I’ve been away from the office for the last three months on sabbatical after six years on the job. I came back rested, but more than that, I returned thinking about what we owe each other.
My sabbatical started in Antigua, my original homeland, where I spent three weeks reconnecting with family and culture. While there, I threw myself into Carnival. Unlike in many other places that have a Carnival, Antigua’s Carnival isn’t tied to a religious calendar. It honors August 1, 1834, the day enslaved Africans across the British Caribbean were emancipated. Every parade, every party, every song is a celebration of freedom.
During Carnival, you see that history in the details. The costumes on the revelers playing mas are riots of color, feathers, and beadwork; each one made with care. Stilt walkers called moko jumbies tower above the crowd, and John Bull move through the streets to the beat of drums and steel pan, after all this time, living pieces of Caribbean folk history. Watching them, I felt a line running across generations and across an ocean, from the ancestors who carried these traditions into the unknown to the people carrying them now. Joy was never a side note to survival. It was and remains part of how people endure.
After the whirl of Carnival, I also had the opportunity to spend time with family and friends for my uncle’s 80th birthday. There was something poignant about being together in celebration rather than at a funeral, and I wish more of us got to gather that way.
When not with family and friends, I spent time at one of Antigua’s 365 beaches, one for every day of the year if one chooses. Those visits told a less beautiful story. I was shocked by how quickly much of the shoreline is disappearing. Antigua’s economy leans heavily on tourism, and tourism leans on those beaches. The people who live there did the least to cause the erosion, yet they carry the risk. I keep asking myself what we owe small island nations whose landscapes are being reshaped by a changing climate. Increasingly, this feels like a question about the social compact, about what we owe people who bear the cost of choices they didn’t make.
Then I went to Ghana for four weeks, my first trip to Africa.
I stood at Assin Manso, the river where enslaved people, after being forcibly marched across a vast stretch of West Africa, were bathed before the final leg of their torturous journey to the coast. I toured Elmina and Cape Coast, where the history is still heavy in the stone. What struck me was that these structures are called castles. That word makes them sound like something out of a fairy tale, but they were brutal holding places for human beings. Language shapes what we remember, and what we choose to remember shapes what we do next.
Other days in Ghana restored me. In Kumasi I explored the Ashanti story at Manhyia Palace, the sword site, and Ike’s Cultural Village. I walked the canopy at Kakum National Park (I made it across two of the seven bridges before fear got the best of me), browsed and shopped at the Accra Arts Market, paid my respects at the Kwame Nkrumah Museum, and relaxed and danced at Laboma Beach.
In Ada, I spent two days at the Nkyinkyim Museum, created by artist Kwame Akoto-Bamfo. His installation honoring enslaved African ancestors is also part of the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. There I learned to drum, sat in a drumming circle, and shaped a clay Nsiso funerary portrait with my own hands.
While much of my time away was meaningful, the naming ceremony I shared with my daughter was a standout, humbling, and deeply emotional. There were prayers, and libations were poured for the ancestors. I was given the name Adwoa Owusuwaa, which means born on Monday and strong-willed. The Queen Mother, a traditional female leader, made clear that this was a return, a finding of roots. It felt like she was invoking Sankofa, the Akan principle that it is not wrong to go back for what you forgot: we must look back at our history and knowledge to build the future. She spoke to us about being the survivors of what our ancestors endured, and about the obligation we carry to those who share space with us now and those who come after us. It reaffirmed that I am part of something much older than me, a chain of people who endured so that we could stand there, and that the chain doesn’t end with us.
As I got ready to return to work, Kwame Nkrumah, who led Ghana to independence in 1957, kept coming into my thoughts. Like emancipation in Antigua and in the United States, and like the right to vote, freedom was never a gift handed down. Wherever you find it, people have had to organize for it, sacrifice for it, and then build and tend it. Everywhere I went during my sabbatical, I was reminded that freedom is kept alive by people who use it.
That brings me home to North Carolina, where the midterm elections are days away.
I used to think of voting as a right. I still do, but increasingly I also see it as a responsibility we hold toward one another. Voting is how we take part in the social compact: how we decide what we owe our neighbors, our schools, and our coastlines. The Queen Mother reminded us of our obligation to those here and those to come, and voting is one of the most ordinary ways we meet it. People paid dearly for the ballot in my family’s history and in the histories I touched on this trip. Leaving it unused feels like leaving a gift unopened.
I’m not here to tell you how to vote. I’m asking you to vote.
Early voting in North Carolina ends this Saturday, October 31, at 3 p.m. You can vote at any early voting site in your county, and if you’re not registered yet, you can register and vote the same day during this window. Election Day is Tuesday, November 3; Make a plan to vote by visiting acluofnc.org/vote. Whichever day you choose, bring your photo ID. If you can’t show one, you can still vote by filling out an ID exception form. To find your early voting site or Election Day polling place, visit ncsbe.gov. If you vote outside North Carolina, vote.gov can point you to your state’s rules.
I’m glad to be back, and glad to be part of this community. Let’s show up for each other.