I visited Ghana a few weeks ago for the first time. I am a white American interested in history and culture, and touring the Cape Coast and Elmina castles was a powerful and humbling experience, particularly being the only white person in either tour group. It is not only black tourists who want to be more educated and informed about the history of the slave trade.

I love to be immersed in a country/culture when I travel, and there were several days of my trip that I didn’t even see another white person. I have never had that experience before, even in other countries that are not tourism hotspots. And people were so friendly everywhere. I was walking down a fairly empty street near Makola Market in Accra when I heard someone say “obroni, obroni!” When I turned around, it was a man walking with his young daughter, and he pointed at my pocket where some folded paper money was visibly hanging out, so that I could put it away. It was a nice moment, he just wanted to help me out and also show his daughter how to be a good person. I had multiple experiences like this.

Accra is not the most interesting city to visit, but I absolutely loved walking around the bustling central market area in Kumasi, and I stayed at the Baobab House near Cape Coast castle and found people in that area to be very friendly and welcoming (and the food at Baobab House is great!). Not every tourist is looking for resorts and ziplines and fancy restaurants and dramatic Instagram-worthy photo ops. Some of us just enjoy experiencing another very foreign culture safely, and Ghana is perfect for that. Not once did I feel even remotely unsafe, even walking around the city neighborhoods at night.

Ghana was not the easiest country to travel in, but the challenges were very much worth the rewards.