A cryptic invitation about hopes and dreams lured 20 Marshall High School students to BilliJo Saffold's English classroom on an otherwise normal school day last week.

As the students filed into the classroom, they sat patiently at desks. Some chatted among themselves, waiting to understand the meaning behind the invitation Saffold passed out to a select few students only weeks before. The only hint alluded to the phrase "Oh, the Places You'll Go!" from a Dr. Seuss book of the same name.

Saffold walked to the front of the class and quizzed the students about their career aspirations. Some replied entrepreneur, sports journalist, surgeon and traveling nurse.

She then asked where in the world they would like to travel. The students said Europe, Asia, Jamaica, Cuba, Dubai, Thailand, Canada and South Sudan.

That was Saffold's cue. She tried not to cry.

"I am nearing the end of my teaching career and one of the things I wanted to do for a long time is to take a group of students to Africa," she said. "How would guys like to take a trip ... to Accra, Ghana?"

The room slowly filled with excitement and chatter as the news their English teacher just told them sank in.

"I got excited. It probably didn't show, but I was excited," said Jamie Xiong, a 16-year-old junior.

Xiong has never been out of the country, but Africa is one of the places she wants to visit because it's the cradle of civilization.

"It's where we came from -- like humans in general," Xiong said "(Africa) is where we descended from. So I always wanted to visit at least once. I think I am going to learn a lot."

Traveling internationally has always been on Saffold's bucket list. Now, she plans to take a group of high school juniors and seniors with her. She wants this trip to be a culminating experience for the students in completing their K-12 education.

In school, students learn about the world and different cultures through literature, science and history books. But it's important, Saffold said, for students to see the places they read about.

"I know what travel does to expand their horizons," said Saffold, who has organized Black college tours for at least 10 years.

Even then, she said, most students going on the college tours had never even had luggage. much less been outside Milwaukee or on an airplane.

But this trip poses a new set of challenges. Saffold has traveled to the Caribbean, but this will be her first overseas trip, along with many of the students. The students have to secure visas, passports and meet medical requirements for overseas travel. The biggest hurdle is raising the $160,000 needed to send 21 students and four chaperones across the Atlantic. The students leave for the nine-day journey in May.

Saffold set a mid-to-late-January deadline to make a dent in that funding goal. The money will pay for airfare, cultural excursions, transportation, food and hotel accommodations. The cost for each student is $7,500, which Saffold wants to defray through fundraising. Each student must pay a $400 earnest fee.

The earnest fee is a lot for students, but Saffold said it ensures they're vested in this opportunity. To help, students will raise money through a bake sale during a Feb. 21 performance of "We Are the Drum," held at the school. And $5 from every catfish fish fry dinner sold will also help defray the cost.

"They simply come from homes where their parents don't have it," Saffold said. "I am trying to give these students an educational opportunity they deserve ..."

Gabriel Houston is ready for the trip. The 17-year-old senior already has his passport though he's only traveled domestically. But he's ready to see "the world for what it really is."

"Not a lot of people get a chance to do something like that, coming from where we are coming from," Houston said. "It's a very grateful opportunity to learn about different stuff and see different stuff."

Kailee Sprewer, a 16-year-old junior, is excited, too. She doesn't know much about Ghana, but she wants to learn about its culture and its religious beliefs.

"I'm big on God. I go to church and I want to know how other people share their religion, how they pray if they go to church on Sunday," Sprewer said.

"I feel like the biggest weapon you have is knowledge. If I can go somewhere and get a bunch of new information and bring it back here, you can change a lot of people and change a lot of things."

Assistant Principal Robin Simpson was in the room when the trip was announced. The students should feel honored to be chosen for this opportunity, she said.

"I hope you understand how special this opportunity is and how special your relationship is with Ms. Saffold," she told the students. "Every single one of you is deserving of space in this room."

Saffold chose Ghana because the West African country has been very welcoming to Black Americans. In 2019, the country hosted the Year of Return, which marked 400 years since the arrival of the first Africans in the Americas.

The Year of Return also encouraged tourism and cultural connections between the African diaspora and Ghana. Saffold is working with a travel agency a New York teacher used for a similar trip.

"That has been helping to make this process easier," Saffold said.

The trip won't be all fun and games. To prepare, students have mandatory culture classes. They'll learn about Ghana's history and prominent figures like its first president, Kwame Nkrumah. They'll also discover Black Americans have had a long connection to Ghana going back to Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois.

Once on the continent, their trip will include attending a church service, visiting a high school, visiting a recording studio to learn about Afrobeat music and participating in a traditional African naming ceremony in a local village.

A poignant part of the trip is a visit to a slave castle. The students will participate in a "cleansing ceremony." Saffold said it's the washing away of the racism, subjugation and intolerance Blacks endured as part of their collective existence in America.

She said it's about honoring the ancestors, who were chained and thrown into the hull of a ship, not knowing what they would face crossing the Atlantic. Those ancestors, she said, lost their identity, dignity and culture -- "everything about themselves."

"They never got an opportunity to return," Saffold said.

Saffold has many hopes for the students. She hopes they see the shared cultural connections between Black Americans and their Ghanaian counterparts. Many, she added, don't realize certain soul foods like greens, yams or okra have roots in Africa.

Saffold hopes the trip will be a healing experience. Once they land in Ghana, they will soon realize they are not minorities anymore.

"It's us," she said.

And she also hopes the trip stokes cultural pride in them. That often happens with the college trips. When students saw their peers striving to better themselves through education and making better choices, Saffold said the kids' attitudes changed.

"I am hoping that this trip," Saffold said, "will do the same but in a different way for these kids."