Finding my Ghanaian roots

By this time, my grandfather's career had greatly progressed, and he was the bank manager at the Bank of British West Africa in Cape Coast, a beautiful fishing town two hours west of Accra. 

The family lived in a large house owned by the bank, set high on its own hill overlooking the sea.  The house had, at one time, been inhabited by the governor, and my mother tells me that some of her earliest memories are of bright sunshine, friendly Ghanaians, and her huge "house on the hill".

As children, my sister and I grew up hearing stories of our grandparents' lives in Ghana, often requesting "Africa stories" at bedtime when we stayed at their house.  Although they lived in several locations in Ghana, the stories we loved the most were set in their house in Cape Coast. 

Certain stock-favourites emerged, such as the exciting tale of the snake in the oven (which later morphed into the story of the snake in the pie, thanks to my grandfather's natural talent for story-telling), which we would happily request again and again.  Pictures and cinefilm of my mother and uncle as babies in Cape Coast had also been kept, and they would occasionally be taken out to entertain my sister and me.

On Saturday, 50 years after my grandparents first moved there, I decided to take a trip to Cape Coast to find the fabled "house on the hill". 

Although I knew that the street nearest the house was called Attebury Road, my grandmother had informed me that it had no fixed address, and its location was simply known by those who needed to visit it.  However, she had given me an old photo of the front and rear of the house, and informed me that there was one, smaller, hill in front of it, housing a church.  The ocean, she added, could be seen from three sides of the house.

Slightly off the beaten track, Attebury Road is lined with small houses and shacks, with families busily going about their everyday work, cooking, chatting and watching their children.  Clearly not a usual route for tourists to take, the locals looked more than a little surprised when I, accompanied by my extremely patient Dutch housemate, Aletta, sauntered down the road, stopping frequently to squint upwards at the surrounding hills. 

It soon became clear that, due to the tall trees surrounding each of the hilltop houses in the area (presumably to preserve the privacy of the residents), we were going to have to make an educated guess at which hill to climb, based on its position.

A hill to our left caught my eye, as it seemed to fit the plot's described location, and I could just make out a large white house on its peak.  With only an hour to go before the last bus left for Accra, we were running out of time, and knew that our search would soon have to be cut short if my guess wasn't right.

At the base of the hill, I met an old man who had set up a market stall on the porch of a dilapidated colonial building, and asked him about the house above us. He told me that it had been uninhabited for several years, but that a couple had recently moved in.  "They say that the governor once lived there", he added, conspiratorially.

As we made our way up the winding path to the top - Aletta now looking rather exhausted, but displaying a laudable look of feigned-enthusiasm - the view around us started to unfurl.  On all sides, the sea appeared, and a light ocean breeze whipped up.

As we turned into the drive and the house came into view, I instantly recognised it. This was an exact copy of the house in the pictures:  a large porch spread out across the front, and a long balcony looked down from above.  No major structural changes had occurred, and, given a new lick of white paint, the house would have been the exact image of the one that my family knew.

After knocking rather tentatively on the door, a man in his thirties answered.  Bizarrely, he greeted me with a knowing smile, exclaiming, "Oh, it's you!  Welcome back!"

After I had regained the power of speech (this certainly hadn't been the reaction I had been expecting!), and I had managed to assure him he didn't, in fact, know me, we established that just two months before, another blonde English girl had also visited the house, asked to look around, and explained that her grandparents had lived there. 

The only explanation we could come up with was that another bank official had lived there either just before or after my grandparents, whose granddaughter had just happened to be in Africa, and had the same urge to find the house, at the same time as me.  Very weird..!

After looking around the house and checking that it was definitely the right one - the owner insisted on opening all of the upstairs windows to prove that you could, in fact, see the ocean from three sides - we realised the time, and said our goodbyes.  The wife of our host had also appeared, and made sure that we had their contact details.

As I left, I told them that I would be back again when my mum and uncle visit in October, and the couple offered to open up a few of the guestrooms for us, keen that the house should see the return of its former inhabitants.

As we left Cape Coast, I couldn't quite believe that I had actually found the house.  Even more unbelievable was that it was almost completely unchanged in appearance, and wasn't, as I had feared, unrecognisably renovated. 

Perhaps most astonishing though, was the fact that Aletta refrained from killing me when we - predictably - missed our bus, and had to wait in the dark for two hours whilst our (considerably less comfortable) tro tro arrived.  What a great day!