ktravula – a travelogue!

The Fourth Class

When I was in Kenya in 2005, I remember that one of the most recurrent observations I received from Kenyans was that Nigeria is a place filled with people who believe in witchcraft and practice it in their daily lives. We all believed in juju, they said, and none of the women I spoke to would dare to marry a Yoruba person for fear of one day having to deal with a mother-in-law that could turn them into a piece of metal at the slightest provocation. I have since discovered that this is a very prevalent perception of Nigeria, mostly obtained through our home videos that have been ranked third in the world in terms of output. Is there practice of witchcraft and a prevalent belief in it in Yoruba land today. The answer is yes. Does everyone believe in it. Erm, I would say yes to this as well, but with very few exceptions of the skeptics.

Cut to my fourth class, where I had asked my students to read a short story titled “Why Atide Is Taking To A Coin”, written by a German friend, student of Yoruba and a current PhD student at SOAS. I first read the short story in 2004 while it was still being written, and I got to contribute a few ideas to its storyline. So last week, when I asked my students to list ten things they found strange, new or memorable about the Yoruba culture from the story, and five things that they found similar to their own culture, I was trying to get them more interested in reading and discovering new things. It was also a way for me to get into their minds and see what they see when they look at me through the prism of Yoruba culture. The result amazed me. Of all the answers given to the first question, one was common to all the ten students in the class: They were surprised that a belief in witchcraft still exists/persists in some cultures of the world, particularly mine. They couldn’t understand why people ascribed occurences they couldn’t explain to the evil forces in their family, and they couldn’t understand why somebody who is Christian/Moslem would go to a Babalawo to get help with something that was bothering them. A Class homework

Now, I could have easily said that it was the fault of the writer of the story for painting the Yoruba people in such a light, but when I look around Yorubaland today, I find not one but many leaders and public figures who would take their supporters or followers to shrines so as to get them to swear and take oaths of allegiance. Recently there was a case of a prominent state governor, and a lawmaker whose naked picture was taken at a shrine where he had gone to perform rituals. The fact is, belief in rituals are still as strong today in Yorubaland as it was before the British came. Whether this is a good or a bad thing is beyond my scope to say, but it took me some time of readjustment to deal with the truth, being a little lost to the effect such disclosures might have on the impressionable minds of my brilliant students, and their ability to see this somehow as a positive attribute of such a people with a complex culture and outlook on life.

Are we a modern society in Yorubaland, or are we still attached to the deep vestiges of the past? If the texts of our literature, the lines of our poems and the plots of our dramas are anything to go by, the answer might be far from what we always like to believe.

News

Brown University to Examine Debt to Slave Trade

March 13, 2004

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/13/education/13BROW.html

PROVIDENCE, R.I., – When Ruth J. Simmons became the president of Brown University nearly three years ago, one striking fact could not be overlooked.

A great-granddaughter of slaves, Dr. Simmons was the first African-American president of an Ivy League university. But the 240-year-old university she was chosen to lead had early links to slavery, with major benefactors and officers of it having owned and traded slaves.

“It certainly didn’t escape me, my own past in relationship to that,” Dr. Simmons said. “I sit here in my office beneath the portrait of people who lived at a different time and who saw the ownership of people in a different way. You can’t sit in an office and face that every day unless you really want to know, unless you really want to understand this dichotomy.”

Now, Dr. Simmons, whose office is in a building constructed by laborers who included slaves, has directed Brown to start what its officials say is an unprecedented undertaking for a university: an exploration of reparations for slavery and specifically whether Brown should pay reparations or otherwise make amends for its past.

Dr. Simmons has appointed a Committee on Slavery and Justice, which will spend two years investigating Brown’s historic ties to slavery; arrange seminars, courses and research projects examining the moral, legal and economic complexities of reparations and other means of redressing wrongs; and recommend whether and how the university should take responsibility for its connection to slavery.

Dr. Simmons, one of 12 children of an East Texas tenant farmer and a house cleaner, said she was motivated by a sense that the multifaceted subject of reparations had too often been reduced to simplistic and superficial squabbles.

Brown University’s Debt to Slavery

October 23, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/23/opinion/23mon3.html?ex=1319256000&en=0246e986680a3947&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

A long-awaited report on Brown University’s 18th-century links to slavery should dispel any lingering smugness among Northerners that slavery was essentially a Southern problem.

The report establishes that Brown did indeed benefit in its early years from money generated by the slave trade and by industries dependent on slavery. It did so in an era when slavery permeated the social and economic life of Rhode Island. Slaves accounted for 10 percent of the state’s population in the mid-18th century, when Brown was founded, and Rhode Island served as a northern hub of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, mounting at least 1,000 voyages that carried more than 100,000 Africans into slavery over the course of a century.

The Brown report is the latest revelation that Northern businesses and institutions benefited from slavery. Countless other institutions might be surprised, and ashamed, if they dug deeply into their pasts as Brown has over the past three years.

The Committee on Slavery and Justice, composed of faculty, students and administrators, found that some 30 members of Brown’s governing board owned or captained slave ships, and donors sometimes contributed slave labor to help in construction. The Brown family owned slaves and engaged in the slave trade, although one family member became a leading abolitionist and had his own brother prosecuted for illegal slave trading. The college did not own or trade slaves.

The hard question is what to do about it. The committee makes sensible recommendations — creating a center for the study of slavery and injustice, rewriting Brown’s history to acknowledge the role of slavery, creating a memorial to the slave trade in Rhode Island, and recruiting more minority students. Other proposals are more problematic. But the value of this exercise was to illuminate a history that had been “largely erased from the collective memory of our university and state.”

Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice

Today.

http://www.brown.edu/Research/Slavery_Justice/

In 2003, Brown University President Ruth Simmons appointed a Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice. The committee, which included faculty members, undergraduate and graduate students, and administrators, was charged to investigate and to prepare a report about the University’s historical relationship to slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. It was also asked to organize public programs that might help the campus and the nation reflect on the meaning of this history in the present, on the complex historical, political, legal, and moral questions posed by any present-day confrontation with past injustice. The Committee presented its final report to President Simmons in October 2006. On February 24, 2007, the Brown Corporation endorsed a set of initiatives in response to the Committee’s report.

ktravula’s comments: Brown has become the first Ivy League institution to come to terms with its slaving past. It is not only commendable, but admirable. I won’t be surprised if it influenced the movement of Professor Chinua Achebe to the old institution to join other members of staff like Ama Ata Aidoo of Ghana.

The Third Class

By now we can greet. By now we have mastered the basic expressions that express intent.

By now we can ask the questions:
“Kíni orúkọ rẹ?” “Orukọ mi ni…” “Orúkọ ọrẹ mi ni…” “Orúkọ babá mi ni…”
“Kini èyí?” “Èyí ni bàtà.” “Èyí ni asọ.” “Èyí ni gègé.”

By now, we can count from one to ten in Yoruba. By now, we can also express number.
“Ọmọ melòó lo ní?” “Mo ní ọmọ mẹta.”
“Asọ melòó lo ní? “Mo ni asọ méjì.”
“Àburò mélòó lo ní? Mi ò ní àbúrò kankan.”

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Or express satisfaction with the teacher’s explanations:
“Sé ó yée yín?”
“Kò yé wa.”
“Ó yé wa.”

On Wednesday, week 4 will be over, and we would have had seven classes so far, each with its own challenges. We have somehow managed to get over the pronunciation challenges, one step at a time. It is not yet uhuru as far as recognizing and being able to correctly pronounce tone marks are concerned. And you can’t blame us. It was a relief for the class to know that there are some authentic speakers of Yoruba in Nigeria today who can’t stand the tone marks nor correctly identify it. The challenge before us is to become better than them. And better than them we shall be. We’re taking it one day at a time.

Fun Saturday

“Freedom isn’t free. Neither are refills.”
– Seen at a local coffee shop in downtown Edwardsville.

These are pictures from the weekend, taken mostly at an outdoor picnic that took place at the Cougar Lake Area, where there was line dancing, boat/kayak riding and volleyball. Enjoy.

Achebe Goes To Brown

Achebe2 PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Brown University announced today (Monday, Sept. 14, 2009) that internationally acclaimed Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe has joined the Brown University faculty. Achebe comes to Brown after 19 years on the faculty of Bard College, where he was the Charles P. Stevenson Professor of Languages and Literature.

Named the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and professor of Africana studies at Brown, Achebe is best known for his novels and essays which critique post-colonial Nigerian politics and society as well as the impact of the West on Africa.

Born in Ogidi, an Igbo village in Nigeria, Achebe studied at University College (now the University of Ibadan). His first novel, Things Fall Apart, is the most widely read work of African fiction, having sold more than 12 million copies in English alone. It has been translated into 50 languages. His other prominent works include No Longer at Ease, Arrow of God, A Man of the People, and Anthills of the Savannah.

For many decades, Achebe has worked to build greater understanding of Africa through his uncompromising political commentary, social critique, and creative writing. Acknowledged godfather to many African writers, he served for a time as editor of the African Writers Series for Heinemann Publishing. He is the author of numerous collections of short stories, poetry and essays. One of his essays, “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness,” aroused considerable debate and had a marked impact on Conrad criticism. A devoted student of Igbo culture, his latest work on Igbo culture and theology is scheduled to be published in October 2009 by the University of Notre Dame Press.

Achebe is the recipient of numerous honors. He was awarded the Man Booker International Prize for outstanding fiction in 2007. Among his more than 40 honorary degrees is an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Brown, where he will serve in the Department of Africana Studies and oversee the Chinua Achebe Colloquium on Africa, a new initiative to be developed by Achebe in keeping with his life’s work to foster greater knowledge of Africa.

News source: http://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2009/09/achebe

ktravula’s comments: Why did Professor Achebe not come to Brown University while I was there?

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