Making A Home in Ghana

It’s the mid-90s and a woman named Grace is walking through untouched, verdant land to get to a hospital to visit her ailing cousin. The land is a few short miles from her ancestral home, where she was born in 1935, and five generations before her.

Grace is intrigued. Forever with a keen eye for potential. Grace buys the land.

She buys several plots for her daughters. Her daughters are all in America, but she knows one day they will return and will need a place to rest. She wants them near her.

Grace is my grandmother. My mother’s mother. In 2022, I helped my mom finish building a home on the land Grace discovered almost 30 years ago. My grandmother saw it mostly built but passed away a few months before it was complete.

These last few weeks back home in Ghana, I stood often on the veranda staring out at this lush land, imagining her on the sienna brown dusty road in front of the house, stopping, looking out, and knowing: this is it for my daughters.

Working with my mom to build this home feels like a generational win, a significant moment in time.

My mom had already purchased the blueprint before I came in, a very American home design. The skeleton was up by the time I had real say. But if I had drawn it from scratch, I would have used rammed earth, mud, natural materials indigenous to Ghana rather than cement. A home that looked like it belonged to the continent instead of extension of colonialism.

As we built this home, we didn’t agree on everything. My mom won the kitchen and I’ll admit it now, she was right. I wanted an open plan. She insisted on a closed kitchen because cooking our ancestral foods demands it. The smells, the smoke, the hours-long process. It needs its own room. I conceded. I’m glad I did.

She also won burglar bars on every window, top floor and bottom. I wanted them only on the first floor. I still wish I’d won that one. I want to see the mango, avocado, papaya and coconut trees my mom planted fully through the windows without interruption.

Where I left my fingerprints is the interior. Muted paint colors throughout the house alongside vibrant ones, a blue wall in the living room that gives a bohemian, island vibe.

A woven chandelier custom made in Ghana. Old couches reupholstered in Ghanaian print.

Oversized windows throughout that pull in the light. The floor tiles are white, though if I were doing it again I’d use wood, natural, Ghana-sourced timber. However, the doors throughout the home are Ghana-sourced timber.

The house is still evolving. But we are in this wonderful place of enjoying the fruits of our labor — my mom’s labor more than mine.

My mom spent decades in America rarely buying herself anything new, mostly Goodwill runs, absorbing every financial pressure so her children wouldn’t feel it. This house is the least of what she’s owed.

What we’ve built together is a haven of peace for both of us especially during these times.

And Grace. To know that everything she saw in that dusty road became this, three generations making our way in our homeland.