Pursuing Peace, One Step at a Time

Today I went to Columbia Heights, Minnesota, to meet Mohamed Dini, a Minnesota resident originally from Somalia. A mutual friend, Abshir Daacad, who is a great fan of my work as a cultural mediator, had told Mohamed about me and my work, including my book, Africans and Americans: Embracing Cultural Differences.

When Abshir connected us, by phone, I learned that Mohamed had founded a non-profit organization called the Center for African Peace Research. During our meeting today, Mohamed told me more about his organization, and we talked about how I could contribute to its work, which is to promote peace, human rights and good governance in Africa.

I shared with him the work I do as a cultural consultant, emphasizing, for example, that unlike others who focus on conflict resolution, I concentrate on preventing conflicts by fostering understanding among people of different cultures, since many conflicts stem from cultural differences. Since he had read my book, he readily understood my perspective.

We explored many aspects of these goals, as well as strategies and  modalities of advancing them. We agreed we can work together fruitfully.

Talking with Mohamed, one gets the idea that he is a serious person with big dreams. In addition to the pursuit of peace in Africa, he is passionate about promoting a true and realistic image of Africa, irritated, like the rest of us Africans, by the stereotypes and negativity that characterize conventional representations of our continent.

For more information, please visit the Center for African Peace Research and Africonexion: Cultural Consultants.

Self Publishing

In the academic world, self published books do not carry as much value as peer reviewed ones. Self published books are supposed to be second-rate. I have doubts about this conventional wisdom.

My Notes on Achebe's Things Fall, a self published work, has been, and continues to be, widely used in academic settings. It featured, for example, as a resource for students of Cornell University studying Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart.

My Matengo Folktales, also self published, has been used by academic institutions such as the University of California San Diego, College of St. Benedict/St. John's University, Colorado College, St. Olaf College, and Montana State University.

My Africans and Americans: Embracing Cultural Differences has been, and continues to be, used in study abroad programs of such institutions as the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM), Augustana College, Gustavus Adolphus College, South Central College and Minnesota State University Mankato.

My other book, CHANGAMOTO: Insha za Jamii, is in Swahili and not well known. It might, some day, attract the attention of some Swahili instructor and be used as a reader for advanced students.

These works are not perfect. No work is, even with editorial input or peer review. It is possible that my books might have benefitted in some way from a professional editor's input, but I wanted them to speak with my own voice.

If society allows me to speak in my classes without the intervention of reviewers, I do not see why I should be required to submit my work to peer review simply because it is meant for publication. I am skeptical of the cult or fetishism of peer review, mindful of the clever prank Alan Sokal perpetrated on it.

I know the justification of peer review. I do submit articles to peer reviewed journals and have published that way. But I do want to exercise my right to decide which of my works to submit for peer review and which to publish as I see fit, to project a voice that is truly mine.

I Got My National Flag Today

Today, I got the flag of my country, Tanzania. Its colours bear symbolic significance. The green represents our beautiful land, the yellow our minerals. The black stands for the people, while the blue represents our country's water bodies, notably the Indian Ocean, lakes, and rivers.

The immediate impulse for my buying the flag has been my experience in festivals where participants represent their countries bearing their national flags. I felt bad being in those situations without my national flag.



One of the most unforgettable, if not embarrassing, experiences was the International Faribault Festival held on August 23, 2014. I watched from my vendor table while other Festival participants stood on the main stage bearing their national flags, said a few words about their countries, and then paraded in single file, to place their flags in the middle of the open space where they fluttered the whole day. I vowed to get my own flag.



Like most people, I love my country, but I was also taught, as I was growing up, to respect all countries. We desired to be friends with any country on the basis of mutual respect, and we would not allow anyone, even our friends, to choose our enemies for us. Such was the blend of nationalism and internationalism our first president, Julius Nyerere, inculcated in us, which has guided our country since the earliest days.

Papa's Shadow: A Hemingway Film by Ramble Pictures LLC

A 2014 graduate of St. Olaf College, Jimmy Gildea has embarked on a career in filmmaking. After several years of hard work, he has produced Papa's Shadow, his first film (2015 Ramble Pictures, LLC). He is already working on his next one, "A Place Called Nowhere," about refugees at Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya.

Since, alongside Patrick Hemingway, the only surviving child of Ernest Hemingway, I feature prominently in Papa's Shadow, I will let others comment on it. However, the film comes with the following description:

FEATURING AN EXCLUSIVE TESTIMONY GRANTED BY HIS SON, PATRICK HEMINGWAY, PAPA'S SHADOW DIVES HEAD FIRST INTO AUTHOR ERNEST HEMINGWAY'S HUNTING EXPEDITIONS IN EAST AFRICA AND THEIR DEFINING ROLE IN SHAPING A LEGEND.

YOUNG FILMMAKER JIMMY GILDEA DOCUMENTS HIS EXPERIENCE WHILE STUDYING HEMINGWAY UNDER THE INSTRUCTION OF AFRICAN AUTHOR JOSEPH MBELE, JOURNEYING ACROSS MIDWEST AMERICA, THROUGH THE SERENGETI PLAIN AND UP THE STEEP CLIFFS OF MT. KILIMANJARO.

HEMINGWAY'S SON PATRICK AND MBELE ENGAGE IN AN INSPIRATIONAL AND REVEALING CONVERSATION REGARDING THE FAMOUS AUTHOR'S FASCINATING RELATIONSHIP WITH EAST AFRICA.

THIS PERSONAL AND EMOTIONAL FILM EXPOSES MANY ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS HEMINGWAY FANS HAVE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR.

Jimmy and I have been in constant communication from the time he enrolled in my Hemingway in East Africa course, several years ago. We took the photo featured here on April 21, 2015, when he visited me at St. Olaf College to talk about Papa's Shadow.

Jim says that these films will be premiered at festivals in America throughout the year. Eventually, they will be available for purchase. I will keep readers of this blog posted on these developments.

Teaching Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Works

Like countless other people around the world, I am an ardent admirer of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's works. I first read and taught Purple Hibiscus, her first novel, in 2006, reading as I taught.

Then she published Half of a Yellow Sun. On October 14, 2006, she introduced it at the Twin Cities Book Festival in Minneapolis. I attended her reading and book signing and posed for a picture with her.

Proud of my signed copy, I was sure that someday I would teach Half of a Yellow Sun. I did, in the summer of 2013. I had thought that given the sadness and tragedy of its theme, this was a bitter novel. I was surprised to discover, as we moved through it, a story of the resilience of the human spirit.

I then decided to teach Americanah, which I did this semester. A dazzling artistic tapestry, it explores themes such as immigration, relationships between men and women, and between races, with remarkable insight and sophistication. I enjoyed Ifemelu's reflections on American culture, often resembling my own in Africans and Americans: Embracing Cultural Differences.

Ifemelu, the main protagonist, shares her reflections on these themes through her blog, and the very theme of blogging, so pervasive in Americanah, reminded me of the conversation I had with Adichie on the day we met. She talked about a blog she was involved with, which was dear to her.

Now, I am preparing to teach a summer course on African Literature. I have already decided to include Adichie's The Thing Around Your Neck, which I have not read. I have no doubt that it is going to be a great experience for my class.
 

Cannon River Conference, Zumbrota, 11 April

On April 11, 2015, I attended the Cannon River Conference held at Lands Lutheran Church in Zumbrota, a town in southeastern Minnesota. The Cannon River Conference is an annual event organized by churches of the Southeastern Minnesota Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).

The meeting started at 9am and included reports, songs and a narrative of the history of the church in this area. I learned about Project Neighbor, a program of the Cannon River Conference of the ELCA which assists people in need of such essentials as food, shelter, and clothing, regardless of creed, sex or race, who cannot find such assistance elsewhere.

I learned about a non-profit called ABAN that works with girls and young mothers in Ghana, empowering them by helping them with skills training that lead to employment. They produce handmade products from recycled materials, which ABAN sells here in the USA. Some of the products were available, for conference participants to see and buy.

After these and other reports, I was introduced. In my talk, I highlighted the fact that as the world changes becoming a global village, every community will, sooner or later, find itself having to deal with people of different cultures.

This can be challenging, as exemplified by the experiences of the Minnesota cities of Faribault and Brooklyn Park, which have become in recent years increasingly diverse. Instead of trying to cling to our old, familiar ways and habits, the new world requires us to learn about our cultural differences and learn to accept the fact that no matter how different our cultures are, we share a common humanity.

Mindful that this was a gathering of Christians, I said that all this is a test of how true we are to our Christian faith. I invoked Jesus and his story of the Good Samaritan, which he told to an audience which saw the Samaritans as bad people. I said that if Jesus were here today, talking to Americans, he would look around and see the negative media images of Muslims, for example, and would not talk about the Good Samaritan, but most certainly the Good Muslim.

That was the orientation of my talk, but I also said that cultural differences represent and offer opportunities as well. In our colleges, for example, we try to help our students develop a global perspective through such programs as study abroad. Since foreigners are increasingly coming into the USA, students who want to study foreign cultures can gain much of that understanding through interacting with the immigrants.

Even business owners and entrepreneurs interested in expanding their operations abroad can benefit by connecting with immigrants in order to learn about foreign countries and cultures before taking their enterprises abroad. Some of these immigrants are well connected in the countries they come from, which could benefit the Americans.

I had more to say, but I did not want to spend more time than was allocated to me. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed, as I always do, having an audience. Since the issues require much more than a single talk, we had copies of my book, Africans and Americans: Embracing Cultural Differences, available for people who needed them with a view to gaining a fuller view of my perspective and hopefully continuing the conversation.

This was a memorable and useful event. I learned much and greatly enjoyed the opportunity to share my ideas and perspectives on the dilemma of cultural differences in our increasingly interconnected world.

Memories of the World Festival, Rochester, Minnesota

On April 11, I attended the World Festival in Rochester, Minnesota, an annual event organized by the Rochester International Association.

I am drawn to such events because I value and enjoy participating in efforts to build bridges and foster understanding among the world's diverse cultures.

Over the years, I have helped organize and participated in such events, mostly in the Twin Cities area. This was the first time I was attending the World Festival in Rochester, representing Africonexion: Cultural Consultants and the Afrifest Foundation.

One of the major attractions of such events for me is encountering the unexpected. At the World Festival, for example, I stumbled upon members of the Rochester Diversity Council.

I believe I first heard about the Council when I was serving on the board of the Faribault Diversity Coalition. But I had never actually met any of its members. I was therefore delighted to meet Al Lun, who told me he was a member of the Rochester Diversity Council and promptly led me to their booth where he got us to pose for the photo featured here.

Although we did not have much time to talk, since I had to continue taking photos of the exhibitions and performances, before returning to my table, I shared a copy of my book, Africans and Americans: Embracing Cultural Differences, with a view to continuing the conversation.

I wanted very much to share this photo on my blog, since it captures our joy and excitement upon meeting. I also like the way it mirrors the diversity of the world's people, so congruent with the theme and spirit of the World Festival.