My Story in Ghana

Nancy Zhengning Zhang

I grew up in a very small town in Xinjiang that was so tiny it couldn’t even be found on Google. 

My mom was 23 years old when she gave birth to me, and 24 when she had my younger sister. From my mom’s stories, I know my sister was very lucky to survive, because the one-child policy had just started being implemented. After the village leaders found out my mom was pregnant with a second child, they tried to force her to have an abortion. Luckily, on that day all the surgical tools had been used up, so the leaders had to let my mom get the abortion done the next day instead. That’s how my mom was able to escape the abortion. At that time, she was very petite, and by hiding her pregnancy she managed to give birth to my sister, who didn’t get a household registration until she was 2 years old.

In my memory, both my parents were teachers. My mom worked in a kindergarten and my dad was a high school physics teacher for students preparing for the college entrance exam. My mom loved singing and dancing, while my dad enjoyed playing the erhu (a two-stringed Chinese violin), so in the evenings we often heard my mom singing Peking opera and my dad playing the erhu. As a girl, my favorite activities during breaks were jumping rope and playing ping pong.

When I just started middle school, I learned that my dad would be going abroad to Africa. From conversations at home, I understood it was because the process for immigrating to the US took too long, and with my dad’s many siblings, we would have to wait a very long time. So my dad decided to follow my paternal aunt to Ghana instead.  

At that time, I didn’t have much impression of Africa other than knowing it was a country of black people. My dad’s plan was to come back and bring us to live with him after two years. I remember in 1989 my dad came back, and we were very reluctant to leave our big cat at home.

After a difficult journey, we finally arrived in Africa, where my dad already had two sisters living there. My two aunts and little cousin had been there for many years. When I saw my little cousin, he was probably only around 2 years old and didn’t speak very clearly, because he was exposed to too many languages at the same time – English, Shanghainese, and local African languages. But it seemed like just a year later he turned a corner and started speaking those 3 languages fluently.

When I first arrived, I was very curious about black people and their kinky hair – I always wanted to reach out and touch it. I also wondered why the palms of their hands always looked stained with a brownish color that wouldn’t wash off.

When we first came to Ghana, there were relatively fewer Asians than white people, we were almost like rare animals. I remember most clearly the first time my aunt took us to the zoo in Ghana to see lions and elephants, but we ended up becoming the attraction ourselves – all the local visitors came in groups following us everywhere we went. They were quite straightforward with their curiosity, pointing and discussing openly, not hiding anything – it was like they were putting on a show for you. We went to see the animals, but turned into animals being watched ourselves.

Although blatantly curious, Ghanaians were simple and warmhearted people. If you ran into trouble on the road, locals would always rush over babbling away, and if they realized you couldn’t understand them they’d find someone who spoke English to translate. When my mom’s car fell into a ditch, it was pulled out manually by locals in this way.

When we first arrived in Ghana, we lived with my dad in Kumasi. It was our first time living in a so-called independent large villa, rumored to be the former residence of a president before he was assassinated. I had no concept of how big it was at the time, only knowing that I would get tired riding my bike around the courtyard a couple of times. The living room was big enough to ride a bike around in circles too. The yard was full of all kinds of African plants, insects and animals like lizards running around. I remember my hobby during free time was catching animals and butterflies, then pinning them to the wooden door as specimens. My dad even framed all the butterfly specimens I collected and mounted them on the walls. To be honest, my butterfly collection was no worse than those in museums here, some with wingspans as big as my palm.

I remember when we first arrived in Ghana, there was a school right across from our house. My sister and I would be escorted to school by the gardener. We were the only two Asian students at the school. On the first day of class, all the other kids from different classes were crowded up against the open windowless classroom peering in at us. During breaks, the bolder kids would come up to us and chat, some even daring to pull my hair. At 12 years old, I felt indignant, angry and scared all at once, but just silently endured it. Looking back, they didn’t mean any harm, just pure curiosity. But at the time I complained to my dad and begged him to transfer me to another school, which is how I ended up going to seven different middle schools one after another.  

By the time I got to senior secondary school, my dad’s job had moved to Tema. At that point I was already very used to interacting with the local kids and my life was quite stable. At the Methodist senior secondary school, there were only three non-local students total – a girl from Greenland, a Taiwanese boy one grade above me, and myself. But since we were in different grades and classes, we never crossed paths. The school specially arranged for me to learn the local language, with the language teacher giving me one-on-one lessons because my foundation was so poor. Looking back, I feel bad for the teacher because now I can only remember a few words.

In terms of food, since I lived with my mom we mostly ate Chinese cuisine. There were a few local specialties I enjoyed eating at school though, like the fried sesame balls that were pretty much my daily lunch.

The school often had music performances or sports meets. The teachers took special care of me and didn’t require me to participate, but my dad always encouraged me to join in and would drop me off at the school on time. Although Ghanaian music is quite monotonous, mostly percussive with all kinds of buckets and barrels used as drums, it didn’t stop the lively celebratory atmosphere with everyone dancing along to the drumbeats.

In school, my favorite subjects were still math, physics and chemistry. Compared to the local kids, I could get A’s in those subjects with my eyes closed. But for required courses like English, agriculture, geography and music, I barely passed. My dad said it was okay as long as I mastered English well enough to pass the O-Level and A-Level exams from the British system. My dad was my private tutor for math, physics and chemistry – he even brought a full set of Chinese middle school textbooks and made me finish them, then have me teach my younger sister as her tutor, making doing her homework my responsibility. 

When I graduated from high school at 17 years old, the advisor said I needed to be 18 to apply to universities in the US without having to find a legal guardian there. So my dad decided to have me work as his secretary for a year, following him around to government offices and learning things like accounting and paperwork from his accountant, a local black woman named Sissie. A lot of Ghanaian kids went to study at Northeastern University in the US, but my mom didn’t want me going somewhere cold, so I ended up choosing the warmer Florida International University in Miami instead. My dad suggested I study electrical engineering since I liked math and science, but I just rolled my eyes at him, telling him not to push his dreams onto me since I wasn’t interested in that.

Two weeks before my 16th birthday, my dad said he’d get me a driver’s license. I was both excited and full of doubts – you needed to be 18 to get a license in Ghana. My dad said not to worry about it. The next day he took me to meet one of his police officer friends, and the day after that I started learning how to drive. At that time in Ghana there were no automatic transmission cars, only manual. I killed the engine countless times while learning, but managed to get my license about a month after my 16th birthday. Then just a month later, I rear-ended a taxi while driving home from school – that was my only car accident in Ghana.

Here is a translation of those paragraphs into English:

When we lived in Kumasi, I didn’t have any local friends to play with, only my younger sister to ride bikes with, catch bugs and butterflies, and watch TV together. I remember watching the Chinese embassy’s DVD version of Journey to the West over and over again at that time. When we lived in Accra, my aunts were worried we would get bored, so they gave us the TVB drama VCDs they had finished watching. That’s how I also picked up Cantonese.

In the last year in Ghana, my parents were constantly worried about how to pay for our future tuition fees to study in the US. Eventually, my mom decided to find a place to open a Chinese restaurant, hoping to have some extra income to support the expensive tuition costs.  

My mom is the type to just get things done once she decides. Next, she had me accompany her to run around to all the government offices, prepare the necessary documents, contact suppliers for stools, chairs, tables, drinks, and hire workers. Two weeks before I was set to depart for the US, the restaurant premises were set up. One month after I left, the Great Wall Chinese Restaurant in Tema Community 10 opened for business. I heard that at the time, my younger sister was my mom’s capable little assistant and junior manager.

After hugging my parents goodbye, I boarded the plane to the US alone, lying down with tears in my eyes, feeling both excited and scared.

Postscript: When chatting with a friend and mentioning my childhood in Xinjiang and Africa, they felt it was quite unique and suggested I should write it down.  

To be honest, I’ve never felt that my experiences were that out of the ordinary . Most of the friends I know are also immigrants to the US, each with their own fascinating lives. But since my friend planted this idea, I started recalling some things from my childhood, many of which are quite interesting.

Hopefully by this time next year, I’ll be able to share about my life in the US with everyone.