GATEWAY TO AFRICA: THE PILGRIMAGE TOURISM OF DIASPORA AFRICANS TO GHANA Ann Reed Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Anthropology, Indiana University July 2006 Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy ______________________________ Gracia Clark, Ph.D. ______________________________ Richard Wilk, Ph.D. Doctoral Committee ______________________________ Beverly J. Stoeltje, Ph.D. December 15, 2005 ______________________________ John H. Hanson, Ph.D. ii © 2006 Ann Reed ALL RIGHTS RESERVED iii For my research assistant, host, and friend Paa Kwesi Sampson Meda wo ase paa! iv Acknowledgements Progress does not come by itself. Neither desire nor time alone can ensure progress. Progress is not a gift but a victory. To make progress, man (sic) has to work, strive and toil, tame the elements, combat the environment, recast institution, subdue circumstances, and at all times be ideologically alert and awake (Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah by way of James Anani Amemasor). Thanking the institutions and individuals that contributed towards my dissertation is an arduous task because I fear that not everyone will be acknowledged. I have not included some individual names on purpose because I wanted to protect them, as some of their statements may be controversial. Please know that I appreciate your frankness and insights even if I neglect to mention you by name. I would like to thank the U.S. Department of Education for awarding me the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Program Fellowship, which funded my fieldwork for the period of July 2001-July 2002 based in Cape Coast, Ghana. I would also like to express my gratitude to the Indiana University (IU) Office of International Programs for the Summer Pre-Dissertation Travel Grant and the International Enhancement Grant, allowing me to conduct fieldwork and study the Fante dialect of the Akan language at the University of Cape Coast in the summer of 2000, during which time I was also awarded a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship to study Fante. Prior to this award, I was granted FLAS Fellowships on two additional occasions to study the Asante-Twi dialect of Akan, for which I would like to thank Indiana University’s African Studies Program and the US Department of Education. I would like to thank the IU Department of Anthropology for the David C. Skomp Grant and the IU Center for the Study of Global Change for the Pre-dissertation Research Grant, allowing me to conduct fieldwork in Ghana the summer of 1999. v Finally, I would like to the Indiana University Research and University Graduate School for awarding me the Future Faculty Teaching Fellowship, enabling me to teach courses of my own design in the Department of Anthropology at Indiana University/Purdue University at Indianapolis during the 2003-04 academic year. I arrived in Cape Coast just before PANAFEST 2001 began and had to hit the ground running. My research assistant, host, and friend, Paa Kwesi Sampson, had been directly involved with the planning and execution of previous PANAFESTs in his role as a cultural officer for the K.E.E.A. (Komenda-Edina-Eguafo-Afbrem) district branch of the Center for National Culture. Paa Kwesi’s wife, Philo, accompanied me to PANAFEST and Emancipation Day events, where we informally chatted with festival attendees and were ourselves participant-observers. Paa Kwesi, Philo, and their children (Yaya, Mommie, and Jo-jo) not only invited me to live in their home, but also eventually adopted me into their family. I appreciate their kindness, companionship, hard work, and sacrifice that everyone so unselfishly offered during my stay with them. Upon my arrival, Paa Kwesi arranged for me to meet some of the key figures for PANAFEST 2001. I was grateful for the opportunity to attend a coordinating meeting of the PANAFEST planning committee, where I first met the PANAFEST Executive Director, resident African American, and member of the African Hebrew faith—Rabbi Nathanya Halevi Kohain. He gave me permission to videotape the public events of PANAFEST 2001. Rabbi Kohain and several other local African Americans graciously granted me interviews, invited me into their homes, and made it possible for me to carry out this research. Paa Kwesi also introduced me to several Central Regional traditional chiefs, who have been influential in PANFEST, Emancipation Day, and tourism vi development. These chiefs welcomed my questions and detailed their specific roles and perspectives in pilgrimage tourism. My field assistants, Francis Aggrey and Fred Kissi—together with Paa Kwesi, and I—showed great patience and perseverance in administering surveys to nearly four hundred Cape Coast Ghanaians. These Cape Coasters generously spent countless hours answering our long list of questions about how much they participate in local tourism and what they think of pilgrimage tourism. I cannot thank you all individually by name, but please know that I appreciate your participation in my research. I want to thank Nana Ocran, Mr. Agbo, and the local management of the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board for regarding me as a research intern and allowing me access to Cape Coast and Elmina castles’ grounds and museums free of charge. The tour guides and museum educators at Cape Coast Castle and Elmina Castles allowed me to tag along on many of their tours and ask them a battery of questions—thank you all! I want to especially thank James Anani Amemasor and Clifford Ato Eshun for helping me administer surveys to African and diaspora African visitors. Thanks also to Blankson for our many conversations, sharing of ideas, and encouraging me to assert my opinion. Tourism stakeholders in the Central Region—including representatives of the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board, Ghana Tourist Board, Ghana Heritage Conservation Trust, and the Department of Geography and Tourism at the University of Cape Coast—were all very generous with their time in granting me interviews. In Accra, tour operators, past directors of PANAFEST, officials from the Ministry of Tourism, the director of the W.E.B. DuBois Centre, and one of the first African American migrants to vii Ghana to be granted Ghanaian citizenship all allowed me to interview them. To all of you, I would like to express my sincere gratitude and thanks. While carrying out my fieldwork, I was affiliated with the Department of Geography of Tourism at the University of Cape Coast (UCC). There, I was permitted to review relevant masters’ theses, share my research design and methodologies with professors and graduate students, and liaise with faculty, students, and staff. My departmental sponsor, Professor L.A. Dei, provided tourism citations and advice on managing research assistants. Kofi Nyarko, Edem Amenumey, Dr. Oheneba Akyeampong, Professor Jeurry Blankson, and Professor K. Awusabo-Asare offered constructive criticism of my research project. Dr. Nancy Lundgren, an anthropologist in UCC’s Department of Sociology, not only offered anthropologically-informed methodological advice, but became my friend and unofficial advisor in the field. I appreciate the always cheerful assistance of Francis Annoh with UCC’s Main Library in facilitating the photocopying of many newspaper articles. Several people on both sides of the Atlantic assisted with the transcription of interviews. Thanks especially to Paa Kwesi Sampson, Mr. J.E.K. Aggrey, Mr. Keelson, Mary Frimpong, Arwen Kimmell, and Cindy Rath. Thank you Paul Schauert for enhancing the sound quality of my audio tapes with the help of the Sound And Video Analysis & Instruction Laboratory (SAVAIL) at IU’s Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology. I also want to recognize Tim Miller, with IU’s Instructional Support Services Media Production Staff for transferring some of my fieldwork data from PAL to VHS format, for assisting with my production of a PANAFEST promotional video, and for setting up a visual anthropology laboratory in IU’s Department of Anthropology. viii I am indebted to Robert West of the Department of Economics at the University of North Dakota for helping me run SPSS statistical tests on my questionnaires of visitors to Cape Coast and Elmina castles. He was very selfless with his time, and I appreciate his willingness to help me run many iterations of the survey data. Thank you to Ty Reese of the Department of History at the University of North Dakota for thoughtful comments on chapter two and fruitful discussions regarding Cape Coast Castle and the slave trade. Thank you to my research committee: Gracia Clark, Richard Wilk, Beverly Stoeltje, and John Hanson. When I was an undergraduate, I took Rick Wilk’s introduction to cultural anthropology course in order to fulfill a distribution requirement. His sense of humor, enthusiasm as a teacher, and creative presentation of the discipline, inspired me to change my major to anthropology. Beverly Stoeltje assuaged my overprotective parents’ fears about my initial trip to Ghana as an undergraduate and arranged to have one of her contacts pick me up at the Accra airport. As a graduate student, I have benefited from all of my research committee’s thoughtful comments on grant proposals and my dissertation. I appreciate the constructive feedback on individual chapters offered by my co-chairs, Gracia Clark and Richard Wilk. Beverly Stoeltje and John Hanson have helped me move my thoughts forward in engaging relevant literature on identity, nationalism, memory, and history. Thank you also to Paula Girschick, Stephanie Kane, Kelly Askew, Helen Gremillion, and Hilary Kahn for your academic ideas and support. I would also like to thank my colleagues and friends in the Department of Anthropology and/or the African Studies Program at Indiana who provided intellectual insights and comradery inside and outside of the classroom: Candice Lowe, Layla Al- ix Zubaidi, Lena Mortensen, Tracy Luedke, Kristin Alten, Christina Burke, Cristina Alcalde, Angela Bratton, Kinsey Katchka, Katy Fallon, Liz McMahon, Natalia Taylor, Tristan Purvis, Nik Heynen, and Alex Perullo.