Memories of the 2017 World Festival, Rochester

On April 29, as planned, the World Festival took place in Rochester, Minnesota. This was the culmination of weeks of planning by the Rochester International Association (RIA). I had featured the festival announcement on this blog.

My daughter Zawadi and I attended it, representing Tanzania and Africonexion: Cultural Consultants. We arrived at the festival venue at 9:45am, with enough time to set up our table and hang the Tanzanian flag on the wall. On the table we displayed my publications, including books such as Africans and Americans: Embracing Cultural Differences and Matengo Folktales.

Around 10:00am, festival visitors started arriving. We talked with those who came to our table about my work as a writer and cultural consultant. Several people recognized me from last year's festival, and I was humbled that they did.

After about thirty minutes, the flag ceremony started. This is part of the festival. It involves a procession of people from various countries carrying their national flags which they RIA owns. The RIA board had for the first time, acquired the Tanzanian flag, which I proudly carried in the procession.

For the rest of the day, we continued talking with people who visited our table and we handed out free xerox copies of my little article, "Chickens in the Bus," as well as information about Africonexion: Cultural Consultants.  We also took turns to walk around the exhibition areas, looking at various  displays and taking photos.

I passed by the table seen in the photo on the left. It was the Nigerian table and they cheerfully posed for this photo. Among the most memorable experiences were conversations my daughter and I had with a professor of Winona State University. As soon as she saw us, she remarked that she had bought my book last year. She said that she would like to bring her students to the festival in the future with an assignment: to interview people from four different countries in order to learn about global cultural diversity. I thought that was a brilliant idea.

Another memorable experince for us was talking with a lady who, after looking at my book, Africans and Americans: Embracing Cultural Differences. began telling of about her experiences in Japan. As an American, she said, she had made cultural blunders in communicating with the Japanese. We enjoyed the conversation, since her experiences resembled mine in the USA. It was rewarding to encounter someone who shared her personal stories so freely and with an arresting sense of humour.


Moving around, I visited a table where I saw a woman wearing hijab. When I approached the table, I realized I had seen this woman last year. On her table I saw Islamic books such as Muhammad Asad's The Message of the Qur'an, John L. Esposito's Who Speaks for Islam, and Wisdom for Life & The Afterlife: A Selection of Prophet Mohammad's Sayings, all of which I have in my collection.

I introduced myself, saying that I teach at St. Olaf College and one of my courses is "Muslim Women Writers," which I created to help counter prevailing ignorance about and misrepresentations of Islam and Muslims, especially Muslim women.

She, on her part, told me that she hosts the Faith Talk Show, and we agreed that it would be a good idea for me to appear on the show at some point in the future. Returning from the festival, I checked online and saw much information about this lady and her show, such this article. I am thinking it might be a good idea to invite her to speak in my Muslim Women Writer's class.

Throughout the festival there were performances by dance and musical groups from various countries. It was humbling to watch these performers as they generously shared their talents and traditions with all of us.

In addition to cultural items for sale, ranging from clothes and artifacts, to jewelry, and works of art, there were also foods from several countries.

The more I attend these festivals, the more I appreciate their value. As I watch the people attending the festival, volunteers, and vendors, and observe their countless conversations, I know that these festivals are a great way of connecting people. I am mindful of the fact that the people who attend the festival communicate with others around the world through email, social media, and so on, spreading the story of the festival around the world. I am doing that right now, with this blog post.

This was another very successful World Festival, a testament to enduring commitment of the RIA to bring people together.

I Started Teaching Today

The fall semester started yesterday here at St. Olaf College, and I started teaching today. I will be teaching on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and the courses on each day are First Year Writing, African Literature and Muslim Women Writers.

As I always do on the first day of class, today I talked about myself, my teaching philosophy, and my courses, highlighting, in particular, my commitment to academic freedom, vexed as that concept is. I don't plunge into the course on the first day of class, mindful that it is rife with uncertainties. I want first to put the students and myself at ease.

It is pleasant to be on the threshold of another season of academic engagements: reading, exploring and discussing ideas, writing, challenging ourselves, and broadening our intellectual horizons. It is a privilege to be a teacher, entrusted with the mission of inspiring a new generation of critical thinkers and socially responsible citizens of the world.

Nawal el Saadawi and "The Fall of the Imam"

This week, in my course on Muslim Women Writers, we have been discussing Nawal el Saadawi's The Fall of the Imam. Reading this engaging novel, which moves freely between dream and reality, memory and fantasy, and is peppered with irony, sarcasm, and sharp wit, we see its underlying continuous indictment of oppression and injustices perpetrated in the name of religion.

In order to gain a sense of the issues that are central in Nawal el Saadawi's life and work, and to witness the spirit of her activism as a champion of women's rights, we watched this video

From "Sultana's Dream" to "So Long a Letter"

My Muslim Women Writers course has concluded its fifth week. Having read Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's Sultana's Dream and Mariama Ba's So Long a Letter, we are now reading Nawal el Saadawi's The Fall of the Imam. I just want to say a word about the first two.

Both are works of social criticism, albeit in different ways. Published in 1905, Sultana's Dream presents a reversal of purdah, the tradition of separation of the sexes and the seclusion of women. In the imaginary country of Ladyland, men are kept in seclusion while women run the affairs of the country, with dreamlike efficiency and success.



Set in Senegal, So Long a Letter deals with polygamy, the situation of girls and women, and the political condition and future of a country. Even though the letter writer, Ramatoulaye, has suffered immensely as a result of the insensitive behaviour of men, especially her husband, she avoids any simplistic casting of all men as perpetrators of evil and women as innocent victims. She acknowledges that there are good and bad people on both sides.

While Sultana's Dream describes an utopia and was ahead of its time, So Long a Letter deals with contemporary issues in a realistic manner. It dwells on women's experiences in an Islamic society, especially their relations with men. As a work of social criticism, it highlights the need for social change.

The Spring Semester Has Started

The spring semester started on February 8 here at St. Olaf College. I am teaching three courses: First Year Writing, Folklore, and Muslim Women Writers. I have taught First Year Writing many times and Folklore a number of times, but will be teaching Muslim Women Writers for the first time.

Teaching a course again and again does not diminish its freshness. It is always a different experience, even if we are discussing the same texts. My Muslim Women Writers course is going to be even more of a novelty, as I have noted, and I wish to say a word about it.

I will be teaching the following texts:

1. Aboulela, Leila. Minaret. Grove. 
2. Ali, Monica. Brick Lane. Scribner.
3. Ba, Mariama. So Long a Letter. Waveland Press, Inc.
4. el Saadawi, Nawal. The Fall of the Imam. Telegram Books.
5. Hossein, Rokeya S. Sultana's Dream. Feminist Press.
6. Mattu, Ayesha. & Nura Maznavi. Love, InshAllah. Soft Skull Press.
7. Nafisi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran. Random.

Of all these works, I have only read Minaret, So Long a Letter, and The Fall of the Imam. In preparing for the course, I have been reading other works, particularly Amina Wadud's Qur'an and Woman and Opening the Gates: A Century of Arab Feminist Writing, edited by Margot Badran and Miriam Cooke.

I have already talked to the class about Islam, dwelling on Muhammad, The Qur'an, the hadiths and the five pillars. I will be saying more based on the readings, the first of which will be Sultana's Dream.

A Memorable Meeting in Minnesota

Today was a special day. I had a memorable meeting with Dr. Barbara Poole Galyen, a friend of many years, who is based in California, but has been visiting relatives in Minnesota, a short drive from Northfield, where I live.

Barbara and I met for the first time in 1995, when she came to Tanzania as a volunteer on my research project on epic folklore of Northern Tanzania, sponsored by Earthwatch. We worked on Ukerewe Island in Lake Victoria.

Barbara told me that time, and has kept telling me, that that experience sparked her interest in Africa and launched her on her subsequent professional life. She went to Kenya to work for the United States International University, and later started a consulting company dealing with cultural issues in the global context. She has traveled the world and made many connections.

We were delighted to meet today, having met for the last time in 1997 in Kenya. We shared stories about our time in Ukerewe, current politics, and a new course I will be teaching in the spring--"Muslim Women Writers." I signed for her a copy of my book, Africans and Americans: Embracing Cultural Differences, which relates to our mutual interests as cultural consultants.

Here is what Barbara herself wrote today on her facebook page about our meeting:

I enjoyed a wonderful visit with Dr. Joseph Mbele who was the one who originally introduced me to Africa in 1995 on an "Earthwatch" adventure. I give him credit for changing my life completely after I moved to Kenya as a result of our fascinating studies on a remote island in Lake Victoria, TZ. Born in Tanzania, Dr. Mbele is currently a professor at St. Olaf College in MN where he continues to work on special projects around the world! He's inspiring me again to get more involved in heart-felt projects globally.

A Course on Muslim Women Writers

I am delighted that in the spring, 2016, I will be teaching a new course, "Muslim Women Writers." Having taught works by Muslim women writers like Mariama Ba, Nawal el Saadawi, Alifa Rifaat, and Leila Aboulela, mostly under the rubric of Post-colonial Literature, I have decided to create a course devoted solely to such writers.

The Muslim world is perhaps the least understood or most misunderstood part of the world among Americans, who tend to see it as homogeneous, and to whom the very name Muslim conjures up images of religious fanaticism and terrorism. They tend to imagine Muslim women as perpetually veiled or burka-clad, suffering in silence under archaic religious and cultural traditions. That there is a longstanding tradition of writing by Muslim women in languages such as Urdu, Arabic, Turkish, Hausa, Swahili, French and English is not well known among Americans.

This course will explore the prevailing misconceptions. With a focus on writings in English and some translations, we will discuss writers from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt, Sudan, Senegal, and the USA, in the context of Islam, Orientalism, Islamophobia, and Islamic feminism. It will illuminate the ways Muslim women writers imagine and interpret their condition within the framework of culture, religion, and gender.

 

I Am Teaching Leila Aboulela's "Minaret" Again

This week, in my African Literature summer course, I am teaching Leila Aboulela's Minaret. We started the course with Ama Ata Aidoo's Dilemma of a Ghost and Anowa, went on to Athol Fugard's Valley Song, then Mia Couto's The Tuner of Silences, then Dinaw Mengestu's The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears.

I am teaching Minaret for the second time, having first taught it in the spring. As I did then, I have started with an introduction to Islam, because Minaret deals with the lives of Muslims. I also feel privileged to talk about Islam in view of the widespread ignorance of it in American society. Having been born and raised in Tanzania, about half of whose people are Muslim and about half Christian, living in relative harmony, I enjoy sharing with students my experience of Islam and Muslims.

This time around, having talked about the origins and the five pillars of Islam, and about the Qur'an and the hadiths, I have started focusing on the novel, intending to go through it at a measured pace, in order to explore it as well as possible.

With its opening words, "Bism Allahi, Ar-rahman, Ar-raheem," Minaret inducts the reader into the world of Islam. In class today, I dwelt on this phrase, which means "In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful," and explained its significance in Islam and in the daily lives of Muslims. I went on to explain other references to Islam featured in the first several pages of the novel. I have no doubt that my students will both enjoy and learn much from this novel.

On my part, especially today, I have been thinking about other works of fiction I have taught, written by African Muslim women. These are Mariama Ba's So Long a Letter, Alifa Rifaat's Distant View of a Minaret, Nawal el Saadawi's Woman at Point Zero and The Fall of the Imam. I am dreaming of someday creating a course on writings by Muslim women. As Muslims say, Insha Allah, God willing.