Hi. I also posted this in the travel writing forum. This may be more appropriate.

I have joined to get advice on where and whom to approach for an article I’d like to write.

I spent the last 12 months living and working in Ghana and racked up several hundred pages of writing (of which about half could be cut as it was written madly between power outages).

What drives me now is what I learnt there. I learnt that the information we receive about Africa in the media is so limited – war, famine, and disease. It’s true, the continent is struggling terribly with these problems and they’re very real and must be addressed. However, Africa isn’t one homogenous blob of people all starving and killing each other.

I want to tell the story of a place that debunks many of the myths. I want to tell the story of a part of Africa which is largely unknown – Ghana – three stops left of Nigeria. There is a book called '1001 places you must visit before you die' – no West African country is listed. It’s shameful that the rest of the world just doesn’t know or care.

Yet here is a country with successive, peaceful, democratic elections (corruption has its own chapter), extremely safe for independent travelers, extremely vibrant and welcoming, thriving relative to the rest of Africa, though having a long, long way to go to meet basic living standards.

It’s a place where you can walk down any street or village at night alone (women too) and not feel threatened – you’re more likely to receive a marriage proposal and a new husband. A place where in preschool the teacher writes rules on the board – be kind to your Muslim brother and sister. Where Muslims and Christians coexist in relative harmony. Where women making less than a dollar a day balance metal containers of chilled ‘pure water’ to sell to passing buses in the hot mid-day sun while dancing and singing – to make half a dollar for the day, if lucky. Where academia is thriving, students protest, the media is independent and critical.

On the negative side, tens of thousands are killed by malaria each year, children in school are beaten for being stupid – dyslexia has never been heard of, corruption is rife and robbing the people of their natural inheritance, sanitation is non-existent in many areas, transport is the biggest killer – I rewrote my will while there.

And who knows about Ghana? Idyllic beaches, jungle, savannah, mountains, friendly people, the works...

My question is this: Next year – March - is 50 years since independence. Ghana was the first African country to assume independence (from the British, as it were). 2007 is also 200 years since the official abolition of the slave trade. Ghana was one of the biggest slaving nations under various colonial rulers. And, since the world cup...

Ghana’s coastline is dotted with about 30 ‘castles’. Many were used to transport slaves from all over West Africa to the ‘free world’. I lived about 800 metres from the most prolific slave trading castle, Elmina Castle. I stood on the unfinished flat roof of our crumbling house each day to look over to it standing on a rocky outcrop in the ocean. About 8 – 20 million slaves were shipped through that castle. It is also the oldest standing western building in Africa south of the Sahara – Michelangelo was a wee boy when it was being built by the Portugese.

There have been several articles published recently on Elmina Castle and the history of the slave trade, including in the NY Times, usually focusing on diaspora returning to discover their past.

However, leading up to these two anniversaries, I feel it is a good time to write an article capturing the spirit of the country to encourage tourism next year. No one ever focuses on women, so I’m thinking I could theme it something like, ‘slave trade to fair trade…’ – the women slaves of the past and the castle – though not the dominant theme, and the women participating in the fair trade movement in the area producing and exporting to the USA. Some focus on the town as most tourists drive through it, never walking through. It’s a lively fishing village with hundreds of pirogues exiting the harbour daily to fish in the ocean and squeeze back into the lagoon past the castle at night. I don’t know. It’s one idea.

Or, a more general look at the village where the castle stands, its evolution since the slave trade, the things that can be experienced in the region, as a microcosm of Ghana and celebration of evolution since slaving times and independence.

I want to donate any income from this to the fair trade org I worked with in the area – also part of my motivation.

My question is, what type of publications would welcome this? Should I write it first, or pitch it first? What type of length? I’m thinking 1000-1500 words.

Apologies for the length of this. I promise to keep any future posts short.

I really appreciate any feedback.

Abrobe,

I have posted a response to this in the travel writers forum. Hope it helps.

Richard.

FYI, sarah Mussi, a children's writer married to a Ghanaian, has written a children's book caled The Door of No Return based around the castles & slave trade from Ghana. TBP March (I think).
I work for a v. multicultural publisher and we are doing an exhbition in the centre of Coventry focusing on the different African countries, including Ghana. Can't immediately think of where you'd go to place your article, apart from mainstream travel mags, etc (as Richard Brown probably has already said).

Hi, I've also heard of this book, The Door of No Return, through a south London connection. Apparently there was some publicity about it was at the Lambeth County Show. It is good to get more out there about Africa especially as next year is the anniversary of such important events. It's good that kids get a to read about such places too in a way that doesn't bash them over the head. Maybe you can adapt your article for students in schools there's bound to be teachers who want more information - how about the TES or similar?