Students Seek Roots in Ghana

COLUMBIA - Parked on a dirt road in a small village in Ghana, Morgan Van Dyke, 13, waited to come face-to-face with her roots.

Staring through the bus window at a large white house, she waited for its front door to open.

The people, she hoped, were related to her - a limb of her family tree that wasn't enslaved and brought to America. Instead, these family members live in the fishing village of Elmina in a large family home.

For Morgan, the school trip was a chance to connect with her ancestry.

Van Dyke's meeting was part of Richland District 1's Student Exchange to Africa, or ROSETA, program, in which Morgan and 10 other students traveled to Ghana for two weeks in June.

The program started in 1993 and allows students to travel to the country on the western coast of Africa. Each year, middle-schoolers apply to go on the trip and are picked by school leaders. Each student raises $2,400 to pay his or her own way.

They visited schools with barren walls and no air conditioning; open-air markets where colorful clothes, beads and handmade knickknacks are sold; and slave castles where Africans were once held in captivity before being sent to the colonies of the New World.

Jim Manning, 14, said he enjoyed connecting with the Ghanaian people, most of whom were friendly and welcoming.

During a church service, Jim, an A.C. Flora High School freshman, and the other students recognized the congregation was singing the doxology in Ga, one of the languages spoken in Ghana.

"So we all started singing along in English," Jim said. "It was neat to connect to people in that way even though we live so far apart."

While participating in traditional dinners and visiting historical sites, students learned about the culture, government and its people. They also appeared on a national TV show similar to "Good Morning America."

And they learned about themselves, too.

"This makes history real," said Alfred Vanderpuije, principal of W.A. Perry Middle School, who led the group. "Most of these kids are African-American students who have heard about the history of how Africans were taken as slaves from West Africa."

It's a priceless experience, parents say - an experience most of them will never have.

"It was worth the sacrifice," said Greer Pickett, Morgan's mother. "We just had to put our pennies together, me and her grandmother."

Pickett's church, Bluff Road United Methodist Church, also helped out.

When the trip was being planned, Vanderpuije, a native of Ghana, told Pickett her daughter was in for a unique experience.

The Vanderpujis and the Van Dyke families are considered cousin families and have always stayed close, he said of the names, which are common in Ghana.

Vanderpuije should know. His family has ties to the area, as his mother's family is from Elmina and his father is one of seven chiefs of Accra, Ghana's capital.

He knew many Van Dykes live in Elmina, near Cape Coast in southern Ghana.

During the day trip to Elmina, it didn't take long to find the family home.

A man and woman in their late 30s answered the door. Morgan got off the bus and asked them questions.

"It's just the two of them living there now," Morgan said. "We weren't sure if we were related or not."

Morgan and the couple boarded the bus, so the students and chaperones could meet them. "They looked very similar in the face," said Nat Miller, a Richland 1 superintendent who went on the trip. "It was really amazing."