Relax and Refocus: A Transformational Retreat for Black Women

Paula: [00:00:00] Hello, everyone. And welcome to another episode of Chatting with the Experts TV show hosted by me, Paula Okonneh, where I bring to you amazing women from Africa, from the Caribbean, and in the diaspora. The mission of this show is to inspire, to empower, and educate women globally. And that’s why I do this every week with 99 percent women and 1%, sometimes I have men on, so that’s the 1%.
Every week I have a special topic, but what topic this week is different. We are going to be talking about how to relax, reflect, reset, and refocus. And with me to do that will be three inspirational women. We’ll be talking about leadership retreats for [00:01:00] black women in Ghana. The first person to join me today to do that will be Celestine.
Celestine.
Celestine: Hello, Paula.
Paula: Welcome to the show. Thank you. Next will be Mary Oluonye. We’re waiting for her to join us. Hello, Mary.
Mary: Hello, paula. Nice to be here.
Paula: Thanks for joining us. And last but not least will be Miss Tesse. Tesse Akpeki. Tesse?
Tesse: Hello Paula.
Paula: Hi. Let’s see. Tesse’s about to start her computer or start her video. There we go.
Tesse: Hi.
Paula: As I said, we have three amazing, I’m including myself, so four [00:02:00] amazing women talking to you about destination retreats in Ghana. Why destination retreats in Ghana? I’ll first of all let Mary lead this because she was the one who came up with the idea and she’ll tell you why.
Mary: Thank you Paula. I’ll tell you how this came about. One day in January, I think it was this year, I was on LinkedIn because you know I do some writing and sometimes I post on LinkedIn and I was just going through my usual rolling through and then I saw this beautiful picture of this woman, this beautiful woman. And she has such a beautiful smile, the type of smile that makes you want to smile back.
So I said what’s this lady up to? What’s this about? And then I read their post, and it was one of the saddest [00:03:00] things I’d ever read. Because this woman, her name was Antoinette, and they called her Bonnie, Pandia Bailey. And she was, had been a vice president of student affairs at Lincoln University in Missouri. Anyway, it turned out that she had experienced what she alleged to be a lot of bullying and harassment at work. And she wasn’t being listened to. She didn’t feel like she was listened to, and she appealed to human resources. She talked to the president of the university, but she got dismissed. She was frustrated and depressed and angry. And in the end, she wrote a letter on January 8th to the the president. And then she took her own life, and it was so sad, because she looked so beautiful, her face was so happy, hopeful, and the smile [00:04:00] sticks with me still, but that wasn’t all. Then I started reading all the comments, and it was an endless scroll.
You’d read woman after woman after woman expressing, their sorrow. They were grieving for this woman. It hit them hard, too. And a lot of them had gone through exactly the same kind of feelings at work, workplace hostility, not being listening to disparity in treatment, all those things. It happens to women in higher education. It happens in other leadership roles in other types of corporations. But what amazed me was just the number of people with exactly the same thing. And women in general face this. Women of color in particular, and most particularly black women, and it really upset me and I remember reaching out to different women I [00:05:00] know, and, sharing with them how I felt about this, and you, Paula, you’re one of those people.
And so there’s another one, and I sent the article to you, and pictures, and the comments, and I asked you what can we do? We felt like I just want to take care of these women, because at my age now, these women who are going through this, I look at them as sisters, I look at them as daughters, I look at them as nieces, and I wanted to do something. So then, you and I talked Celestine talked, Tesse talked, and an idea was born. How can we help? And so the retreat started there. I’ll let you all continue on with that. That was the idea.
Paula: For those of you listening [00:06:00] I’m sorry, but I didn’t introduce Mary. Do you mind introducing yourself so that people will know who you are? I’m sorry about that. I’m just touched by this whole story that, I asked you to go straight into this without letting you introduce yourself for just one second. Just even if it’s say who you are.
Mary: I’m Mary. Oh, no problem. I’m Mary. Mary Oluonye. I’m a travel consultant, one of the co-owners of Celmar Travel and Tours, U. S. A. I’m based in the USA and I work with Thelma in Ghana to design tours, custom design tours for people. We do destination management in Ghana. Some a little bit in Nigeria as well. So anything that needs to be done in Ghana, we can take care of it. We conclude in taking care of our women, I might add. I’m also a writer. And I help [00:07:00] especially marginalized writers and underrepresented writers improve their writings and edit to help them produce books that are their dreams of writing. So that’s what I do in a nutshell.
Paula: Thank you. Thank you so much.
Mary: You’re welcome. Welcome.
Paula: Yeah, I’m still, talking about that still, it’s touched my heart, but I’ll go next to Celestine. Tell us a little bit about yourself and why did you decide to join us on the show today?
Celestine: Thank you, Paula. My name is Celestine Afatsawo. I’m in Ghana. I’m also a co founder and director of Celmar Travel and Tours. I work with Mary most of the time with the ground handling. I do the coordinating of most of our tours in Ghana. Also the director of Celmar Travel and Tour, the office in Ghana. I [00:08:00] work also with for Celvic Agro Consulting . We work with farmer groups, women. We train women on farming and help them to establish themselves.
Paula: Okay. Thank you so much.
Celestine: Yeah. My profession actually is, I’m an accountant. I worked for some time and I retired and we found a Celmar Travel and Tours and for now we’re working with ourselves. Oh, yes.
Paula: Thank you.
Celestine: So that’s about me. I am a family woman. I have four kids. Three boys, one girl.
Paula: Thank you. Thank you so much for telling us the connection between you and Mary. And last but not least, again, is Tesse. Tesse, tell us about how you came involved, you became involved with this retreat, please.
Tesse: Yeah. Hi everyone. I’m Tesse Akpeki. I live in the United Kingdom. I’m based in Wembley in England, [00:09:00] and I am a leadership strategist and a governance expert. And last year, I was voted the Champion for Governance for the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, and also made a master coach for the Association for Coaching. Very passionate about storytelling. Very passionate about women’s empowerment and absolutely focused on people having the freedom to be their best selves in whatever situations they are. Paula, you contacted me. And told me of Mary’s passion. Based really or stoked by the sad story that Mary has shared and you invited me to be involved. And it was a very easy yes, actually, because, no one should be in a situation where they think the only way out is to take their own lives. And for me, I just felt that there was something which was beyond just [00:10:00] surviving. There’s something to be looked forward to in thriving and flourishing wherever people are.
Paula: All right. Got you. Yeah. So we’re all here to talk about reflecting, resetting, restoration, wellness in the leadership conference and retreat. Let’s talk about that. With what we’ve heard, how can we reflect, reset and restore in this conference that we are planning in January? Tesse, I’ll throw that question out to you.
Tesse: I love the four Rs, but what it means is that each time we go into a register, like if we’re resetting, we actually say, what does the reset look like here? If we’re relaxing, what does it mean to relax in this situation? If we are repairing, restoring, what does that look like? [00:11:00] So the main thing here is that the encouragement invitation is for women to leave behind, wherever they’re coming from, to leave behind what is heavy, what is not working, what is not serving and have and come with an open mindset to say, okay, what can we be, do or feel instead?
And what we hope to do is that by holding that space, by hosting that space, which is, a different kind of space of possibility. Women will be able, will be freed up to see what can replace where they are, or if they’re in that place, what can keep them in that place? Because some people would have probably arrived at somewhere where they’re quite content, but there’s something about sustainability. So having reached where we are, how do we stay here? And even better, if we can get to the next stage.
Paula: I love that. With that being said, I’m going to throw out the question to [00:12:00] Mary and Celestine to say, so why did we choose Ghana? What’s special about that location? Why Ghana? Why not Nigeria? Why not Kenya? Why not South Africa?
Mary: Celestine, do you want to go first? Okay, why Ghana? Ghana is a most hospitable country, I visited Ghana, maybe about when I first came was maybe seven years ago
Celestine: Yeah.
Mary: Or so. And, I went there and I wasn’t sure what to expect. And by the time I left, the first time I only stayed a few, what is it, like about seven days, 10 days. And when it was time to leave, I realized, you know what? I’m coming back here. The immigration official [00:13:00] told me on my way out, madam, did you have a good time here? I said yes. So what did you like about it? What I really liked about Ghana was the people. The people are so hospitable, so welcoming, so courteous. Not only is that beautiful, but it’s a lovely place to just get away, relax. If you love beaches, they got beaches. If you love mountains, they have mountains. If you love lakes, they have lakes.
If you like, what else is there? Forests, they have forests. And it’s just a beautiful country, and it’s peaceful. What more do you want? It’s just a very lovely country in West Africa, if you want to and it’s welcoming and not only that there’s a strong connection between people in the diaspora. [00:14:00] They have a connection to Ghana because Ghana has welcomed people of African descent, no matter where they are in the world, to come home to Ghana. If that’s what they want to. That’s what’s lovely about Ghana. What do you think, Celestine?
Celestine: Yes. You’ve said it all. And also Ghana is a peaceful place to come and actually reflect and relax and get away from a lot of things in your environment that is getting off your life. So Ghana gives you a deep reflection of who you are, that you can find where you are. And Ghana opens to our black people in the diaspora to come home and feel at home. And we feel bringing people [00:15:00] from the level of leadership retreat type we want to do to Ghana will give them that peace. So this will suit the theme of the retreat: reflect, relax, and refocus. We feel Ghana has all the environment, the culture, the tradition, and the property to give that theme that we chose for the retreat. So we chose Ghana for all these reasons and we hope it’s going to be very good.
Paula: Yes, I’m sure it’s going to be very good because there’s one thing that, that we talked a lot about and that’s restoration especially, as we said in, in this particular case where this woman didn’t feel that she could be restored. And I know that’s something that Tesse, you are very passionate about, wellness and resilience. And, when you think about restoration, [00:16:00] you think about resilience, at least I do, and, wellness, of course. In January, during the retreat, can’t speak today. How do you think that you’ll be able to show people how they can restored in one way or the other. You don’t need to go into depth, but I know that’s a passion of yours.
Tesse: Yeah. And thank you. That’s a wonderful question. And I’m glad that you said wellness and also wellbeing, which are two different, similar, but very different things. And people keep on talking about wellbeing and that is how can we keep well, but wellness are the practices, or the habits, or the pathways to remain well, so well being and wellness are complementary. And how we hope to do this is to actually help people who come on this [00:17:00] retreat to focus on what is good, what is strong, what is worthwhile, and to celebrate what they’re good at. And also to recognize that no one is alone. Sometimes the situations where people take their own lives, sometimes it’s because they think that’s the only option.
Sometimes they think that the only one, but actually knowing that it’s okay, not to be okay, knowing that we can have a really good, healthy support system and knowing that the things that we’re doing that are good and strong and right is very helpful. And we hope to create a container whereby people will be able to do that. There was something I read today as we were preparing for this show, and it says, your work is not your worth. I repeat that. Your work is not your worth. And sometimes in a very pressurized situation, and when we are burnt out, [00:18:00] we actually think that our work and our worth are one and the same and they’re not. So hopefully we’ll be able to enable and empower the women coming on the retreat to separate out their worth from their work.
Paula: I love that. Your worth is not your work, and your work is not your worth.
Tesse: Absolutely.
Paula: Yes. Knowing that there is a plan, there is a purpose for each one of us, and we have something to fulfill. And just knowing that, No one can be you. You are unique, you’re special, and everyone needs something that you, or somebody needs something that you uniquely bring to the table, so you are special. Ties up with, not getting your worth from your work, but knowing that just being there, you’re special, just being around, you’re special.
Something that I wanted to [00:19:00] ask too, and I’m, we, because I’m part of this. We chose January of 2025 to have this retreat. But for me, there was something special about January. It meant, new, fresh beginnings, new beginning. 2024 is out, 2025 is in, and there’s so much you can start doing afresh in January. I know that was one of the reasons I liked January. But is there anything, and I’m throwing this out now to the tour operators, is there anything specific about January that anyone coming to the retreat would be able to enjoy or see or experience in Ghana, in addition to the restoration that Tesse just spoke about?
Mary: Oh, this is Mary here. The thing about Ghana, anytime you go, it’s nice. It’s good. That’s just the way it is. We, January is great because, you’ve left the hustle and bustle and the busyness of the holidays. You’ve [00:20:00] gotten through that. You’re starting, like you say, afresh in January, and it’s a good time. It’s like a little bit of a downtime in Ghana, the tourists season. You’ve gotten past the holiday season and the peak season is not yet coming until maybe more like May, June. So it’s a time of peace. It’s a time where you can just take a break. Reset. This is relaxed. No major crowds around.
It’s not a high tourist season. So it’s a quiet time. And these are the women we want to have a quiet time after all the rush of the holidays, the stress of work. It’s a good time to reset. It’s a time to reflect and say, are we going to stay where we are or we’re going to change things? This is now you can reset your [00:21:00] thinking, your mindset. So it’s a peaceful time amidst beautiful surroundings. You can still see a lot. In terms of the season, it’s a little bit dry. So it’s not rainy season. I don’t think it’s rainy season. Celestine, am I correct?
Celestine: Yeah, it’s not a rainy season.
Mary: Okay, so even though you can come and visit a rainy season too, because it just rained some parts of the day and not other times of the day, but it’s pretty dry, so it’s a good time to come visit. But like I say, with Ghana, any time is good.
Paula: Ghana, believe it or not, we’ve almost been talking for 30 minutes, but one thing I did want to point out is that today we are in different parts of the world, and the person who’s in Ghana right now as we talk is Celestine. So Celestine, I’m gonna throw this question in particular to you. What are the highlights that [00:22:00] anyone who joins us this January, this coming January, will be able to experience in Ghana? Ghana, that’s your home. Ghana, that’s your birthplace. Ghana, that’s your heritage. What would you tell them?
Celestine: Wow. Ghana, there are a lot of things that you experience, and there are so many ways you could enjoy yourself in Ghana. If you like music, you enjoy it in Ghana. You like dancing, you like to have nights out, and if you like to be by yourself at the beach, Yeah, and you would like to experience the people, their daily life as a way of making it possible for you to experience people. You can have a chance to visit people in their homes, stay with them and experience their daily life and you like it.
[00:23:00] You have chance to, see people going about their livelihood. Life on the streets, selling, a lot of things, culture, engagement with people, you don’t have to fear anything, just relax, you can be on yourself alone, without a guide, without misleading the tour operator, you can just be on the streets to observe yourself, you have freedom to ask questions. Anyone, we, the people are good, in that way, people are good. Anyone that see that, so you look a bit like a foreigner, will stop, would like to help you. You see someone, you’re working, the person realize you’re getting like, you are nervous, or maybe you are, you don’t know exactly what to do.
You will see this kind person coming there to you and say, can I help you? So you won’t fear, you won’t be worried, to come to Ghana anytime to experience, a good [00:24:00] time. It’s a good place to come and relax. Come and you will enjoy it.
Paula: Yes.
Mary: Can I add one thing too?
Paula: Sure.
Mary: Yes. You can also have a good chance to reflect, too, on your ancestors, because, due to the transatlantic slave trade, Ghana played an infamous role, but they have some of the well-preserved slave castles and dungeons in Ghana. Often, many People from the diaspora like to come in and reflect on what their ancestors went through and the resilience and strength of those captured Africans that were taken to the Americas, and their strength and how they survived such horrors. And it adds to a sense of who you are and [00:25:00] what your people have gone through and the strength of black people. So that’s another very good point of reflection in Ghana. And of course, the people who come will experience that too.
Paula: Yeah.
Celestine: More like coming back to the roots.
Paula: Coming back to the roots. And that’s very important, especially as you said, this is a destination and leadership retreat for black women, ladies. So again, we come back to Miss Tesse, last but not least, what would be your parting words to anyone who joins us this January 2025 at this leadership, but reflective retreat that we are going to be having for black women.
Tesse: When I think of Ghana, I think of a country that is blessed with gold, golden [00:26:00] memories, golden experiences, golden beginnings. And what I’d like to reflect on as we leave is an invitation for women to invest in themselves. So that they can embrace that gold, the golden future, the golden presence, and then let go of the past through the golden release. So this is something that I’m sure will change lives. Because it’s something that is going to lead to better and to best.
Paula: Oh, I love that. Something that is going to lead to better and to best. And with that, we’re going to open up the floor to those of you who have joined us today, who have questions. Questions for all four of us, whether it’s me, the host, and how come I’m connected with these dynamic women, or Celestine, who is in Ghana, [00:27:00] and we can say is the Ghana expert, to Mary, who’s the author, we mentioned author, we didn’t, but you can ask her about that, why she has written children’s book for black children, and also she is part of the co-owner of Celmar Tours. And of course, Tesse Akpeki, who is our wellness, in addition to all so many other qualifications, but she is our wellness and resilience expert.
So the floor is now open to all of you to ask any one of us questions on why January 2025 would be a good time to come to Ghana and reflect. I want to make sure I get it right. You guys fill in for me. Reflect. Restore.
Mary: Reset.
Paula: Reset.
Tesse: Refocus.
Paula: Refocus.
Mary: And restore, yes. [00:28:00]
Paula: Thank you. Thank you everyone for joining us today. And the floor is now open to all of you to ask each and every one of us here a question or questions about why this leadership conference, retreat and spa would be one of the best things you’ve ever experienced. Thank you.