On ReGhana.

Dear READER,

REIMAGINING GHANA is a deeply personal feat.

I am learning that to reimagine Ghana is to reimagine my mother, my father, and my late loved ones. It is to reimagine myself. The parts that make me up.

Ghana is alive. Is young. Older than my mother, but I wonder whether I should treat them with the same grace. Younger than my father, but I wonder whether I should offer them the same care and understanding. 

Still, Ghana is alive. 

It has been most natural to humanise Ghana, to explore it as person. Ghana is young.

Spending five weeks in Accra has been life-changing because Ghana is intimate. What began as an idea to reimagine a standout work by Paul Strand has become an unravelling of my personal history. Forty-Four Words is an extension of me, and this project—Reimagining Ghana—solidifies that notion.

I have been questioning readiness as an idea. What it means to be ready to do something. Which, I believe, apparently entails not being ready but attempting to be. That characterises Reimagining Ghana. I have begun to move without all parts in place, but it is working and resulting in writings such as this.

I’ve been thinking about what Ghana is. I think about who I am. John Mahama, in his inaugural speech, stated, “All of us are Ghana. You are Ghana, and I am Ghana.” And what if this is true? What state of affairs does this give rise to?

The central question that underpins a response to whether Ghana is a new nation entails deliberating what a nation is. And what it means to be new. All interesting things. If we continue in the thinking of Mahama’s speech, one must ask themself if they, indeed, are a new nation? 

I think where I land on the matter is somewhere in between a governed state by law and natural order. An element of comparison. In relation to peers. And something else—not quite sure yet, but on the path of discovery.

I have been pondering on what joins both England and Ghana. I think it is circles and captains. Football. So, I wonder if Ghana is a game? And if true, what is the score? 

I think about what I know of Ghana. The Ghana that I was told about. The Ghana I have experienced. The Ghana I have yet to know. These Ghanas do not always align, and maybe they are not meant to. 

It has been five weeks of watching, listening, absorbing. Noticing the contrasts. The hard edges where expectation meets reality. The moments of familiarity and the moments of dissonance.

To reimagine Ghana is also to reimagine how we engage with its past. The objects, the archives, the stories that have been (re)told. Ghana: An African Portrait is an object of observation, but what happens when the observed reframe themselves? What happens when shifts gaze?

Reimagining Ghana. 

I return to readiness. The readiness of a nation. The readiness of an individual. The readiness to ask different questions, to form new narratives.

I think about movement. The movement between places. The movement between ideas. The way stories migrate and reshape themselves.

And I think about the people. The ones who have stayed. The ones who have left. The ones who return. The ones who dream of returning but never do. The ones who build here and the ones who build afar. All of these people.

And so, to reimagine Ghana is to reimagine those who shape it—to question how we inherit, claim, and create a nation with every generation. To pull at the seams of history as it unravels. To ask if a nation is ever truly formed—or if it is always in the making.

A conversation unfolds. Soon, I hope.

AMANDA BOACHIE
February 2025