Moving To Ghana as a Single Mom

[00:00:00] Paula: Hello, everyone. I am Paula Okonneh, host of Chatting with the Experts TV show, where I showcase the exceptional lives, professional lives of women from Africa and the Caribbean who now live abroad meaning Europe, North America, the UK or Australia. I also speak to women who did not leave Africa and the Caribbean and still live there.
[00:01:02] Paula: And what we do is we strive to teach, empower, and inspire women from all over the world from their stories, that’s the stories of these women, and their lives. Today is no exception. I have an exceptional, fantastic woman who will be talking about her journey. In the world, but in particular, we’re going to talk about a book which is called Single Mom’s Guide Moving To Ghana.
[00:01:36] Paula: So let me tell you about this fantastic woman. Her name is Karlene Thompson, and she’s a native of Jamaica, and she spent over two decades in the United States, but her thirst for new adventure and her desire to provide her children with a truly unique upbringing. led her on an extraordinary journey, and she shares her experience with herself and her two sons as they embark on an extraordinarily fantastic adventure.
[00:02:15] Paula: And with that, I welcome my guest, Karlene Thompson, to chat in with the experts.
[00:02:26] Karlene: Hello, how are you?
[00:02:29] Paula: I’m great, thank you for coming on to Chatting with the Experts where you can share with my listeners and my viewers your experience on moving to Ghana as a single mom.
[00:02:42] Karlene: Thank you for having me. This is a very exciting time for me. This is all new experiences for me, so I’m hoping that I can share some insights that I have with your audience.
[00:02:53] Paula: Absolutely. What I know the first question some people may ask and I’m asking, why Ghana?
[00:03:00] Karlene: Why Ghana? I got that question a lot when I was deciding to make this move. And why Ghana? Why anywhere in Africa for that matter? The thing is Africa, the whole continent has been painted with a paint that it is poor, it’s backwards. People live in huts and they eat. They don’t eat or there’s wild animals and all these bad negative pictures that is painted on Africa and people are accepting this for truth and not wanting to see for themselves and I had the experience of having been there myself and experienced the wonders the beauty and all of the resources that are available in different places and especially Ghana and I wanted to show people that They need to make that move for themselves and decide for themselves if they want to make that move or not. And so I wanted to make sure that I set up the steps or the things that they needed to do to get there as quickly as possible without the hurdles that I had to go through and made it as easy as possible for anyone who wanted to do that for themselves so that they can experience all of these things that I experienced and decide for themselves without having to hear from somebody else.
[00:04:17] Paula: I love that. Alright. So that’s a good explanation on why Ghana, why Africa and then why Ghana in particular. Okay, so let’s say I’m a single mom, which I’m not, and I’m planning on moving to Ghana. What are some of the things I need to consider?
[00:04:33] Karlene: Some of the things that I had to consider was education for my children. I thought about whether I would want to send them to the schools that are there. I looked at the different schools, the different systems that are there. They’re based on a British system, and I didn’t want to go down that road. I grew up in a British system in Jamaica myself, but it was also comparing the standards of the African system to America. And I didn’t find that they compared very well. So I decided to do my search in a homeschool setting and try to make it as easy as possible. I tried to make it online. Initially, all of our schooling was not online. So I had to pack up boxes and boxes of books and take it with me when I traveled. But eventually the school that I joined with moved to an online program and that made it so much easier.
[00:05:26] Karlene: We can take it anywhere we’re traveling to. We can move ahead. We can stop. It’s so much simpler. We can go anywhere we want to, whenever we want to. So that’s what we decided to do. So that was one thing that I had to consider, education. And then the other thing was the cultural differences. Africa was something that was new to my children.
[00:05:48] Karlene: They had never been to Africa, but they took to it so quickly, so easily. It was like, it was nothing for them. So they played with the local kids, they learned some of the local languages, they got into all of the activities. It was exciting for them. So those are some of the things that I considered. As far as being a single mom, doing it alone was a little bit difficult, but thankfully I had family that were there to support me.
[00:06:16] Karlene: My mom was my main support, but there are friends there as well. And we met different people along the way. So that helped a lot. So we have a lot of support along the way. So that helped.
[00:06:27] Paula: So there’s a question I’m going to ask you. So you, your kids, from my understanding, you lived in the U S for some time. And so your kids probably were born there.
[00:06:37] Karlene: Yes.
[00:06:38] Paula: Born in the U S. Okay. So now from what I… I read your book, by the way, oh, excited.
[00:06:44] Karlene: Oh, thank you, nice.
[00:06:46] Paula: Yeah, I read the whole book and so I wanted you to explain to my viewers that, okay, you’re a single mom and then your marriage unfortunately broke down and now you wanted to travel with your children. So now you’re going to Ghana. You’re deciding that you’re going to go to Ghana. So what happens? You’re not with your husband. You’ve got to take these children. Are there some things as a single mom in particular that you have to put into consideration? Can you just take these two children and leave?
[00:07:12] Karlene: No. I didn’t. That would be crazy. I had to make sure that The custody agreement that I had in place allowed me to be the primary custodian and have final decisions on any major decisions. So I had tiebreaker what do you call it? Tiebreaker clause placed into the custody agreement. So that if we came up on any kind of disagreements and we couldn’t come to a decision, then I as the main parents taking care of the children or my children could make the decision in their best interest and that’s what I did. So that’s one of the main things as far as having custody of your children.
[00:07:50] Karlene: And then the other thing is the fathers were not interested or not involved. They were not that included in the parenting process. That made it a lot better. But if somebody has a spouse or ex-spouse who wants to maintain that connection, it can be a little bit more difficult and that’s something they may have to maneuver and try to come to some kind of decision between the both of them. I’m sure if both parents are agreeable, they can work out something where they share a visitation, meet somewhere in the middle and, work out that kind of agreement between each other. But mine was a little bit easier in that they didn’t want to be involved at all.
[00:08:29] Paula: Okay. Alright. They didn’t want to be involved. So you didn’t have much of a custody paperwork probably involved like now you’re taking these children out of the country. And…
[00:08:39] Karlene: right.
[00:08:40] Paula: Okay. Alright. So this is really about a single mom. So what else would a single mom need to know? Because there’s a difference between just taking your children out, but taking your children out, as a couple. But the fact that you named your book Single, there’s a reason for that.
[00:08:58] Karlene: Yes, I said single because I’m not married for one and not that I’m looking for a relationship, but being as an only parent trying to do what two people would have a difficult time doing, there were struggles along the way. Yes, I hit a lot of roadblocks. And one thing is that you’re a woman. If it was a single man, it might not have been a bad thing because in a patriarchal society as Ghana is women are treated differently. If I took my car to the garage in America, it’s similar to how they treat the women here.
[00:09:36] Karlene: There’s a little bit of cultural differences where that is concerned. You have to be aware that being a woman you have to be a little bit more strong. You have to be more forthright in what you want. You have to stand up for yourself. You don’t have that man to support you. You don’t have that man to speak for you or to represent you. So that’s the part that I wanted to make clear. It’s not just being single but being a woman as well.
[00:10:03] Karlene: It’s a lot different than just having a partner to do it with. You can say, okay, your husband can go take care of these things or your partner can take care of these situations. I had to do all by myself or all for my children as well. So there’s that. It’s not just me being single. Yeah.
[00:10:21] Paula: Okay, thanks for that. But I also know because I have connection with Nigeria and even with Ghana.
[00:10:28] Karlene: Yeah.
[00:10:29] Paula: Being a woman and being a single woman takes on a different dimension.
[00:10:33] Karlene: Yes, absolutely. As in Nigeria, there was a time when I wanted to take them on a trip to Nigeria and I couldn’t because I needed to have a man to give permission, to write a letter to say you can take your children. I am the only one that is involved or is responsible for my children, why do I need to have a letter from the man? So we never actually, and I never took the kids to Nigeria because I didn’t want to have to deal with the hassle of that. You hit up certain barriers that you have to decide which battles to fight. And, I just didn’t fight that one.
[00:11:05] Paula: Okay, I got you. Alright. So we talked about custody because you were bringing the children from the United States. Did you all need a visa? Is that something that a mom needs to consider put into consideration?
[00:11:15] Karlene: Yes, absolutely. In Ghana, you do need a visa to come here and it’s basically the same process as if you’re going to any other country. It’s not any longer… now with COVID, I don’t know. I did this before COVID, so it’s a little bit smoother. I don’t know what the process is, it probably is going to take a little longer because of backlog and all that other stuff. But I took them to the office that day. We got the visa that day and we could fly out up to six months after we got the visa. It’s not a problem.
[00:11:43] Paula: Okay. And how long can you… I mean your visas for 90 days?
[00:11:49] Karlene: 90 days. And once you’re in the country, you can get an extension, you can get another 30 days extension. I think you get up to three extensions. But what we did was we would go over to Benin or we’d go to Togo and come back. And so that kind of broke up the extension process and made it a little bit more seamless.
[00:12:08] Paula: You are indeed a global traveler.
[00:12:10] Karlene: You can learn.
[00:12:11] Paula: So you’d go back to Benin and to Togo. But they speak French there, don’t they?
[00:12:16] Karlene: Yes, they do. So we learned a little French
[00:12:21] Paula: Oh, I love that. Alright, so now we’ve got the visa, you’ve got the custody of your boys, and you fly, to Ghana. Oh, did you go, check it out first. Did you go scope it out okay, have a house that you’re gonna rent? Figure out , I know you said that you’re going to homeschool them.
[00:12:39] Paula: What about transportation? Did you get a car? How, what were your next steps once you got to Ghana? What happened then?
[00:12:46] Karlene: So previous to me being married, having kids and all that, I traveled before, so I traveled to Ghana and as a single person. So I went there, loved it. And my mother also loved it. So she decided to retire there and she started building her house and getting it all set up. She had foresight that I couldn’t even imagine. She said she wanted to have her house ready that when I had kids, they could come. No kids in sight, she’s building a house.
[00:13:15] Paula: I love it.
[00:13:17] Karlene: She built this house which took almost nine years. So over that span of time, got married, got divorced, had kids, life happens. And when I decided to move, it was already in place. My mom’s house was already almost finished by that time. It wasn’t quite finished yet. So for two years before that, we moved to Liberia and we lived in Liberia for two years while my dad was there working a whole nother story.
[00:13:44] Paula: Wow.
[00:13:45] Karlene: Yes. And that was the start of their experience in Ghana , in Africa. And they smoothly transitioned to life here with no problems. So when we finally moved to Ghana, the house was set up. My mom had set up, transportation and everything. So everything was already in place for us. And we already knew that ahead of time. So the time in Liberia was basically a transition to get us used to the concept, the kids acclimatized and to have time to finish the house and get everything else set up for us when we moved.
[00:14:16] Paula: Okay, so when talking about setting up the house so your mom built the house you had no…
[00:14:21] Karlene: I came, I saw, and basically she did everything from dirt to roof. Design, construction, she was there from start to finish. She’s awesome. One day you should interview her.
[00:14:36] Paula: She is a remarkable woman. That’s why I’m talking to her daughter, you. You’re remarkable as well.
[00:14:43] Karlene: Thank you.
[00:14:46] Paula: I know, as I said, I have to give a disclaimer, I lived in Nigeria for years. Building a house, I know is not easy in Nigeria, and I guess it’s probably similar to that in Ghana. For someone who probably never lived abroad or lived in Africa. How easy is it to get a house? Is it like in the United States? At least that’s what I can talk about where you know, you get a realtor and then you decide how, online, you’d be looking at specs of the home. Anything like that?
[00:15:17] Karlene: Not even close. There are realtors here but not for buying land. If you’re buying land, you have to do the work yourself. Everything that is involved in the housing process, you have to do it yourself. You go look for the land unless you know somebody who has a land and they can take you to where it is.
[00:15:38] Karlene: If you go like we, my mom basically said, okay, I’m going to buy land. Show me what you have. She went, she looked, she didn’t like, she went somewhere else. Look, and she decided on the land. Then she had to go through the whole… meeting the chiefs meeting the families, presenting offerings, and going back and forth with bartering back and forth.
[00:15:56] Karlene: So it’s not like you have a contract and you finish in 30 days. It’s a time-consuming process. Once she had the lands, then she had to go through the government paperwork and all of that. So that’s a whole nother process. Then the building of the house was the main part of it that took the longest because everything there is done with cash.
[00:16:20] Karlene: So you don’t build until you have the money. And when the money is done, you stop. And the best thing to do is to be there when the house is being built. Because if you’re not there, you don’t know what you’re getting. You don’t know what they’re charging you. You want to be right there on the ground when the house is being built.
[00:16:38] Karlene: And so when the house was almost done, maybe three-quarters of the way down, I came to the house and saw it. My son was with me at the time, we walked through the different rooms and saw how far she had come doing everything. And so we proceeded. So it’s not a 30-day, 40-day kind of thing. Quick nine years time before my mom’s house was done.
[00:17:01] Paula: Obviously.
[00:17:01] Karlene: And still being done.
[00:17:02] Paula: But, obviously you loved what you saw and you felt so comfortable that you were like, but I’m still moving here.
[00:17:10] Karlene: Absolutely. Yes.
[00:17:12] Paula: So we talked about the housing. What about driving? And so did you have to get a driver’s license or, people, they have drivers?
[00:17:20] Karlene: Yes.
[00:17:21] Paula: How does that work? Because I’m talking to you as though I’ve never lived there, but having lived in Nigeria, I think there’s some similarities. So talking to someone who wants to go to live in Ghana and their single mom, can they come with the American driver’s license? If for example, they’re coming from the U. S. Can they use an American driver’s license?
[00:17:42] Karlene: Yes, You can use your U. S. driver’s license, I think it’s up to six months. After that time, you’re at risk of being pulled over. If you get pulled over, you’re going to get charged fees and penalties and all these other things. So you want to set up yourself beforehand. You have six months, so you should be able to have enough time to get a Ghana driver’s license, which is not that difficult. You go to the driving… DVLA, they call it and you get a license. You don’t have to do a test because they’re assuming that you know how to drive since you have a U. S. driver’s license. So you get that. And as far as driving yourself, you can drive yourself the whole time you’re there. And when you get driver’s license, continue to do that. On the other hand, if you want to not drive at all, you can get a driver. It’s not that expensive. You can negotiate to get a driver to drive for you.
[00:18:32] Karlene: You can have one that is on staff for as long as you want them to or as needed. So you can negotiate back and forth and have that set up. As you go along or you can get uber if you’re in the city It’s easy to get an uber to go anywhere you want to go. That’s like The quickest and fastest thing to do, run to the grocery store, call the Uber.
[00:18:53] Paula: Okay. In terms of technology, they are on par with us here in the United States. You can use your mobile phone.
[00:19:00] Karlene: Yeah.
[00:19:01] Paula: For calling Uber, but something just came to my mind too. In terms of money, I think you guys are very in Ghana. They’re quite advanced in that. You can send money to each other over the phone, correct?
[00:19:12] Karlene: Yes. Yeah. It’s awesome. It’s wonderful. You don’t have to carry cash at all. It’s on your phone. You pay at the grocery store, at the gas station, the small boy, anybody that has a phone. You can send them money any amount you want, as long as you have cash on your mobile money, but you have to get that set up on your phone. You have to have that process taken care of ahead of time as well. So that is also.
[00:19:36] Paula: Ah, okay, because I think I jumped ahead of myself thinking… Yeah, I know a lot of things are done on your phone in Ghana. And so credit cards are not something that I’d have to if I will come in there as a single mom, I’d have to put into consideration.
[00:19:52] Karlene: You can carry them, you can use them like regular cards, as long as you inform your banks that you’re traveling. I use my credit cards. I use my ATM cards. I get local money out of the ATM and your credit cards come out as Ghana money and shows up in your bank account as U. S. dollars. Either way you can use your credit cards or you can do mobile money. You have that option, it’s very flexible.
[00:20:16] Paula: Yeah. So what else can you… I think it’s like we’ve covered everything we’ve talked about visas,…
[00:20:22] Karlene: No.
[00:20:22] Paula: Customs, housing, money getting a car, moving around, transportation. The fact that you’re setting up a bank account, and even an account so that you can move money on your phones. Is there anything else that one would need if you’re moving to Ghana in particular?
[00:20:40] Karlene: Yeah. The fun part.
[00:20:44] Paula: Yeah.
[00:20:46] Karlene: We have so much fun. You would not believe that there’s so much things here in Ghana for kids to do. Initially, I had to find things because I felt like I was the only one with kids there. But just driving around and meeting people and finding places to go, we have created a community that has other kids their age. They have play dates together. They do soccer. We’ve traveled together. We have been to several different locations around the country. There is Kids Play Place, the play zone, where you can have bowling.
[00:21:21] Karlene: You have trampoline. There’s a restaurant. There’s zip-lining in this one place. It was amazing. There’s also an amusement park. It just opened recently. There’s a music park. It’s not Disney World, mind you, but it comes close. There’s rides and train stuff, animals. There’s a zoo there. And there’s several things for them to do.
[00:21:42] Karlene: And then, you can go to places like resorts. We have been and stayed at Aqua Safari, Coconut Grove, Labadi Beach, and they have wonderful pools and beaches there. So we see a lot of things. I share times with other families. When they have birthday parties, we go to different places with them.
[00:22:02] Karlene: We’ve been to Afadjato. I have some pictures on my Facebook page with my son. He did that Rites of Passage. He climbed Afadjato to the top, and it was an achievement for him because he felt like he did something because he climbed to the top of this mountain. It was a beautiful picture to see.
[00:22:19] Karlene: There’s different things for us to do, always discovering new things and finding families to hang out with and do different things with. So there’s lots to do in Ghana.
[00:22:30] Paula: You’re making me… you’re the second guest I’ve had on talking about Ghana. You make me really want to come there. The last time I was there was 2011.
[00:22:38] Karlene: Oh, there’s a lot of different things going on right now. Lots of different things. Yes, absolutely. You should come.
[00:22:45] Paula: Fun. There’s a lot of fun things to do for you as an adult and for your boys.
[00:22:51] Karlene: Yes. Absolutely. And of course, if you’re single, there’s Afro, what is it called? Oh my goodness. I forget the name of it. But there’s a big African festival music festival that happens in December. And there’s always concerts and jazz clubs. So many different clubs I’ve been to. Lots of nightlife, lots of things to do. So not just young and old, but old as well can come and enjoy themselves.
[00:23:14] Paula: Oh, wow. This is fantastic. Fantastic. And Karlene Thompson, you just accomplished everything that I do on this program that says that you’re from the Caribbean, and you live in Africa, and you’re a very accomplished woman. And there’s something, though, that I just remembered that I think I need people to know is that When we talk about traveling, you don’t just restrain yourself to just Africa, but you have also, you told me that you spent some weeks also in Europe recently, right? Was it you? You spent some weeks touring some of the European countries? I think we’re frozen here.
[00:24:03] Karlene: Yes. So with COVID happening, we were locked down in Ghana for about four years, not being able to go anywhere. And I am a travel junkie. I love to travel and my kids now have the fever. So we were like Jones in for travel. So this summer, we spent like a month just touring all over Europe.
[00:24:24] Karlene: We went to five different countries and we didn’t stop there. We kept going. So we’re planning to go to Asia next time. So we’re planning our next trip. And in the midst of all that, we had to learn French. My son is learning German cause he wants to actually end up going to school in Germany. So yeah, we are students of the world right now.
[00:24:50] Paula: Students of the world. I absolutely love it. And if someone wanted to talk more with you about your… let’s say Ghana in particular, moving to Ghana, because that’s really what your book is about. Single Mom’s Guide: Moving To Ghana, where can they get in touch with you?
[00:25:08] Karlene: Okay, so my website is Thompson Experience, all one word, lots of vowels, I before E. So it’s ThompsonExperience. com, and my book is on there, you can, it’s, now, you’re the first to hear this, but it’s also on Amazon Kindle as of today.
[00:25:26] Paula: Alright!
[00:25:28] Karlene: And it’s available on there, and it’s only ebook right now, so I’m working on the paperback version and that should be coming out shortly. And I’m also on Facebook, Karlene Thompson. I’m on Instagram. Thompson, I think I forgot what that one is. I’ll send it to you. I don’t wanna mix them up ’cause there’s so many different ones. And I’m also on Instagram and YouTube. So I’ll share that with you. And you can post it in the description as well.
[00:25:54] Paula: Absolutely. And again, to my amazing listeners and videos, wasn’t that fantastic? She’s a global traveler of the world, citizen of the world. Yes. If you enjoyed what you heard, I invite you to tune in next week to listen to another episode, not with Karlene, but with someone else just as interesting, just as fascinating who has the, ability to share with you what they have learned on their life journey to empower and inspire you.
[00:26:23] Paula: And for me, you can get in touch with me on my website, which is chattingwiththeexperts. com or you can find me on LinkedIn at Paula Okonneh. Just search for me in LinkedIn or on IG. Oh, that’s Instagram. And my handle there is at chat, chatting, sorry, at chatting_experts_podcast.
[00:26:51] Paula: I’d love to get in touch with you. Every week I am inspired and I learned something new from my amazing guests, just as I maybe have learned today. So thank you so much. Thank you so much Karlene, for coming on and sharing with us your global experience in general, but talking about what it means to live as a single mom in Ghana.
[00:27:16] Karlene: Thank you so much, Paula, for having me and making this. experience of pleasure. And I hope that your guests will have a good experience reading my book. And I hope to hear from them and, post your reviews, send your questions, and just contact me. I’d be happy to know that you’re out there and that you saw this video and to know that you are watching and seeing how the changes are happening in Ghana. So I thank you so much for having me on the program.
[00:27:45] Paula: Thank you.
[00:27:52]