I slept poorly the night before we went to the center of the world.
Three a.m. found me wide-awake in my parents’ house in Accra. My parents had been slowly building this house for more than half my life. Tonight was the first time in over a decade that we had all slept under the same roof in Ghana.
The frogs in the courtyard cried. Jet lag clung to me like an itchy blanket.
Obviously, one cannot actually travel to the iron core of this planet. And the Earth’s surface doesn’t really have a “center” — that’s not how spheres work. But a centuries-long collaboration between a motley crew of explorers and astronomers eventually yielded longitude: imaginary vertical lines radiating north to south around the globe.
Which means there is, in fact, a precise location where 0 degrees longitude meets 0 degrees latitude. The center of the world, if you like.
But unlike the Equator (0 degrees latitude), which is equidistant from the north and south poles, there is no natural basis for 0 degrees longitude. You can put it anywhere you like — and people did. Nations around the world established their own country-specific prime meridians, often running through their capital cities. Greenwich is a borough of Britain’s capital — hence, the Greenwich Meridian, which was internationally adopted in 1884.
This line slices down from London through the English Channel, over continental Europe, across the Balearic sea, and down through northwest Africa until it hits the port city of Tema, Ghana, before plunging into the Gulf of Guinea.
The actual point where the prime meridian hits the Equator is in the Atlantic Ocean. But the closest city in the entire world to that aqueous landmark is Tema, Ghana — where my mother grew up.
