Breath of the Ancestors

When I think of Friends in Africa, I gen­er­al­ly pic­ture the large East African year­ly meet­ings in Kenya and Ugan­da which trace their begin­nings to three evan­gel­i­cal Friends who arrived in Kenya in 1902 and set up a mis­sion in Kaimosi.

In this mon­th’s Friends Jour­nal Paul Rick­etts pro­files a small­er Quak­er out­post on the Atlantic coast in Ghana. A group of Amer­i­cans trav­eled there last year as a del­e­ga­tion of the Fel­low­ship of Friends of African Descent.

Ghana was also the depar­ture point of mil­lions of enslaved Africans head­ed toward death and mis­ery in the West­ern Hemi­sphere. Paul takes us to infa­mous Elmi­na Cas­tle, where the ships were loaded with chained human car­go. I always enjoy sto­ries of Quak­er inter­vis­i­ta­tion but this one is espe­cial­ly poignant.