What steps did you take to add the Ghana trip to the JOURneys program?
AVA THOMPSON GREENWELL: So I had been doing the South Africa Journalism Residency program for decades. From 2014 to about 2024, along with, and that was the undergraduate part. And then I was also doing the South Africa Explorers, which is for the graduate students. And I did that, for a period of time. And, going to South Africa is, was a fantastic experience. After that happened, we didn’t really have a presence in Africa for any of our programs. And because I wanted to try West Africa because I know most. People in the United States actually have roots in West Africa, not in South Africa. I thought it would be great to make that transition. So I think, I saw an opportunity and I knew there was no presence, no Africa presence in the program. And I really think I really didn’t want that to be the case. I wanted to make sure that Africa was represented because, so often Africa is not represented when it comes to anything that’s a world event.
Vickers: What was the significance of choosing like Ghana specifically?
GREENWELL: I think there’s so many connections to African Americans. In the United States, not just those who have maybe direct Ghanaian ancestry, but as you probably know, in 2019 there was something called a year of return where the country of Ghana was encouraging African Americans to come and visit, but also to live there. So there’s been, if you go to YouTube, you’ll find all these videos about people who moved there, people who love it, people who have moved back and maybe didn’t love it. And so that’s also creating some tensions with Ghanaians because they feel like maybe some of these African expats, black expats from the United States are driving up some of the prices and some of the economy. In the United States, your ancestors might have been walked from other places like Nigeria or Togo or Bernine and places like that, and walked through Ghana or somehow through Ghana. They have this place called the last bath there. Where a lot of the people who were being enslaved, were cleaned up in this river and so there was a lot of, I think the thing that struck me that I didn’t really know, having studied some of this again from a distance, is when you get there and you’re actually on the land, you have a different perspective and a different understanding of that. And so I think that Ghana is significant because of this year of return. It, it provides a lot of variety, I think, in terms of the ability to study not only religion. But also culture and even just modernity, so you can have some places that are super modern, some neighborhoods that are like, would rival any of the best neighborhoods in the United States. And then you can have some neighborhoods that look like you’ve walked back in time. It’s really, it still is a developing country, I would say.
Vickers: What skills or like journalistic credibility do you think students will gain if they’re going on the trip?
GREENWELL: Yeah, so we call these opportunities, whether it’s Medill explorers, whether it’s Medill undergrad. The journalism residency program is we want you to get adverse experience, which is very similar to international reporters. That is, you don’t live in the country, but you’re gonna be living there for a short period of time. And so you have to get up to speed really quickly on what are some of the issues. You have to be able to use your resources. You also may need someone on the ground. Sometimes you may need someone there for translation. Sometimes you might need someone not just translation of language, but also translation of cultural practices. And we are gonna try to prepare you all as well as possible for that. What we wanna do is make sure that students have some sensitivity. That you can’t go into a country taking your values and assuming your values are better than the other country’s values.
Vickers: What do you hope like the history of this specific trip to Ghana within the Journeys program?
GREENWELL: I hope it continues to exist, but I also hope that. Okay, if we do South Africa and then we do Ghana, that there will be other countries that we eventually will take students to as well.
For WNUR News, i’m McCall Vickers