Culture and Companionship Retreat, 2009

I just received an invitation to participate as a presenter in a Retreat scheduled for March 26, 2009. This is a gathering of Lutherans involved in building relationships with fellow Lutherans in Africa and elsewhere. We had a similar retreat at the same place last year, which I mentioned here.
Apparently, that retreat went so well that the organizers wanted to have it again. While the topic last year was Mission and Accompaniment, this year it will be Culture and Companionship. I am pleased to be invited as a presenter again, delighted that the retreat is going to focus on culture, a topic most dear to me.

I look back on the experience of last year, and the discussions we had, of the theory and practice of Accompaniment as articulated by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the discussions of the challenges and opportunities of establishing partnerships between American congregations and congregations in Africa and other parts of the world. I recall, as well, the warm fellowship that pervaded our gathering.














Here I am with a fellow presenter on that day, sharing ideas.














Sharing ideas with a fellow presenter.














Talks in small groups are a great way to consolidate and expand on what transpires in the larger gathering.














I had been asked to bring my books, and here I am signing copies.














We took a group photo, to record this memorable day.

With all these memories alive in my mind, I look forward to the forthcoming Retreat. I look forward to intense and valuable conversations on the place of culture in human interactions. I believe strongly that, perhaps more than anything else, cultural differences are the most serious challenge we have to address when we seek to work with people of a different culture. Unless we understand them and find ways to leverage them, perhaps turning them into opportunities, the cultural differences will be a perpetual stumbling block or a nightmare.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day, 2009

January 19 is Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States. Events are held all over the country commemorating the life and legacy of this great American.

In the small town of Northfield, where I live, we are having several commemorative events this weekend. We had the first one yesterday titled "Arts for Martin." People came together to pay tribute to Martin Luther King Jr., including community singers, school children, college students, drummers, and dancers. I was the featured speaker, making short speeches at three intervals between the performances.

As the director had suggested, I spoke about Martin Luther King Jr., Barack Obama, and what those two mean for us. I said that though we honour Martin so much, almost looking upon him as a supernatural being, he was an ordinary human being, who worked hard in school, struggled with life's challenges, and personal challenges, including struggles with matters of faith.

He came from a family of preachers, stretching all the way from his great grandfather and including his grandfather and father. All these were preachers, part of a tradition that preached the social gospel, not confined to theological matters and matters of worship alone, but deeply involved in addressing the needs of the disenfranchised, working with the poor, active in civil rights, voter registration, and so on.

The image we have of Martin Luther King Jr. leading demonstrations, such as the 1963 March on Washington, is part of this story, a story which permeates his speeches and writings. I mentioned, in particular, the famous "I have a Dream" speech and the "Letter from Birmingham Jail".

I mentioned Martin's statement that he dreamed of the day when "little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and little white girls as sisters and brothers." Martin dreamed on the day when his children would "live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

I stressed that though this message was addressed to Americans, it speaks to the whole world. Though it appears to address whites, it applies equally to all of us; we should all judge people on the basis on their character, not their race, religion, ethnicity or other category.

Martin is known all over the world, and I focused on Africa, on Africans who judge and discriminate against others on the basis of religion, ethnic group, clan, and so on. Why do these Africans claim to be honouring Martin?

Like Martin, Obama was brought up in the African American religious tradition that stressed the social gospel. Upon graduating from Harvard, Obama became a civil rights lawyer and a community organizer in Chicago. In his writings and speeches, Obama has stressed the need for unity across races, genders, religions, ethnicity, and other categories. His message has been to affirm the dignity of every person, and belief in the potential of human beings to be the best they can.

I talked again about Africans, who have joined in such an euphoric manner in celebrating Obama's electoral victory. I wondered whether they are really honouring Obama. Do they celebrate him simply because he has African roots, or do they share Obama's values and vision? The paradox is that even Africans who are obsessed with their ethnic group, for example, and who despise and discriminate against other ethnic groups, claim to be celebrating Obama. How can Africans who are so obsessed with their clan or village or religion that they look down on others, claim to be honoring and celebrating Obama?

At this point, I saluted the Americans. At least they, in electing Obama so overwhelmingly, have taken a step towards realizing Martin's idea of judging a person by his or her character. America has not thereby become a perfect society, but the Americans can claim to have taught us a lesson.

To highlight the challenge that lies ahead, and to be true to the legacy of Martin, I invoked another statement of Martin, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." That way, Martin highlighted for us the need to stand with any oppressed person anywhere in the world, and fight for justice everywhere in the world.

So, while the Martin Luther King Jr. Day is a day of celebrating the legacy of Martin, it is also a day for asking ourselves some serious questions and reminding ourselves of the challenges that lie ahead.

Talking with American Students Going to Tanzania

Today I went to Apple Valley, Minnesota, to speak with students from Gustavus Adolphus College on their way to Tanzania on a study trip. Their professor, standing second from the right in the back row, in the photo, had invited me to talk with them on differences between African and American culture. In preparation for our meeting and for the trip, she had asked them to read my book Africans and Americans: Embracing Cultural Differences which many colleges use for orientation of students going to Africa.

After my preliminary remarks, talking about my background and my passion for my work as a cultural mediator for Africans and Americans, we had a long question-and-answer session. It is always a delight for me to be involved in such encounters, since I not only learn from hearing my readers' questions, but I also get an opportunity to share whatever I can to make such people go to Africa with confidence and a sense of humour.

The Gustavus Adolphus Tanzania program is described here.

Things Fall Apart: 1958-2008

I wanted very much to write a tribute to Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, given that this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of its publication. Rightly, people around the world have celebrated the event.

Things Fall Apart is the most famous African novel, whose appeal, after fifty years, shows no sign of diminishing. In fact, its reputation continues to grow, with more translations coming out, symposia, critical works, and a never ending desire on the part of instructors to include it in their course offerings. Actually, only two days ago, on December 29, I received in the mail a parcel from Norton Publishers, which came as a complete surprise. It was a complimentary copy of a critical edition of Things Fall Apart, edited by Francis Abiola Irele. I was delighted and quite amazed that this gift should come just as I was getting ready to write my tribute to Things Fall Apart before the year ended.

Like all readers of this novel, I never get tired of reading it and never cease to discover new insights and meanings in it. I have been priviledged to teach this novel since the early seventies, with students from around the world. I am happy to have had the opportunity to write about it as well. One of the highlights of my work with this novel was participating in a reading series organized by the South Dakota Humanities Council, click here. The Council invited me in 1997 to write a study guide on this novel, which I later expanded and published, click here.

For me, one of the most intriguing and fascinating aspects of this novel is that though dealing with a particular period in the history of Igbo culture, it strikes a chord with African cultures across the continent, telling what can only be described as timeless truths. In terms of artistry, it is unmatched on the landscape of African writing. No wonder its appeal continues unabated, fifty years on.

When it first came out, Africa was mostly under colonial rule and in the throes of the struggle for independence. No wonder that Africans saw Okonkwo, the hero of the novel, as their hero. His struggle against European intervention in his community resonated with their own struggle.

With the passing of years, however, Africans are able to look more critically at Okonkwo and discover his weaknesses and negative traits. Feminist consciousness, for example, has helped sharpen our focus on those weaknesses. Most importantly, we feel secure enough to challenge Okonkwo without feeling we are undermining the nationalist sensibilities of the fifties.

In my own way, I have been fascinated by the marginal characters in Things Fall Apart, such as Unoka, trying to elevate them to a position of respectability I feel they have been unjustly denied. This may sound like an uphill task, but I am excited about it and I enjoy sharing with students this unconventional approach to the novel.

We are all grateful to Achebe for having produced this classic, which has established itself as the quintessential African novel, artistically wrought, foundational, and satisfying in all kinds of ways.

Workshop: "Culture, Globalization and Development"

The world is increasingly becoming a global village, but what is globalization? What are the cultural implications, challenges, and opportunities of globalization? In the emerging global village, with its complex cultural dynamics, what is development and who defines it? These are the key questions to be addressed in a workshop to be held at the Meeting Point Tanga, Tanzania, on July 4, 2009. Read here

Do You Have an Accent?

If you are like me, with deep roots in Africa, you probably have heard Americans say you have an accent. Read more about this here.

International Volunteer Day

December 5, 2008, was International Volunteer Day. I went to St. Paul, Minnesota, to attend a function organized by the Global Citizens Network, http://www.globalcitizens.org/index.htm in commemoration of this important Day. I had known about the GCN for a few years, through visiting their website. I know, for example, about the work they are doing in several parts of Tanzania. Yet I had never met these people. I therefore looked forward to attending this event in St. Paul.

I was happy to meet the people who came to the event, including members of the Board of the GCN and volunteers. We discussed the concept of global citizenship: what does it mean to be a global citizen? Do we, as individuals, consider ourselves global citizens? I thought these were very meaningful questions, and we discussed them at length, exploring the challenges and opportunities of encountering other cultures, learning to understand them on their own terms, discovering the differences and, above all, learning that our own ways, perspectives and values are not the only valid ones. Accepting the differences and being comfortable in the knowledge that, despite those differences, we all share a common humanity, is part of being a global citizen. We exemplify our global citizenship by working with others as respectful and ethical agents of social change in our communities and around the world. Global citizenship entails acknowledging and accepting all human beings as citizens of the world we all live in.

It was wonderful to be with people who are so dedicated to doing positive things in the world, learning, sharing gifts and resources, and knowing that they, in turn, are enriched by their encounters and experiences with other people around the world.

Amidst the discussions and reflections, we watched slides showing GCN volunteers on building projects in Nepal and Kilomeni in Tanzania.