Pan African Breakfast Meeting, May 22

The Pan African Summit planning committee met again today, at the Center for Families. We have been meeting once a month, preparing for the Pan African Summit, scheduled for October 9, 2010. I have written again and again about the first Summit, the memory of which is indelibly stamped in the minds of all who attended.

The Summit planning committee feels obliged to keep the torch burning, mobilizing the people for the second Summit and the work that lies ahead, beyond the Summit. That is the purpose of our monthly breakfast meetings. As we head towards the Summit, we have used these meetings to learn about various issues pertaining to the Pan African community in Africa and in the Diaspora.

Today we found ourselves spending most of the time exploring the different realities and mentalities of Africans and African Americans. It was a thoughtful and drawn-out conversation, which revealed the hidden truths about how different the experience and the mindset of Africans is compared to that of African Americans.

Today's meeting was like a mini-summit of Africans and African Americans. Seen in the photos, from left to right, are Gerald Montgomery (USA), Joseph L. Mbele (Tanzania), Edmund Ocansey (Ghana), and Eugene Dix (USA), who had led one of our meetings, reported here. Edmund and I shared our African experience and perspective, and Gerald and Eugene explained the African American experience and reality. I was particularly struck by the eloquent and profound account Gerald and Eugene gave of the psychological barriers that African Americans deal with on the road to self-fulfillment and success, barriers that, in my view, Africans don't even imagine, let alone understand.

As I sat there, listening to Gerald and Eugene, I told myself that no book I have read has taught me so much about the African American psyche. I realized how much work we need to do to make the Africans and African Americans knowledgeable about, and fluent in, each other's reality. I am using the word "fluent" purposefully, for our very lives and experience are a form of language. Learning about each other is like learning and mastering a language, in the deepest sense of that concept.

We did not say much about the Summit, but we noted that our plans are on track. As the Summit planning committee, we felt that through our discussions today, we had done important work of clarifying and solidifying our understanding and our vision. If we could share this kind of exploration and these kinds of insights during the Summit, we would have gone a long way towards achieving our goals.

Teaching Athol Fugard's Plays

Two weeks ago, I was in the midst of teaching Athol Fugard's plays to my senior class, all English majors. We got to Fugard after studying Tawfiq al-Hakim's The Tree Climber, an intriguing but very interesting play. Before that, we had discussed two plays by Ama Ata Aidoo and two by Wole Soyinka.

I had chosen two plays by Fugard: A Lesson From Aloes and Sorrows and Rejoicings. I recall, vaguely, that I read A Lesson From Aloes as a graduate student in the Department of African Languages and Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, around 1981. The name of Fugard was constantly in my mind then, partly because my fellow graduate school student and friend, Deborah Foster, had written a study of Fugard's Blood Knot that was famous in the Department.

When I decided to try teaching Fugard, several years ago, I chose to start with Master Harold and the Boys, for no particular reason. In a subsequent semester, I tried Sorrows and Rejoicings and taught it again afterwards. In the meantime, I bought and browsed through Fugards's Notebooks.

My growing interest in Fugard led me to decide to teach two of his plays this semester. My class has been able to see not only the range of Fugard's artistic techniques, but also the depth of his understanding of the human cost of apartheid, his probing revelation of the tragic consequences of this system on individuals who experienced it.

Fugard is a deep thinker, who draws from his own experiences of South Africa and the world--since he traveled much--and from his voracious reading of other writers. In his plays and his Notebooks, we see the influence of his wide reading: Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett, Andre Malraux and so on.

Like Camus, Hemingway, and other famous writers, Fugard struggles with issues of the meaning of life and the human condition, truth, and art itself. I am most inspired by Fugard's brilliance as well as humility in the face of those he admires for their contributions, as is evidenced by this passage from his Notebooks:

Resumed reading Camus's "Carnets." I would be happy to spend the next ten years deepening my understanding and appreciation of this man--and rereading and again rereading everything he has written. Camus sounds out and charts the very oceans of experience, feeling and thought, on which I find myself sailing at this moment. His importance to me is monumental. Reading Camus is like finding, and for the first time, a man speaking my own language. (Athol Fugard, Notebooks, 1960-1977, Theatre Communications Group, 1984, p. 94)

Maasai Tribe--Arranged marriage views--Tribal Wives--BBC

Workshop: "Culture, Globalization and Development" (TICC, June 12)

Plans for my "Culture and Globalization" workshops in Tanzania this summer are proceeding apace. I will conduct the first one on June 12 at the Meeting Point Tanga. Read here

Writing About My Country

For about two weeks now, the idea of writing about my country has been foremost in my mind. How did it all start?

Certainly, Lonely Planet has something to do with it. I have been thinking about Lonely Planet perhaps more than at any time in the past, how its writers bring the remotest corners of the world into our lives. Lonely Planet has seen places I have not seen, and might never see, even in my own country.

Before Lonely Planet, however, there was Ernest Hemingway, one of the most gifted writers of all time. For me as an African, Hemingway is precious. His Green Hills of Africa described my country in ways hard to match, let alone surpass. His description of the land, the people, and the animals rings true on every page, as I noted in a previous post. He wrought the same magic, if not more, in his other African stories, including Under Kilimanjaro, published post-humously.

The desire to write about my country owes much also to Derek Walcott, the celebrated Caribbean poet and playwright, a Nobel Laureate like Hemingway, whose works I have read and taught for a number of years. These last two weeks, my thoughts have dwelt on Walcott squarely. What he says concerning his decision to write about his country is unforgettable. Growing up reading English poets, who celebrated, nay sanctified, their native land and its vegetation, such as the oak and the elm trees, the roses and the daffodils, he believed that English trees and flowers were the only ones worth writing about in poems.

He underwent a conversion later, wondering why the coconut and mango trees of his native Caribbean were deemed inferior to the elm and apple trees of England. He decided to strike in this new direction, writing about the coconut and mango trees, sanctifying them through poetry. In his poems and plays, he writes about his people: the fishermen, the fruit vendors, the workers in the tourist resorts. He brings the Caribbean to life, its complexity of colours and shapes, its ups and downs, its pains and hopes.

I think about my village and my home region, up in the mountains east of Lake Nyasa, and I think about Tanzania, my country. The dream of writing about it looms large on the horizon. I am not a poet, but working hard, I should manage to write some decent prose.

Afrifest 2010

Members of the Afrifest Foundation met again today, at the 1st Cup Cafe in South Minneapolis. The main item on the agenda was planning for Afrifest, the Pan African cultural festival scheduled for August 7, 2010.














We received reports about several matters, including confirmation of the venue and an update on exhibitors and performers. Vendors are being lined up, and an art display is in the works.













We will have a fashion show and musical performances. The Sojourner Truth Academy will do a step performance. The Pan African Historical Display will be there as well.













There will be food booths, art and craft displays, informational materials and books. There will be children's activities and games.













Afrifest 2010 promises to be an exciting and edifying event. To sign up as a volunteer, contact: volunteers@afrifest.org. Mark your calendar; spread the word, and be there.

Towards the Pan African Summit, 2010

The Pan African Summit steering committee held another meeting today, at the Center for Families. At our last meeting, we had expressed the desire to reach out to more African Americans and had agreed that we could use the African American churches to reach that goal.













Thanks to the initiative of Edmund Ocansey, today we were joined by two special guests. One was Dara Ceasar, a social worker in the Minneapolis public schools, seen on the right in the photo above. She offered advice on incorporating children's events and activities in the Summit.













The other guest was Reverend Ian Bethel, second from the right in the photo above. You can watch some of his sermons on YouTube, such as this one. Reverend Bethel offered to help spread the word about the Summit.













Also present was Dr. Richard Oni, seen on the left in the photo above. Dr. Oni is president of Minnesota Institute for Nigerian Development. With orgnizations such as MIND, the Africans in the greater Twin Cities area are easy to reach. Hence our view that we need to do more to reach out to the African American community.













We brought up a number of ideas regarding publicity for the Pan African Summit, such as using Facebook and Twitter, as well as African newspapers such as Mshale and the African News Journal, and KMOJ radio station.













We will continue with our outreach to the African American churches, aware that it is easy to reach Minnesota Africans through their numerous associations, whether ethnic, national, or regional.













We reviewed the issue of sponsorships and will go ahead and invite businesses and organization to advertise in our Summit booklet.