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I have written quite a bit on the subject of “my parents come from there”.  This is the story I tell of the children of Ghanaians in the diaspora who see themselves as coming from north London or Newcastle or Frankfurt and Ghana as the place their parents talk endlessly about .

These children come from Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States or wherever their Ghanaian parents have settled. 

This condition can lead to some rather interesting situations. Take the African Society gatherings at any of the fancy US universities and listen carefully to the members introducing themselves. I happen to know about Columbia University, so let’s take that as a concrete example. The majority of the members would introduce themselves as coming from California, Minnesota, Texas, Indiana or whatever other state in the US and then as an afterthought, they would add: “originally from Nigeria, or Kenya or Sierra Leone” and the few who came to the University directly from schools in Ghana or South Africa or elsewhere on the continent, find themselves scrambling to assert their identities as the real Africans.

Now I discover the phenomenon of “my parents come from there” is not reserved to Ghanaians who live in the diaspora. The phenomenon exists and thrives very much here in Ghana and indeed, in Accra. 

My dear Abutia
I met a young lady the other day who was trying to put a name to my face, which she thought looked familiar to her. Her face lighted into a smile as she thought she had found the answer: “you come from the same village as my father, you come from Abutia”. 

I took a deep breath; anybody who has ever had to deal with me, has heard about Abutia, and so I thought that comment hardly constituted a significant insight. But I was curious that the young lady said her father came from there; so where did she come from, I asked. She smiled and said both  parents came from Abutia. 

My young friend told me she came from Madina. To the uninitiated, Madina is a suburb to the northeast of Accra. Has she been to Abutia before, I asked. Her father takes her and her siblings to Abutia during the Easter celebrations and they have been to a few funerals as well. 

I had a pleasant conversation with the young lady and I am certain she will be going places in life and I will certainly be rooting for her. But I must say she has shaken me thoroughly. 

This young lady is not in any way or form ashamed of or reluctant to be associated with Abutia or ashamed to be seen as coming from a village, which is what my dear Abutia is. She has thought the matter through for herself; she is not persuaded that the concept of hometown should be interpreted as where your parents come from. She reckons that in her twenty-something years, she has probably slept in Abutia 15 times, to the best of her recollection. 

She was born in Madina, her home is in Madina, she grew up there, her friends are there and even though she doesn’t live there now since she finished university, her parents and younger siblings live there and she goes to visit often. That is the place of her home and that is her hometown, if someone wants to know.

Changing attitudes
I wonder if the Ghana public service has kept up with these changes  in its attitudes. When you were employed in the public service, you had to put down your hometown in the records for your personal details. Something called “leave allowance” used to be calculated according to the distance between where you were stationed and your hometown. 

There was a popular tale in the service that a surprising number of public servants came from the geographical extremities of Ghana; Axim to the southwest, Denu to the southeast, Wa to the upper west and Navrongo to the upper east. 

There are more questions that arise: if your hometown is Madina or Adenta or North Labone or Airport Residential or Mallam or Weija, does that mean you are a Ga? 

Is this a generational phenomenon, and I wonder if our sociologists have caught up with it?    

For years I had been openly contemptuous of those I call “Professional Ewes/Fantes/Akyems/Dagombas”, who are born, bred and raised in Accra and who go on to claim membership of tribes and try to outdo those who live in the home areas of these tribes. I had never really tried to answer the question if I thought you could only be an Ewe if you were born and bred in the Volta Region. 

Would Abutia die?
We now have a generation of Ghanaian children whose mother tongue is English. That is the language spoken at home, never mind the quality. Many of these children pick up some Ghanaian languages at school and are never comfortable speaking them. I am not passing any judgement on whether this is a good thing or not; I am simply stating a reality. 

Are those children Fante/Ewe/ Ga or whatever their parents claim to be or are they free to say their parents come from there? In any case, where do they come from? Do they have to come from somewhere necessarily? 

Since official policy no longer seems to encompass the idea of rural development, it would seem that before very long, most people in Ghana would come from Accra, Kumasi, Sekondi-Takoradi, Sunyani, Tamale and a few other big towns. Parents and grandparents  would come from  Abutias and when they die off, the Abutias too will die. I am glad I won’t be around to see it.