1. In 1948, the colonial masters established sister universities in Ibadan and Accra. Fourteen years later, and after independence, the universities would begin the University of Ibadan X University of Ghana Bilateral Games to honour their shared history. If you were lucky enough not to be caught in the programme’s famously inconsistent planning, you might participate. If you were luckier still, you would represent your university in the other country. And if you were the luckiest of all, your friend, who insists luck has never been on her side, would win her game, and recommend your name for the next contingent. You would pack your bags for Accra.
2. Girl and boy have always debated against each other as rival halls in their university’s inter-hall debates. The first time the boy sees the girl, she's beating his hall of residence on the hallowed Trenchard stage. The next time they meet, they're still at Trenchard. She's a timekeeper for the first leg of the bilateral games in UI. He's in the audience, his eyes returning to her.
This time, they are not on opposing sides. The girl and the boy make the team for the return leg of the bilateral games. They spend a month on the last floor of the Communication and Language Arts building, reading Nkrumah and Nyerere, building cases. Eventually, books and music take over. Soon, they are seated at the boy’s hostel cafeteria with Paul Kalanithi's ‘When Breath Becomes Air’ between them. The boy’s eyes remain on the girl. She can’t hold his gaze. The girl doesn't want to believe what she senses about the boy. After all, she had been talking to his friend.
3. The year my mother met my father, he was in Ghana for a church event. My mother had sworn she needed a break from the drama at home - a fallout with her cousin over some missing jewellery - and decided to spend Christmas with this young, sweet Nigerian pastor she'd just met. I've never asked for details. In fact, I never asked my father because I knew very early how much of a love story theirs wasn’t.
4. This is my first time in Ghana since my father died. I’m less hesitant now to tell my coach we would be seeing my mom's city and that I might leave briefly to see my uncles. I was fifteen the first time I took pride in being Ghanaian. I had just run away from my father's house to my mother's. I wrapped her kente, wore my cheap gold earrings and sat on a stool against the sitting room wall with a black fabric stretched out for a backdrop. My Instagram caption read ‘Embracing a part of me I have never had the chance to’. That day, I had two worries: one, I was worried my mom would find out I was baring my shoulders on the internet; even more, I was worried my father would find out I had told the internet I was Ghanaian.
5. Lengthy delays at the borders meant our twelve-hour journey turned into nineteen. We hadn't accounted for the two-hour stop at Seme and Hillacondji, navigating bribe conversations in broken French. At Aflao, to my surprise, there was no squeezing cash into a handshake.
6. My first year at the University of Ibadan, I was walking back to my hostel with a guy. Right at the bend on the road, the security men flashed a torch in our direction. I took the cue, as it was mere minutes to the 9:30 PM curfew. I hurriedly hugged the guy goodnight and ran, hoping to make it before the doors closed. I didn’t. By the time I reached the security men, I had broken three rules: I had brought a man near the hostel after 8 p.m, making him a potential criminal; I had run across the lawn to beat the curfew and I was now late thanks to their questioning.
These accusations led to a heated back and forth, especially as the first offence was never publicised.
Three grown men simply couldn’t stomach a young woman choosing to hug a man goodnight at her pace over the fear they expected their shrivelled presence to command. After what felt like forever, the inevitable questions came up:
What year are you in? Bring your ID card.
What’s your name?
My father’s anglicised Yoruba surname always led to another question.
‘Where are you from?’
By then, we had been arguing for nearly fifteen minutes. The last thing I wanted at that moment was to be Yoruba – to become their daughter. A Yoruba girl who should have known better than to speak back to her elders and who could now be reprimanded in the language.
‘I’m Ghanaian’
Each man’s voice softened after the next.
‘Imagine, you are even a foreign student!’
‘I knew there was something; our girls don't behave like this.’
My ID card was handed back to me and I walked in without being fined.
7. The contingent was lodged in a hotel for the duration of the games. Rooms were assigned by gender with guys on one end and ladies on the other. Hotel rooms have a way of suspending consequences. So when the boy asks if he can sleep in the girl's bed, the girl says yes. The next night he is back, and the girl lets him in again. This time, she reaches for his hand. Eros guides their bodies through laughter, water, and sweat. In the morning, they admire the long blue rug with gold patterns, stretching down the hallway and joke about ‘The Shining’ as he slips back into his own room. When they lose the game, they would feel a bit guilty about time spent this way. Only briefly.
8. Briefly, the girl and the boy believe what happened in Ghana should stay in Ghana.
9. Growing up, my father insisted we tell people my mother was South African. Only years later would I realise the irony of this alternative. He had replaced one imagined prejudice with a country better known for its xenophobia.
I’ve never been sure where his animosity towards Ghanaians came from. He made it seem as though this lie was to protect my mother and, by extension, me and my sisters. I initially assumed it had to do with his Deeper Life mother and my mother’s dreadlocks and eventually, perhaps in his mythomania nature, he’d simply decided somewhere along the line that South Africa was better.
At the time, it made sense. After all, I would hear at school that Ghanaian actresses were ‘corrupt’ for kissing onscreen, for dressing in clothes considered explicit at the time. ‘Ghanaian’ was the reason she finally left the house he'd made unsafe. ‘Ghanaian’ was also the reason I forgot to greet. ‘Ghanaian’ was really just his favourite slur.
10. ‘I am not African because I was born in Africa, but because Africa was born in me.’ I wonder what Nkrumah would make of the entrance fee to his memorial park when even ECOWAS passport holders had to join and pay in the ‘Foreigners’ queue.
11. Sometimes I sit and wonder how unrestricted it must have felt. I imagine my mom packing a small travel box, perhaps one smaller than my box for this trip. Throwing in only what could be considered necessities and leaving for another country, simply because she wanted to. As of the time of writing this, I'm some hours away from turning the age my mother was at the time she made that decision. I can only dream of the security and affordability of such a time.
12. The boy and the girl are in Makola Market, shopping for souvenirs to take home. The girl's eyes catch a stall lined with waist beads. She asks the boy for a colour that suits her. Eros. Later that day, in Room 205, their bodies are pressed against the mirror, his fingers tracing the red beads as he had imagined.
13. What happened in Ghana didn’t stay in Ghana. In the late 90s, the woman packed her bag for the Christmas trip.
14. The boy and the girl sit in the last row of a thirty-seater coaster bus. To their left is a heap of travelling boxes and hurriedly packed bags, stuffed in the dim light before dawn. They occupy the only two seats in the row, paying little attention to what such deliberate isolation might look like on a school trip.
The bus is headed for the Aflao border. They share the boy's headphones, listening to Hozier's ‘Northern Attitude’ on repeat, cut off from the hotel Wi-Fi and, with it, the internet. The girl has her eyes closed, quietly waiting for ingested Diclofenac pills to dull the ache in her body.
The boy nudges her.
‘Isn't that your village?’
She opens her eyes.
There it is, printed on a weathered signboard.
Agbozume.
Beyond it, only bush and a narrow mud path disappearing into the distance. Then it's gone, and the bus keeps moving.
What happens in Ghana doesn't stay in Ghana.
Sapphire Mclaniyi-Agbley is a Communication and Language Arts graduate of the University of Ibadan and the 2025 winner of the Abebi AfroNonfiction Award. She has published in or has forthcoming works in Lolwe, Isele Magazine, Brittle Paper, Kurating mag, Almanak Media, IFA Journal, The Feminist Mag., Kenya and Naija Feminist Media. With her directing debut at the Fadaca Film and Theatre Fest, 2026.
When she’s not immersed in books or crafting her own stories, you’ll find her swimming or dancing salsa.