Lovely Day
It started with a guitar.
Or perhaps more accurately, the search for one.
Nick Reynolds, a guidance counselor from Massachusetts, plays guitar, and understanding the power of music, and the power it has to bring people together, getting that guitar into Nick's hands suddenly became important.
The search wasn't easy. There were no cables. No amp. And despite our best efforts, no guitar.
So, like so many moments on this journey, we adapted.
Kwasi, co-leader and the Cultural Coordinator of the WTIG, placed a bass in Nick's hands instead.
The sound was tiny. A microphone helped carry it just enough. We leaned in a little closer.
And somehow...it was exactly what it needed to be.
Later that evening, during an event called Teaching and Life, where past and present Witness Tree alumni, future participants, lecturers, and friends gathered in community, Nick took the stage.
"Should I introduce you?" I asked, serving as the evening's emcee.
Nick shrugged.
"Sure. I'm going to play Lovely Day by Bill Withers."
I looked at him, delighted.
How was he to know?
How was he to know that Lovely Day is my personal anthem? That it is the song I wake up to every single morning. The song I hum when my train is delayed. The song that somehow finds me, whether the sun is shining brightly or hidden behind dark clouds.
How was he to know?
Lovely day... lovely day... lovely day... love-LY day.
And how was I to know that as conversations about Nick's song drifted around the room, Amina would quietly tell me that her morning begins exactly as mine does? Different cities. Different lives. The same first song.
How was I to know?
Lovely day... lovely day... lovely day... love-LY day.
Three years ago, I arrived in Ghana as a participant, full of questions and anticipation. I was asked to write the very first blog before Ghana had revealed herself to me. Before I had walked her streets, heard her stories, or met the people who would forever become part of mine.
Today, three years later, I find myself writing the final blog.
This time, I return not as a participant, but as a co-leader. The role may be different, but in many ways, I am still that same wide-eyed woman from 2023, continually surprised by the quiet ways we discover one another.
Because that is what Witness Tree has always done so beautifully.
It reminds us that connection rarely announces itself. It slips into conversations over meals. It appears in shared laughter. It reveals itself in stories told across generations. Sometimes, it arrives in the familiar melody of a song that has been waking two people, living in different cities, every morning without either of them ever knowing.
How was I to know?
Lovely day... lovely day... lovely day... love-LY day.
We learned many songs on the road.
One of them reminded us that the road would be muddy and rough... but we'd get there.
And it was.
It was muddy.
It was rough.
We bounced.
We laughed.
We sang louder.
The road never got smoother, but somewhere between the potholes and the laughter, our spirits grew lighter.
How were we to know?
Lovely day... lovely day... lovely day... love-LY day.
As Bill Withers sings Lovely Day, he holds that final word—day—for 18 remarkable seconds.
As children, my siblings and I took that as a challenge.
We would fill our lungs, close our eyes, and try to hold that note right along with him. We never made it. Our eyes would begin to water. Our voices would grow weaker and weaker until we dissolved into peals of laughter, gasping for the breath we thought we could hold.
This time, as the song plays in my mind, I find myself wanting to hold on again.
Not to the note.
To this.
To the conversations that became friendships.
To the strangers who became family.
To the stories that quietly stitched us together.
To the moments I never could have imagined when I first arrived in Ghana three years ago.
And then I realize...
Maybe that was the answer all along.
How was I to know?
I wasn't supposed to.
That's the gift of Witness Tree.
It has a way of introducing you to people you didn't know you needed, revealing connections you never could have planned, and reminding you that the most meaningful moments in life are often the ones you never saw coming.
So this time, I'll take one more deep breath.
And hold on...
A lovely dayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy…
Denise Carter Mataboge is a co-leader of the Witness Tree Institute’s 2026 Sankofa Cohort , and an alum of the 2023 WTIG program. She teaches at Neighborhood Charter School: Harlem, New York City