Accra, Ghana – Ashley Haruna never intended to stay in Ghana. But everything changed for the 28-year-old health coach when she stood facing a dark cell inside the stone walls of Cape Coast Castle. As the tour guide explained that many of the enslaved people who’d once been held there had ended up in Haiti, Haruna says she “felt something”.

Having grown up in the United States to Haitian parents, she realised “my ancestors could’ve passed through here. This place. This ground.

“I wasn’t looking for that,” she reflects. “But it found me.”

The feeling it stirred within her only grew when she returned home to Ohio. After a few months, with her family’s reluctant approval, she returned to Ghana – for good.

That was in December 2021, and Haruna was following in the footsteps of many other A

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