CAMPBELL: In a land once called the Gold Coast, European castles bestride the African shore like alien invaders. They were built as early as the 15th century and used by Portuguese, Dutchmen, Danes and Britons to imprison and ship out slaves. Today they’re memorials to a trade that shamed humanity.

SEESTAH IMAHKUS NJINGA: Over 500 years ago our ancestors were taken away from these shores in the bowels of ships, brutally raped, robbed of their culture and taken to faraway places, to strange lands.

CAMPBELL: Vienna Robinson is part of a black diaspora that’s come back, even adopting African dress and names. This former New York travel agent now calls herself Seestah Imahkus Njinga.

SEESTAH IMAHKUS NJINGA: We are no longer coons and niggers. We are proud African people who are here where we’re supposed to be. We make no apologies to anyone for what we are doing or how we are doing it. We stand proud as African people.

CAMPBELL: And she’s helping other African Americans make the journey, giving advice on migration, organising tours and staging re-enactments to show what their ancestors suffered.

Europeans kidnapped or bought slaves across West Africa. All were marched overland to the Gold Coast ports. This land’s now called Ghana has become the first stop for African-Americans tracing their roots. They can visit the very dungeons where slaves were crammed in like cattle before being shipped to the Americans.

SEESTAH IMAHKUS NJINGA: We come to give homage to our grandmothers and great grandmothers who were forced to pick cotton in the hot sun, who were forced to bear babies by men that they did not know nor did they care to know.

CAMPBELL: The experience of coming to Cape Coast, the largest of Ghana’s slave ports, brings out raw and long suppressed emotions.

SEESTAH IMAHKUS NJINGA: For too long we were not even considered human. We built this world. So how can you tell me some crap about a founding father in America who owned my parents.

CAMPBELL: Many African Americans come here as a spiritual pilgrimage never intending to stay.

SEESTAH IMAHKUS NJINGA: But it’s okay because you have made the journey.

CAMPBELL: Thousands do stay, transformed by an experience that changes their lives.

SEESTAH IMAHKUS NJINGA: [Returnee activist] When I went into the castle dungeons I knew when I came out that I would never be the same person again. It was emotional. I remember crying and hearing people screaming and seeing all of these women, people laying all over the ground, sick, crying and I was in that and then it was as though I could feel all of these hands, people touching me, embracing me, you know telling me not to cry you know that it was alright. That everything was going to be fine.

CAMPBELL: Seestah Imahkus was one of the first to make the move. In 1990, she and her cab driver husband, Nana Ababio, set up a hotel near Cape Coast leaving their urban jungle for good.

NANA ABABIO: It was a treat to get together to go to the beach but now I find myself at a beach every day so it’s a vast contrast.

CAMPBELL: Still the Atlantic.

NANA ABABIO: Still the Atlantic, right.

CAMPBELL: They came of age in the heady civil rights struggle of the 1960s, amid a growing sense of Pan-African nationalism. Their children thought they were crazy.

SEESTAH IMAHKUS NJINGA: Well they were angry for a long time. That hurt, that really, really hurt but the opportunity to return to the land of one’s ancestors, to be able to make that real connection with who it is that you are, your true identity, the sacrifice of family was worth it because sixteen years later, our family are beginning to come.

CAMPBELL: Up to five thousand blacks are believed to have moved to Ghana from North America, the Caribbean, Brazil and Europe. For many it’s been a bittersweet homecoming.

KWAKU ASANTE: Yes this is home, this is our new home. We’ve been here approximately five weeks now. Of course we’re been in Ghana going on four months.

CAMPBELL: Dr Adwoaa Asatewaa left a university professorship to move to Cape Coast with her husband Kwaku. As expected, they’ve found they can live in relative luxury on their savings.

So if you’re going to retire, this is a better option then going to Florida or…

KWAKU ASANTE: Oh absolutely! Well Florida, if you go to Florida you have to start with a million dollars up front and that’s not going to buy you too much in Florida.

CAMPBELL: But they’ve had to come to terms with a disturbing discovery. The Africans they see as brothers and sisters, see them as strangers.

KWAKU ASANTE: We wanted to feel like we had come home however we later found that we weren’t that welcomed by the native population. We weren’t welcome because they don’t know us and we don’t know them.

CAMPBELL: It takes just a short visit to the local market to see the gulf of five hundred years of separation. Most locals don’t even regard them as fellow blacks. They call them “obruni” meaning whites.

ADWOAA ASATEWAA: How much you going to charge me? And don’t charge me obruni [PHONETIC] prices! Bibini! If you charge me obruni I don’t buy. I like you so I’m going to buy I’d say a thousand but I know you overcharge me.

CAMPBELL: So is she obruni?

MARKET LADY: Obruni.

CAMPBELL: She’s obruni, is she?

MARKET LADY: Yeah.

ADWOAA ASATEWAA: I’m not obruni. I’m bibini.

MARKET LADY: Okay.

ADWOAA ASATEWAA: Okay! Ashanti! It is not a very pleasing way to be identified. You know we don’t want to be called obruni because we certainly weren’t treated like obruni in the US by any stretch of the imagination. We were treated as African people so that is a challenge.

CAMPBELL: She’s also found that people have little sympathy for them as decedents of slaves.

ADWOAA ASATEWAA: They don’t know the history. They don’t know who we are. They don’t know that we are Arbeuybin. They don’t know that we are descendants of the Africans that were taken here to enslavement in to the various Americas. They don’t understand that for the most part. But our task and our challenge is to bring this information back to our brothers and sisters here.

CAMPBELL: Dr Adwoaa wants to learn from Ghanaians but also teach them how to do things properly – beginning with basic hygiene.

DR ADWOAA: You notice too that they have open sewers. Now that is definitely a health hazard and many times you will find that people will be eating and selling food and right underneath are these open sewers which certainly is not good to our health. Of course these are issues and problems that exist in Ghana, that exist amongst our people and we have to try and educate them to the realities of how this kind of living and situation can fester disease.

CAMPBELL: Now if I came here as a white person telling them what to do they’d probably be very offended. As black people do you think you’ve got more leeway?

KWAKU ASANTE: I think we may have more of an edge.

CAMPBELL: Not according to many middle class Ghanaians who are now proudly celebrating fifty years of independence from Britain. Communications consultant Solomon Parker welcomes the returning Africans but not some American attitudes.

SOLOMON PARKER: They should not come in here thinking that they have the rights to change things and they have been given a God given right to go on a mission to change the world.

SEESTAH IMAHKUS NJINGA: We are aggressive. Aggression was something that we had to have in order to survive in America. You didn’t survive in America being very passive. It’s kind of hard after being like that in America then you find yourself in Africa and then you want me to sit back and become passive. I sometimes have to sit on my lips you know? Bite my tongue.

CAMPBELL: Perhaps the biggest disconnect is that many simply don’t understand why Americans would come here. Most Ghanaians earn less than two dollars a day. The number of African Americans returning is dwarfed by the number of Africans trying to get to America. The sight of rich new arrivals only increases the envy.

SOLOMON PARKER: Now if you are a waiter, and you are standing in a restaurant and you are watching African Americans come in or other Ghanaians who have been outside the country come in to eat and spend about three or four, five or six times what you earn in a day on one meal with their family, then of course you’re going to want to go to where they are to try and create a better life for yourself.

CAMPBELL: The irony is that many African Americans believe Africa offers them a better future then America. Mimi Igyan left a comfortable home in Atlanta to bring her three children and her mother Kali to a small rented house in Cape Coast.

MIMI IGYAN: In the United States you never really feel at home. When you are always feeling like you are under pressure, you know you are under so much stress by the police officers, by all the authority figures, you never feel comfortable you know? You never are free to just roam about without someone treating you disrespectfully or just treating you like a criminal or treating you like you’re not even a person. So I feel very good coming here even though with all of its quirks and its inconveniences, you know it’s still home. It’s still home so we feel very good being here.

CAMPBELL: The children attend a local African school, living no differently from the villagers around them.

MIMI IGYAN: I felt as if they were being molested by American culture. You know American culture is too sexually driven, it’s got a lot of violence in it. The schools my children were attending in the United States had become almost prisons and so we’re happy for them here. They have the breezy classrooms you know? And they get to sing and just enjoy being a student you know and enjoy being a kid. It didn’t take but maybe two weeks when the children said they wanted to stay, they said they really like it here. They want to stay so I believe we’re going to stay. I don’t think anything could send me back.

CAMPBELL: Until recently, few Ghanaians gave much thought to the legacy of slavery. It was seen as something Europeans did in the distant past. The government is now holding a series of celebrations to mark the 200th anniversary of Britain’s abolition of slave trading.

The Wilberforce Abolition Bill was a powerful moral statement but it didn’t end the slave trade. Liverpool merchants ignored the ban for another 25 years, the US continued shipping human cargo until the civil war and Arab and Portuguese traders didn’t stop until the end of the 19th century. What’s more, the African Americans who’ve come here believe passionately that the stigma of slavery has continued to the present day.

SEESTAH IMAHKUS NJINGA: I don’t see it as a form of celebration that Ghana should be participating in. You want us to celebrate the abolition of a slave trade that you were responsible for starting or participating in? No I think that that’s hypocritical and I personally would have nothing to do with that.

CAMPBELL: The anniversary has at least focused attention on what slaves and their descendants suffered.

SCHOOL TEACHER: Once you are a slave they have bought you so you are the property of the officials here.

CAMPBELL: For the first time children are learning that it wasn’t just Europeans involved in the trade.

SCHOOL TEACHER: And those behind the trade were some chiefs and they were exchanged for ammunitions like gunpowder, drinkables like whiskey, schnapps and even ordinary mirror.

CAMPBELL: The return of the diaspora is slowly making a mark right across the country. There’s even a steamy jazz joint in the capital Accra and the customers aren’t all Americans. Joey Jay was a London DJ before deciding seventeen years ago to chill out in West Africa.

JOEY JAY: It’s peaceful. I’d rather be here then Iraq or West London.

CAMPBELL: It’s a totally different life but one he’d like many others to follow.

JOEY JAY: You’ve got to secure your future you know and sometimes in life you have to realise that you’re getting older and prepare for your old age. So that’s what I’ve done. So whatever I do after this, I’ll probably be running around the world DJ’ing but at the moment I just need somewhere where I can put my head down and not think about getting on the 266 bus.

CAMPBELL: He’s now developing a housing cooperative for returnees. In a rare sign of reconciliation, a Volta River Chief granted the land in compensation for his ancestor’s role in kidnapping slaves.

JOEY JAY: People from the Caribbean, Brazil, of African descent can come and purchase land here and come and live.

CAMPBELL: A little touch of paradise.

JOEY JAY: Yeah.

CAMPBELL: It’s a nice spot isn’t it?

JOEY JAY: Yeah it is beautiful. It’s very picturesque, very calm. I get involved with the local people, find out what they eat, the culture and everything and then you find you can slip in.

CAMPBELL: Some long term settlers wonder if they’ll ever be completely accepted. The government encourages the black diaspora to visit Ghana but Imahkus suspects what it really wants is their money.

SEESTAH IMAHKUS NJINGA: That’s the impression you get. It’s like bring your resources, you know bring your money and stuff like that but don’t stay long okay? And as far as I’m concerned, anywhere in Africa wherever the spirit leads us to be, we have the right to go there and settle.

CAMPBELL: The slaves who left these castles had no change of ever returning.

MALE TOUR OPERATOR: Many of them didn’t know that some of their descendants would return through this door of no return.

CAMPBELL: Their descendants are coming back in their name, closing the circle on half a millennium of misery. They are still to close the gap that separates them from the African born. Two hundred years after slavery here was abolished, they are finally starting to feel free.