The night before I left for the center of the world, I didn’t sleep well.
At 3 a.m. she found me wide awake in my parents’ house in Accra. My parents have been slowly constructing this house for over half of my life. Today, for the first time in over a decade, all of us slept under one roof in Ghana.
The frogs in the courtyard were crying. Jet lag stuck to me like an itchy blanket.
Of course, you may’t actually travel to the iron core of this planet. And the Earth’s surface doesn’t really have a “center” – that is not how spheres work. However, centuries of collaboration between a various crew of explorers and astronomers eventually resulted in longitude: imaginary vertical lines radiating from north to south around the globe.
This implies that there may be actually a precise location where 0 degrees of longitude coincides with 0 degrees of latitude. The center of the world, in case you will.
However, unlike the equator (0 degrees latitude), which is equidistant from the north and south poles, there is no such thing as a natural basis for 0 degrees longitude. You can put it anywhere you wish – and other people have done it. Nations around the world have created their very own country specific prime meridians, often passing through their capital cities. Greenwich is a district of the capital of Great Britain – hence the Greenwich meridian, which had a world character adopted in 1884.
The line runs from London across the English Channel, across continental Europe, across the Balearic Sea and down through northwest Africa until it reaches the port city of Tema in Ghana, before dipping into the Gulf of Guinea.
The actual point where the prime meridian hits the equator is in the Atlantic Ocean. But the city in the world closest to this watery landmark is Tema, Ghana, where my mother grew up.
Tema was also my home from the time I used to be one yr old until the summer I turned five and we moved to New Jersey. I discovered about its unexpected location while browsing the Internet a couple of days before my two-week visit to Ghana. I had just left a demanding job and had no plan for what would occur next.
What was the risk of encountering this fact just before a long-awaited departure, with bags full of gifts for members of the family and half-formed questions on how to renew life?
My enthusiasm waned for my Tema relatives. “Will Meridian fix the streets?“ asked one cousin. Rightly.
My mother herself, who called three countries home, aroused some enthusiasm. I still don’t know if he did it for my good (like when you root for a child who proudly shows off a piece of fluff) or because, as an immigrant, she knows what a delicate job it is to tell people where she comes from in terms they can understand.
She and I left Accra for Tema on a Sunday afternoon in the unforgiving sun. The city – usually bustling with food vendors and pedestrians dodging traffic – was quiet. We first stayed at my aunt’s house, a few doors down from where she and my mother grew up.
From there we drove the ridiculously short distance (due to my mother’s wobbly knee) to the former Meridian Church, named for the line that ran through its property. Along the way, we gained a younger cousin – mustachioed, thin and soft-spoken. His facial expression is grim by default, but his laugh reveals the little boy who still lives in my thoughts.
In the car, Mom called Uncle Charles (no relation), an old friend of hers and the owner of the boarding house across the street from the church. He was tapped to show us around.
Uncle Charles has the easy smile and warm, encouraging demeanor of someone who greets guests for a living. As we got out of the car, he and my mom greeted each other in Ga, which I think is my mom’s funniest language.
She speaks quite funny English, and I don’t understand any of her other languages well enough to appreciate her wit, but I swear most of the conversations I overhear in Ga – the lingua franca of this city when she was a girl – unfold within a few minutes into belly-inducing laughter. Maybe it’s just my mother, but I like to imagine the center of the world surrounded by laughter.
As we approached the church gate, a man was taking a nap in the guardhouse. Uncle Charles woke him up, telling him that we would be able to see the Greenwich Meridian line across the yard.
A heated conversation ensued: The guard insisted that he could not allow us to move forward about 30 feet without the express permission of the church official; and since everyone had gone home, we were out of luck.
“That’s ridiculous,” protested Uncle Charles. He had walked there countless times without such permission.
The guard, perhaps not expecting any resistance, gained questionable authority and insisted that he would not let us pass.
Disappointment pooled at my feet. I did not expect that I would be transformed when I touched this ambiguously hallowed ground. But the prospect of this stubborn little man preventing me from achieving my goal made me suffer.
I needn’t have worried. When delicate reasoning failed, it was decided that we would simply walk outside, through the unobstructed courtyard. If this was truly a serious offense, Uncle Charles would take responsibility for it. The guard was clearly unhappy about this challenge to his authority, but beyond attacking us, it wasn’t clear what else he could do.
The Greenwich Meridian is marked by a stone runway. The outside is covered with dusty bricks, then a row of brown rocks, and the inside is a thin strip of speckled purple. At its base stands a tall slab of white stone in the shape of a tower, the zipper of which you can imagine opening up the whole world.
I didn’t think carefully about what I wanted to do on this piece of land. Maybe a moment of meditation. I imagine myself thrown along this line into the Gulf of Guinea, where I will meet the equator.
I tried to keep in mind the deep cosmic and cultural insignificance of this piece of land, along with the irresistible invitation to squeeze some meaning out of it – because how else can you mark life?
My mother interrupted my thoughts when she insisted that I pose for a photo in front of the marker. “No, Mum!” – I said with the particular zeal of an adult child, putting up belated resistance.
Undeterred, she took up a position at the foot of the marker and started taking a selfie video. “Here I am standing on the Prime Meridian!” she said. I suppose we all made meaning in our own way.
Or we weren’t.
My cousin, standing off to the side, pointed to the church behind us.
“What is that this?” I asked him.
“I went to primary school here,” he said. “The church ran my primary school. I didn’t know this line was here.
He spoke clearly, without fanfare. I couldn’t read anything from his expression.
“You don’t really seem to care,” I said.
He began to gesture with genuine confusion towards the space behind me.
“NO,” he said. “I do not care.”
Emefa Addo Agawu, formerly a producer of “The Ezra Klein Show,” has written for The Washington Post, Vox and other publications.
