GUYSBOROUGH — She holds the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Award, the Duke of Edinburgh Award, and her name proudly adorns the Dr. William P. Oliver Wall of Honour.
For more than 20 years, she has lived and worked in the Municipality of the District of Guysborough, the last several of which as the municipal councillor for the communities of Lincolnville, Sunnyville and Upper Big Tracadie.
She has been named one of Nova Scotia’s 50 notable African Nova Scotians.
Now, Mary Desmomd – a great-grandmother, former nurse, chaplain, current advocate and elder – sounds as giddy as a schoolchild preparing for her first field trip.
“Africa,” she said breathlessly. “I’m going to Africa.”
Specifically, she is travelling to Ghana in March as part of a small group of African Nova Scotian elders and young people from the Municipality of the District of Guysborough, a planned pilgrimage, nearly a year in the making, that will bring eight travellers together for a two-week journey rooted in history, culture and shared experience.
But for Desmond, the trip is more than a destination or an itinerary. It is, she said, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. “I wanted to put my feet on my home, on my motherland,” she said. “This is the dream come true.”
And not just for her. Alicia Clyke and Tyrell Byard, 23 and 24, respectively, will be travelling with her as part of the group. Clyke is a psychology student at Cape Breton University. Byard works as a nurse in the emergency department at Dartmouth General Hospital. Both are from the Guysborough area. Both signed on quickly.
“I’m really excited,” Clyke said. “I think it’s an extraordinary opportunity for us Black youth to get to travel to our homeland, with elders.”
Byard describes it more bluntly, still sounding slightly surprised it is actually happening. “Not many people just get together and say, ‘We’re going to this continent to explore this country,’” he laughed.
For Clyke, that’s a big part of the appeal. “Spiritually, I feel like it will be a connection piece that maybe I’ve been missing here in Nova Scotia,” she said. “I feel like it’ll be a hopeful experience.”
The call home
That is the point. From the outset, Desmond said, the idea was not to script the experience too tightly, but to create space – for elders and youth alike – to encounter history, culture and place in real time. “It’s not a vacation. This is a historical, cultural and educational piece. It’s for the elders, and it’s for the young people, too.”
The idea took shape during a conversation Desmond had with David Fletcher last spring. A longtime educator and community development consultant based at St. Francis Xavier University, with more than 30 years’ experience working in Africa, Asia and Canada, including extensive time in West Africa, where he has personal roots, Fletcher is also a friend, colleague and fellow traveller – both literally and spiritually – of Desmond’s.
“David said, ‘Mary, why don’t you get some community members and we’ll go on a pilgrimage to Africa,’” Desmond recalled. “Well, I said to him, ‘You got a microphone or something plugged into my apartment?’ Because my sister and I were just talking about going to Africa.”
Fletcher remembered the moment as less dramatic than decisive. “I always kind of said in passing – you know, whenever I was taking off to go to Ghana for a visit – that it’d be great if other people came along. And we never really made it happen. I mentioned it again to Mary, and she said, ‘Let’s do it. Let’s go.’”
From there, the work began. Travel dates were fixed for March 2026. Flights were booked. Accommodations and ground transportation were arranged. An itinerary took shape that balanced historical sites, cultural experiences and time spent in community, including a homestay in a rural area.
The group settled at eight travellers, a mix of elders and younger participants, each responsible for covering their costs. The price of the trip was estimated at roughly $5,000 per person, with additional expenses including required immunizations. For the younger travellers, that meant relying on a combination of personal resources and community fundraising.
Preparation went beyond finances. Passports were checked. Time off work arranged. Conversations continued about expectations and responsibilities, both personal and collective. Throughout, the emphasis remained on travelling together – across generations – with enough structure to support the journey and enough openness to let it unfold.
A shared journey
Now, with departure weeks away, the planning is well advanced, if not yet complete. Final details are still being addressed, calendars cleared and preparations refined, as the group moves from intention to readiness.
For both Clyke and Byard, the planning phase has become part of the journey – a period of anticipation shaped as much by the excitement of others as by logistics.
Said Byard: “I work full time and, you know, I have to put in for time off for it. And I was like, yeah – Africa. And my employers really jumped right on it. They were like, ‘Yeah, OK, take your time.’”
Meanwhile, said Clyke: “Our community has really chipped in and really put their best foot forward for us. We are the youth from Guysborough that are going, you know, and they see this as a good opportunity for us.”
Byard recalled one moment in particular. “I got $100 from a woman who said, ‘You cared for my father in hospital. Please have fun on your trip.’”
It will be fun, Desmond said – but it will also be much more than that.
The group’s time in Ghana will be structured around a mix of historical, cultural and community-based experiences, beginning in Accra and extending beyond the capital into rural areas. Plans include visits to sites connected to the transatlantic slave trade, as well as time spent learning from local communities about contemporary life, traditions and systems of shared responsibility.
A central part of the journey will be a homestay, where the group will live with families rather than move through the country as tourists. Meals, daily routines and conversations will be shared, offering an experience grounded in participation rather than observation.
There will also be time devoted to music, storytelling and spiritual practice – elements Desmond said are inseparable from understanding place and people. The emphasis throughout is not on rushing from site to site, but on slowing down enough to listen, reflect and connect.
For the younger travellers especially, the experience is meant to be immersive rather than instructional – less about being told what Ghana means, and more about discovering that meaning in relationship with elders and with one another.
Bringing it back
And while the itinerary includes history, community life and time spent in conversation, Desmond said there is one moment she expects will carry weight – a traditional naming ceremony, during which each member of the group will receive a Ghanaian name, bestowed by elders according to local custom and protocol.
For Desmond, that ritual represents something she has thought about for most of her life. “For me, I wanted to get my African name back,” she said. “That’s the baptism.”
Fletcher said the ceremony is not symbolic or improvised, but something offered by the host community. “That’s something that’s coordinated by the traditional elders in that community. So that’s sort of a gift that they have offered to us, and it will be done according to their tradition, their protocols.”
What happens next, all of them say, matters most once they return.
For Clyke and Byard, the journey does not end in Ghana, but in what they bring back to their lives and communities in Nova Scotia – in how they carry themselves, in how they speak about who they are and where they come from, and in how they choose to give that experience away.
Desmond sees it the same way. The trip, she said, is not something to be held onto, but something to be shared – across generations, across communities and across time.
“This isn’t for me to keep,” she said. “This is something I bring back.”
She paused, then added: “And whatever I bring back belongs to all of us.”
In that sense, the journey she is about to make is less a departure than a continuation – of a life spent advocating, teaching, listening and building space for others to stand more fully in who they are.
Africa, at last, is part of that journey, and home in Guysborough County and Nova Scotia is where it will live.
