Our 2019 Journey

In December 2019, Fambul Tik made history. More than 58 African Americans — most from South Carolina and Georgia, the vast majority descendants of the Gullah Geechee people — boarded a single flight to Sierra Leone. It was the largest documented Gullah heritage group to travel to Sierra Leone in modern history.

They followed the arc of history. They stood on Bunce Island — where tens of thousands of their ancestors were held before being shipped to South Carolina and Georgia. They climbed Old Yagala — a fortified mesa village built by Africans who chose to resist the slave trade rather than submit. They walked Freetown — where formerly enslaved Africans from Nova Scotia returned to West Africa in 1792 and built a new life.

The journey was documented by South Carolina Educational Television in the Gullah Roots documentary, which captured the emotional solidarity between two communities separated by 300 years of history but bound by blood, language, food, and craft.

But the most remarkable outcome happened after the cameras stopped rolling. Two of the 2019 participants were so profoundly moved by what they experienced in Sierra Leone that they invested in the country itself. Their investment — combined with the vision of Fambul Tik and TpGroup Sierra Leone — funded the construction of The Eco-Living Oasis at Kent: a sustainable residential estate built at a heritage site on the Sierra Leone peninsula.

On November 14, 2026 — exactly five years from the day the foundation was laid — that estate will officially open. The 2026 Homecoming Tour is your invitation to witness that moment.