Reflections on Understanding Culture Through Literature

When I wrote my application to join colleagues for a trip to Morocco and Ghana, I was both terrified and excited. On the one hand, I was excited to gain perspective on African texts and films I have taught over the years. On the other hand, although I have traveled in the U.S. and Europe, I was intimidated by the unknown. Realizing that I was literally along for the ride – no need to make reservations, hunt for hotels or restaurants, no fear of getting lost, no worry about languages since Ahmed and Kwasi had us covered – I was able to push away the terror and concentrate on the excitement.

Morocco was simply splendid. Since my arrival on campus in 1985, I have been reading L’étranger by Camus in my French 320 classes. I had never been to Northern Africa, and while we were headed to Morocco rather than Algeria, I was eager to understand more about the countryside and the culture of a former French colony. Camus was passionate about Algeria, and his character Meursault reflects many of the inner struggles the author perceived in a country he loved as simultaneously foreign and homeland. As the bus rolled through the hills littered with ramshackle dwellings, I saw farmers under the blazing heat working in the fields with their donkeys.

In my mind’s eye, I reread the scene where Meursault walks from the nursing home to the cemetery to bury his mother: grass on the hills turning from green to brown under the dry heat; Cypress trees (a symbol of death) looming on the horizon; the sun growing hotter by the second as it rises in the sky; red soil contrasting with white roots as shovels of dirt cover the casket. The constant struggle between life and death is everywhere in the harsh Moroccan environment where the poor eke out their existence in an unforgiving land. Serving as borders between fields and tiny homesteads are thick irregular lines of prickly pear cactus whose fruit amidst the thorns is a metaphor for life.

After our visit to the vestiges of a lost culture in the Roman ruins at Volubilis, we took turns waiting in the rest area. There was neither toilet paper nor running water, but a wizened attendant waited nonetheless for his tip. Change in our pockets was not always a guarantee, and Linda offered to pay this round. As I waited for her, I explained in French she would pay for us both. He suddenly asked me in broken French if I had a pen, and with gestures interspersed with the words for pen and girl, he pleaded he would take instead a pen for his daughter. I handed him the only pen in my bag, and his face beamed with delight as he thanked me profusely. I will never again take for granted the power of a pen.

I enjoy teaching a number of West African texts and films. In my French 220 class we routinely work on a film and children’s book called Kirikou et la Sorcière written by Michel Ocelot, a French citizen who spent his childhood in Guinea. Ferdinand Oyono wrote Une vie de boy about a young man who, lured by a “better” life among the white Europeans, first embraces and then ultimately rejects servitude in colonial Cameroon. Camara Laye’s L’enfant noir documents his experience as a child in colonial Guinea where he straddles the traditions of his village and the colonial French educational system, which ultimately leads him to France. Mariama Bâ in Une si longue lettre describes the conditions of women living in polygamous Sénégal. In French 341 Francophone Short Stories my students read a collection of indigenous African myths and legends. Ghana provided an opportunity for me to internalize otherwise remote cultural references, including the practice of polygamy and the irony of “négritude” in francophone literature that celebrates African identity within the context of colonial rule. The highlight of the trip, however, came in Cape Coast when I had the opportunity to speak to a class of high school students taking French. At the end of the conversation, I told them I taught a film/book called Kirikou et la Sorcière. One boy looked at me with incredulity in his big eyes. “Kirikou?” he repeated until we firmly established it was in fact the same Kirikou, and he told me he had seen the movie. I could not resist asking if the movie was an accurate representation of Africa, and he resolutely affirmed it was. I continued, “I will be able to tell my students they are not wasting their time?” “Not at all,” he insisted, and I will be certain to tell them.

Pictures below: A termite mound (“une grande termitière rouge”) and Kapok tree roots (“arbre fromager” – not to be mistaken for a cheese tree!) as seen in Kirikou et la Sorcière.

Were we really in Africa?

Did that really happen?! Were we really in Africa?! I'm still spending most of my time processing this amazing adventure!

I never expected to see so much, do so much and learn so much in such a short time- and I'm still learning- as I retrieve and examine memories of the trip, they take on new dimensions now with the luxury of retrospection.

I am immensely grateful for the opportunity to travel and experience two incredible cultures with an amazing group of people! The field of education and the children whose lives are touched by these Exeter and Punahou teachers are indeed lucky to have such dedicated and inspiring individuals.

I find that I struggle to articulate all that I've seen and learned. I think the most surprising part of this adventure is that I'm learning so much after the fact- we moved so quickly from one eye-opening adventure to the next, that I just stored each piece of our travels in the back of my mind, and now it is such a joy to take each memory out and examine it- many 'aha' moments have happened for me since I've returned- so many things now make sense- connections, connections, connections.

I'm trying to figure out the answer to the most common question- what was your favorite part? The easy answer would be, of course, the dancing and drumming at the Centre for National Culture- that was pure frosting on the cake! Not only was it a thrill to see, but immensely rewarding to know that the African dance segment of PEA's dance program is right on target. And talk about serendipity- Kwasi has been telling me about a particular dance 'Adowa' which would be perfect for our dancers- and they did that dance! Got it on my camera!

So, I jump from one 'favorite' image to another- was it the anthropology lecture, the Grand Mosque, sights and sounds of the various market places, sitting on the floor with 2 babies on my lap at the creche, laughing with Kosi in his backyard, Ahhhhhh from the minarets, mausoleums and arboretums, tapestries of color in the architecture of Morocco and the dresses of Ghana, the chance to cruise the canals of Amsterdam during a layover, storks, wandering the streets in search of an eclipse, the kindnesses and good humor of traveling companions, the Roman ruins, counting off in Arabic ( I will never forget that 'khamsat'ashar' is 15), Moroccan headdress demo- no, I think the visit to SOS Children's' Village was the best- or perhaps, the afternoon with Touria, the English teacher in Morocco who opened her home to us, or eye-opening visits to schools and the excitement of possible connections, learning the appalling details of the slave trade, collecting Moroccan and Ghanaian music for my dance classes, the indomitable spirit and pride of the people we met- and what about my own personal achievement (which my family does not believe)- I actually ate camel burgers and sheep brains- who knew!

This trip cannot be summed up in a few quick comments to family, friends, colleagues- I can't seem to articulate the barrage of knowledge, emotions, and understanding that accompanies such an unbelievable adventure with an incredible group of traveling companions, tour guides, and our own Ahmed, Kwasi and Mercy. Then, of course, the unbelievable Queen of our Morocco/Ghana Adventure- Hope (whose name is particularly apropos...)- without whom things certainly would have fallen apart!
~Linda

Touring Morocco - Who Feels It Knows It

As a native of Ghana, and a student of Ghana's social and political history, the Ghana leg of our Africa trip this past summer did not add anything overly substantial to what I already know about the country. That is not to say, however, that I did not enjoy visiting the country with my colleagues, I did. If anything it was an honor and a pleasure to facilitate our pre-departure Harkness conversations on Ghana and Africa, as well as being sort of the fall back guy in Ghana, helping colleagues avoid the pitfalls of the marketplace during our shopping trips, and filling in the details for them as we moved from one landmark site to another. Perhaps the greatest excitement of all was seeing the Asante King in person at the graduation ceremony of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumase, as unexpected as the opportunity was. That said, for broadening my knowledge beyond my imagination, it was the Morocco tour which turned out to be the real thriller for me.

The one week tour of Morocco - from Casablanca to Rabat, Fes, Meknes, Volubilis, and Kenitra - raised my consciousness about the central place the country occupies in world history to a level no book alone could ever have. You see, mainstream academia and international bodies, such as the World Bank, have always decoupled North Africa from the rest of the continent in their dealings with Africa, to the extent that the so-called "sub-Sahara Africa" has come to mean Africa, in general. And yet, Morocco (which, together with Algeria, was known collectively as Mauritania at the time of the Moslem conquest) is, perhaps, surpassed only by ancient Egypt in any consideration of Africa in world history during antiquity and the medieval era. As an instructor of African history, I knew quite a bit about the history of Morocco, but only from the distance of written texts. Since our return from Africa, I have gone back to my books, re-read them, and have come to a better understanding of the central place of Morocco and Islam in the nearly thousand-year-long (from about mid-7th century to the mid-17th century) history of the region that stretches all the way from Spain through Morocco to the ancient empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai - all because of what I saw and heard from our tour guides in Morocco.

To walk through the imperial cities of Fes, Rabat, and Meknes is to appreciate the power of the Arab dynsties - from the founding Idrissids through the Merinids to the current ruling Alaouites. By leaps and bounds, Fes, a city of three cities - the Idrissid Fes el-Bali (Old Fes), the Merinid Fes el-Jedid (New Fes), and the French Fes - is the place to visit if one really wishes to know what I might call Arabic Morocco. Its grandeur is matched only by Marrakech to the south, the other imperial city which gave Morocco its modern name. It is unfortunate that, for security reasons, we had to skip going there. Founded by the Almoravids, an African dynasty from the Senegal River valley whose hegemony stretched all the way from Spain to the Ghana Empire during the 11th century, Marrakech was retained as the imperial capital by the succeeding Almohad and Saadian dynasties, both of which were also African.

It is hardly a stretch, therefore, to say that, if Fes is the spiritual and cultural center of Arabic Morocco, then Marrakech is its African equivalent. Although French is currently the European component of the multicultural character of Morocco, historically, that distinction primarily belongs to Spain. I cannot count the number of times our tour guides kept mentioning "Andalusia," the generic name given to Moslem Spain. It was there that, with Arabic, African, Jewish, Greek, Roman, and Chinese influences, the revival of higher education blossomed and laid the foundations, in part, for the subsequent European Renaissance centuries later.

Without a doubt, the most indelible experience of all for me took place in Kasbah d'Ouidas, a fortress enclave near Sala, Rabat's twin city, which served as the capital of the short-lived pirate-controlled Republic of Bou Regred (named after the nearby river). Upon turning a corner during a tour of the Kasba's narrow but pristine streets, we suddenly came upon a colorfully-dressed traditional street musician seated on a pavement chanting and strumming on a guitar. I was so moved by the spectacle that before I knew it I had joined him on his mini cymbals, at which point Ali, our tour guide, proceeded to adorn my head with some of the musicians's head gear. The spontaneity of it all was a thrill of a lifetime!

Well, the thrill may be gone now, but certainly not my new consciousness. I look forward to teaching the "Islam in Africa" unit of our "Pre-Colonial African History" course this fall with more enthusiasm and confidence than I could ever have gained without the trip to Morocco. How true the maxim that "who feels it knows it." We spent only one week in Morocco, but, in terms of consciousness awakening, I feel like I have lived in Morocco long enough to effectively teach the general contours of the central role the country played in world history during the medieval era - an influence that stretched all the way from England to the Songhai Empire.

And so, to all those who made this trip possible and memorable - from our sponsor Phil Loughlin to Principal Tom Hassan and his executive secretary, Mikki Deschaine, who was responsible for the pre-departure orientation logistics, my colleague Ahmed Jebari, who helped facilitate the Harkness conversations during our pre-departure orientation, and who also became our de facto fall back guy in Morocco, Hope Staab of Punahou, the leader of the trip, Jamie and Ali, our tour guides in Morocco, Kwaku, our tour guide in Ghana, my Exeter colleagues on the trip, who provided a much-needed moral support throughout, our Punahou counterparts, who serenaded us at every opportunity with a performance of the legendary Hawaiian rhythms and dance, and, last but certainly not the least, my traveling companion and life-partner, Mercy - I say thank you, sukran (Arabic), medase (Twi).
- Kwasi Boadi

Is It Poverty?

The two men in the picture to the right are dyeing agave silk in the medina of Fes, Morocco. The medina is an intricate and fascinating maze of narrow alleyways bustling with commerce. Skilled craftsmen work on their products while shopkeepers display their merchandise and compete for customers. Children run around, family members chat with each other, friends share a laugh. The tourist is struck by the vitality of the place and may wonder whether this can be considered “poverty.” The lives of the people in the medina are simple; yet they often appear happy and dignified. There’s no starvation here, and the many expert artisans take obvious pride in their work. These families are undoubtedly better off than the many we saw in the rural areas of Ghana. But we shouldn’t be misled into romanticizing the lives of these Moroccan households. What they experience, every day, is poverty indeed.

Poverty is best understood as a condition that limits people’s choices. Such choices include not only feeding oneself and one’s family, but also having access to health care, education, and some degree of economic security, as well as having the ability to participate in the life of the community and pursue interests and endeavors considered valuable. Morocco has undoubtedly made great strides toward removing poverty. A mere 2.5% of the population now lives on less than $1.25 a day; this compares to over 50% in the average Sub-Saharan African country. Life expectancy, now over 71 years, is not far from the levels achieved in North American and Western European countries (and nearly twenty years longer than in the average Sub-Saharan African country). Yet literacy levels remain remarkably low and access to health care limited. And there isn’t much of a social safety net to catch those hit by unemployment or a sudden drop in incomes. While the merchants in the medina may get by when things are good, their livelihoods are not secure; an illness, accident, or economic downturn will quickly push them below the poverty line. And their ability to see the next generation move into higher-paying, more secure jobs is drastically limited by an educational system that leaves over 40% of adults unable to read and write.

The next step for Morocco is to expand the reach of its educational system, so as to reduce illiteracy, increase labor productivity, and move a greater share of its population into the relative comfort and security of the middle class. A larger middle class will also allow the country to muster the resources needed to build a stronger social safety net for those who remain at the margins of the economic system.

It is intriguing for the tourist to observe the tanneries in the medina and learn that work conditions here have changed little since medieval times; but chances are that the people who work here hope that their kids will have a better life—one that frees them from the harsh toil of manual labor and affords them more economic security and peace of mind.