Journey of One Step

January 20, 2017
Memphis, Tennessee

I once heard someone say “The journey is a thousand miles begins with a single step.” At first I didn’t understand what it meant because all my life I’ve been taking steps and nothing change. Ever since I joined One Step Initiative, I’ve seen improvement in my life. I rode a plane for the first time, visited Ghana, West Africa, and had new experiences along the way. Going to Ghana while sitting on a plane I could feel my anxiety build, but I knew that I was in for over a ten-hour flight, a time zone change, and a drastic change of weather, but I didn’t know what else to expect beyond that. The thrill of the unknown was overwhelming.

As we approached the ground, beautiful building and structures took my breath away because the image I had of Ghana was so different. The city of Accra is totally different from home because there were people everywhere, people selling items in large bowls on their heads and when you look around you see people walking around road side shops buying and selling items; no matter where you looked there were people. One day we went to the W.E.B. Du Bois Memorial Museum. After walking through the museum, I had a better perspective of how Du Bois had such a strong influence on Ghana’s history and how he brought a new sense of hope to the people of Ghana. At first I didn’t want to travel to West Africa, but I’m glad I did because the program was a great out of the classroom lesson.

After everything I learned in sessions at home and while travelling with One Step Initiative, I feel that I can tell people about what it’s like because I was there, experienced the culture, and saw it with my own eyes. So now that I’m back home and if anyone asks me today or any other day about what I learned from this trip I’ll tell them “it’s a once in a lifetime experience that you can only understand by living it yourself.”