In 1997, long before Ghanaian president Nana Akufo-Addo launched the “Year of Return” welcoming African diasporans to Ghana, the Black American scholar Saidiya Hartman travelled there to retrace the routes of the Atlantic slave trade. Hoping to be treated as kin, Hartman quickly realised that Ghanaians saw her as an “obruni” or stranger, “a foreigner from across the sea”, as she writes in her 2006 book, Lose Your Mother. It is a similar welcome, combining mistrust, admiration and envy, that Black gay American friends Elton, Scott and Vincent receive when they land in Accra in Ghanaian author Kobby Ben Ben’s bold and provocative debut, No One Dies Yet.
The year is 2019. “Returnees” are swarming Ghana’s forts and castles. Our American trio share the fervour, but they are keener still to explore the country’s underground queer scene. They enlist the help of two locals: Elton’s friend for sex, the sassy and flamboyant aspiring crime novelist Kobby (playfully named after Ben Ben), and Nana (cheekily named after Ghana’s president), an enterprising religious homophobe whom they mistake at first for an escort.
