My childhood pen pal and I grew up on different continents. After 30 years of friendship, we finally met in person.

When I was 8 years old, my second-grade class participated in a pen pal assignment that matched me with a girl named Naa Ashirifia from Ghana.

At the time, there was no social media for a rapid response, no texts to drop a quick note, and no simple phone call that could last for hours. And although the back-and-forth correspondence wasn’t immediate, the connection was instant.

We were growing up on different parts of the globe: me in Youngstown, Ohio, and Naa Ashirifia in Accra, the capital of Ghana. Still, we quickly bonded over the small but important details of our pre-adolescent lives.

Growing up, I never imagined that we would meet in…