In 1985, she and Joe Appiah travelled abroad together to visit their friend Kamuzu Banda, President of Malawi, whom they had known during his period of exile in Ghana, to celebrate the twenty-first anniversary of Malawi's independence. They travelled widely around the country, before going on to stay with their daughter Abena, who was then living in Zimbabwe, and Ama, who was working in Angola. Later in the decade, they made a visit to Ama in Norway, where Joe was diagnosed with the cancer that claimed his life in 1990.