fate; stolen and shipped from the many forts dotting the West African coast to destinations in the Americas and Europe: the African Diaspora. The Elmina Castle in Ghana and The House of Slaves in Senegal are of particular significance as they served as major slave trading posts; the point of no return for millions of enslaved Africans.
In commemoration of that arrival in Virginia 400 years ago, President Nana Addo has declared the 2019 as the “Year of Return, Ghana 2019” as it will be a major landmark spiritual and birth-right journey inviting the Global African family, home and abroad, to mark 400 years of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in Jamestown, Virginia. The arrival of enslaved Africans marked a sordid and sad period, when our kith and kin were forcefully taken away from Africa into years of deprivation, humiliation and torture. While August 2019 marks 400 years since enslaved Africans arrived in the United States, “The Year of Return, Ghana 2019” celebrates the cumulative resilience of all the victims of the Trans Atlantic slave Trade who were scattered and displaced through the world in North America, South America, the Caribbean, Europe and Asia.
