PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Twenty Philadelphia charter school students are just back from a 10-day trip to West Africa, where they studied the transatlantic slave trade.
The trip to Ghana was a personal and poignant voyage for the seventh-graders from Global Leadership Academy West and GLA Southwest.
Trips are part of the charters’ mission, according GLA founder Dr. Naomi Johnson Booker. “From kindergarten to eighth grade, our children travel,” she said.
In Ghana, students walked the same ground as people who were enslaved. “We went to a place called the Last Bath, which was a place where they gave them their last baths before they loaded them up onto the slave ships,” Booker told KYW Newsradio.
“We went to a dungeon and we saw where our ancestors were treated. We went through the Door of No Return.”
She added, “We would be on the bus riding through the streets of Ghana and then we would be talking about things that we saw, as well as how it affected us.”
GLA West student Naomi Belechew said there was a clear contrast between the places where the masters lived and the slave quarters.
“It was very dark in the dungeons. I can tell you that,” she said. “It was very, very dark. And there wasn’t very good ventilation.”
Fundraisers and donations helped to offset the cost of the trip.
Students are planning a school presentation about their excursion this month. “I’ll definitely talk about it because it was a life changing experience for me,” said Belechew.