Since I was a little girl I’ve had this bubbling desire to do something—to help people and to make things right. I remember the first time I recognized class: I was a little girl and went home with one of my classmates after school. Being a kid, I didn’t really know the difference yet between new furniture and old; I didn’t know what to look for in a kitchen or a bathroom for signs of new-improvements. I didn’t even know the difference between a house and an apartment. I was focused on the Barbie dolls and the glue sticks and the make believe. I guess I didn’t really comprehend it, but it was something I felt—this place was different than my house. When I got home and started asking questions about the difference I quickly was told to be thankful and polite—furthering my suspicions that something other existed. I suddenly felt overwhelmed with this new knowledge and uncomfortable about how to deal with it.
Throughout my childhood, my father was the director of Social Services in my small, southern, mountain town. I would go to his office and see people I knew in the lobby. Years later I would understand what this meant—friends of mine that were in the lobby because their parents were applying for food stamps or welfare. I didn’t understand how lucky I was. As I become more conscious of this lucky place I had landed in life, I also learned how to feel guilty about it.
When I got to college, this only exacerbated itself. I discovered not only my guilt about class—but my guilt about race, as well. I suddenly become aware of what it meant to be white and privileged. I read book after book about how evil I was—an honorary white, female member of this budding bourgeoisie class coming from the small, private, liberal arts colleges of the world.
And in my sophomore year, I decided to go on a three-week study abroad program to Ghana. That first trip rocked my world. I experienced these things every day, all day for a month. I felt my white skin, for the first time, as a minority. I was questioned, out right, about my class and my guilt—didn’t I feel horrible for what had happened to the African man?
On this first trip, walking through the slave castles, a young Ghanaian stops me and asks: Don’t you feel terrible for what your people did to us? His question is so blunt and so forthright that I stumble on my words and can’t answer him. Here I am, walking around feeling heavy about this whole experience, and this total stranger pins the whole thing on me. I'd never thought to ask myself if I felt responsible for slavery. He walks away with a smirk on his face. He had won.
I searched my soul for a response to the young man's question. I sought some kind of a reaction that would illicit some large scale change in myself. I arrived home with a false sense of simplicity. I threw away clothing, I scaled down my possessions—seeking solace in a temporary reduction of the stuff I felt cluttered my life and my vision. I felt almost pious about these acts. As if these reductions had somehow made me a better person. In truth, the possessions crept back in to my life, over time. After all, it was never really the possessions that bothered me in the first place. It just seemed like the simplest place to start. The least messy place to begin. If I didn’t start with my stuff first, I’d have to actually look into myself for answers.
But the question, and the thousands of new questions that stem from that first one, have sat on me for eight years. Don’t I feel like I need to do something? Is there something I can do to help? To make amends? To change things?
On each of my trips, I watch children with distended bellies reaching out for my hand. Grown men and women beg for money. Young men run scams for the tourists, desperate for American dollars or something from our luggage. Women in markets offer you their children (mostly as a joke, but some not so much), begging you to take them to America. Posters in shack-like store fronts proudly display images of America—red sports cars in front of McMansions—referencing the American Dream.
And each time I struggle with myself. How can I have so much and be here with people who have so little? And most of all, how do I even begin to understand—to empathize—what this space is about? How do I cope with who I am? How could I sit comfortably with myself, knowing what I now know about how wrong the white man did Africa? And even worse, I'm always met with questions when I come home that I don't know how to answer. Why do you like it there so much? Why doesn't it scare you? Questions that make me angry and I don't always know why.
My work with urban youth in Baltimore has helped; these kids have taught me an awful lot about the realities of race and class in America. And I’ve learned a lot about my own skin. I’ve become sensitive to the way people talk about others, as if somehow ethnicity, class, and race affect a person’s humanity. I haven’t just read about poverty in textbooks—I’ve seen these things. I’ve felt it. It’s a different beast all together to feel these things.
So today while I'm packing a bag with my designer white jeans and my malaria pills and my expensive arch-supportive sandals, I’m struck by how far I’ve come since that first trip. How much more comfortable I’ve become with my status. I guess I’ve become more comfortable with myself, in general, and most importantly I think I’ve gotten over the self-righteousness that comes with being a “do-gooder”. I spent too many years of my early twenties feeling really, really proud. It wasn't doing me any good.
I feel a distinct difference in my heart from the first empty hand I turned away. I feel that my guilt has shifted to a new space. I still feel like shit, at times, but I have a different understanding of things like community and wealth and race. I’ve come to love these communities—these places I travel. I’ve learned a lot of hard lessons about history and a human’s capacity for forgiveness.
I also have a new understanding, and perhaps appreciation, for what my role is while I’m traveling through these communities. I’ve become more okay with who I am. I am a white woman of privilege. I am American. I remember on my first trip wanting so desperately to be somewhere where I didn’t stick out. Where I wasn’t the subject of everyone’s conversation. Where I wasn’t the white girl. It was another first encounter with other. I didn’t know what to do with the feelings I was having. I couldn’t find words to explain myself. I didn’t know how to get over myself.
When I was working in the Baltimore City Schools, I had hundreds of moments where I felt like this. Where I wanted to be liked. Where I wanted to blend in. To not be the white lady. To not carry the baggage of all the horrible things the “white people” seem to do around here. And I learned, as most of my friends who teach in schools where they are the minority, that this was, fundamentally, my issue. The kids didn’t really understand what it really meant—they barely recognized me as a white woman. It was me who recognized myself as a white woman. As a contrast. And I had to sit on it. I had to feel uncomfortable for a few months. And it eventually changed--but I think it was me who changed. Not the situation.
And the kids helped me cope with myself. One afternoon, a small child, we’ll call her Jada, was sitting next to me in the cafeteria. For some reason she’d been calling me “Godmama” all week.
She asks, “Godmama, can I have another cookie?
“No, Jada,” I reply, “only one for every one.
Another child walks by, sucking his teeth, “Man, she can’t be your godmama! SHE WHITE!"
Jada, without skipping a beat, replies to him without the slightest bit of hesitation, “SHE NOT WHITE! SHE LIGHT-SKINNED!"
She then quickly and innocently turns to me, places her hands on my face and says, “When people call you white, it hurts your feelings.”
Breakthrough. Not white, light-skinned. All about perspective.
And I’ve had to dig deep on what these things mean. And I’ve learned that I’m not afraid to feel hurt or scared or to get my hands dirty. I crave to understand. Yeah, those things suck when they’re happening but what comes out on the other end is something that I often can’t name (although I’ll probably try).
And yes, I still have moments when I feel terrible, but I am who I am. I must start from this point. I can’t be anyone but who I am and I cannot continue to make excuses for where I come from. We all have a role to play in this world—the question becomes: what do we do with the power we have?
I know now that I'll never really save the world, despite all the liberal idealism I once had for myself. I've learned too much. I've had to get over myself. These last few years of traveling back and forth, I know I’ve been taught a lot more than what I’ve brought with me. I’ve seen more in these small self-sufficient villages that will educate me about community, about living, about humanity, than I would ever get from a lesson in a classroom. But it doesn’t make turning away those hands any easier.
I recently flipped through a travel book preparing for my site visit. Stuck between a paragraph on volunteering in Africa and safety tips was a sub-chapter entitled “Africa is Hell”. At first I read the short paragraphs waiting for the punch line—for the intended joke. There wasn’t one. The author was being genuine. He wanted to remind his readers not to get caught up in the fantasy of Africa. He wanted to include a reality check—a remember the-AIDS-rate-and-the-fact-that-civil-wars-erupt-overnight message. As if anyone whose ever really gone and known what it feels like could forget that. I'm not sure the editor really read this book before it went to print. Or maybe he did because he fundamentally believes this.
I've spent weeks laughing about this "Africa is Hell" chapter. And just today, as I'm packing and thinking and anxiously blogging, have I really processed what it means. I guess I can't blame the guy for including the chapter. I've seen the hellish parts. I've walked past people in such unfortunate situations that will permanently sit on my heart; I've seen images that I'll never shake. The place has changed me. The Africa is Hell message ringing true. And there are so many Americans who buy into the fantasy. Who go to "Africa" (a place to many think is a country) to find their roots and to go on Safari and to dance with other just long enough to feel excited but not really digging deep or asking questions. Africa is Hell, he wants to tell these people. Don't go. Don't ruin it. Don't exploit it.
I can't ignore the facts. No amount of sugar coating can take away the simple truths of what poverty really looks like. Hunger does horrible things to someone’s eyes. But I can’t shake this feeling that there is something more important happening under the surface of this pain and devastation. If Africa is Hell, why do I feel changed? Different?
And I struggle with myself. Am I one of those Americans? I don't feel like I am, but can I possibly be anything but that American? I feel like I've got an exemption pass. That I've earned my place here. I've asked all the questions and I've cried and I've kept myself awake at night riddled with guilt. I feel like I've had breakthrough. Perhaps in this space, I'm light-skinned. Because I've also seen the opposite.
Crashing parties is West Africa has become one of my favorite activities. Between shots of local gin, and the hundreds of libations made to the gods (and to the elders), my liquor-soaked eyes observe smiling faces and joyful dances. Women proudly prepare mounds and mounds of food, asking you to help and teaching you generations-old lessons on pounding yams, and everyone happily shares. Small children hold onto your thumb and giggle when you repeat words in your terrible Twi and Yoruba. This couldn't possibly be Hell.
And of course all of this rationalization serves one purpose: to make me feel better about what I’m doing. To make me feel more comfortable in my expensive jeans and pearl earrings.
As I'm packing, I'm remaining positive. I'm looking forward to another few weeks in this place I've come to consider a second home. I'm packing the gifts I'll bring to the people I've come to consider family. The children I've watched grow-up. The women I've become sisters with. But the guilt never subsides for long. It creeps back in with a mighty fist, demanding answers. Questions that I’m not sure I know just yet how to answer.
Showing posts with label roots. Show all posts
Showing posts with label roots. Show all posts
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Like nothing I'd known before, until I knew it better
People ask me now, 'What was Africa like?' I tell them that the place I came to know is laughing yet troubled, strong yet crippled, and dancing. Africa was like nothing I had known before, until I knew it better. But to really explain it, I have to start from the beginning. -Sarah Erdman
In flipping my calendar this morning to the bright and shiny month of July, several things happened.
One: I relished in the fact that June was over. Normally I don’t feel this way about June—such a sweet, warm, school-ending month. But this June was an exception; a terrible month of car accidents, driving rental cars, and bad feelings in the pit of my stomach over stupid things like money and material possessions.
Two: I sighed that my one week of vacation had come and gone so quickly and that although I am tan, and relaxed, it never seems to be enough time to do all the things I think about when I’m drafting those “things I’ll do on vacation” mental lists.
Three: I glanced down at the bright purple note on July 28th that I depart from Dulles Airport at 11 pm for Accra, Ghana. My fifth (FIFTH) trip to West Africa since 2002.
Four: I crapped my pants because I haven’t even started thinking about my 10 day site visit to the motherland. Or the malaria pills I’ll need. Or located my yellow fever vaccination card.
(Sidenote: However, I do use my annual trip to West Africa as a year-round excuse to buy cool, light-weight, earthy/artsy looking clothing, insisting, "…this will be just PERFECT for Benin!” and then promptly losing said clothing to the great abyss that is my closet and dirty laundry pile and going to Target three days before my trip and cursing why Target doesn’t sell short skirts and tank tops during December.)
For those of you who don’t know me, perhaps you’ll find this fascination of mine with West Africa charming. Or perhaps even kitsch. You’ll probably assume I’m way cooler than I really am and that I’m so well-traveled and probably really smart. You’d, for the most part, be pretty wrong on all fronts. You probably also think I’m the luckiest girl on the planet that I get to travel so much for work—and well, I can’t argue you on that one. Working in higher education has its perks. This is definitely one of them.
For those of you who do know me, however, you’ve probably already stopped reading because you just can’t stand to hear me talk about it anymore. And that’s okay. I understand. I’d hate me too. But I can’t help but talk about it. And think about it. And find ways to weave it into stories. I’m starting to understand how the fundamental religion-nuts feel.
I remember in middle school, so sick and tired of being asked had I been “saved” and did I go to church—saying, yes, I was baptized as a baby and, yes, I go to the Presbyterian church on Main Street, and being met with “well have you considered OUR church?”—I finally cracked and blew up. WHY THE HELL IS IT SO IMPORTANT THAT I BE SAVED IF I PRAY AND TALK TO GOD AND GO TO SUNDAY SCHOOL ALL ON MY OWN!? I was met with a response: “I just want to make sure you make it to heaven, that’s all. It’s like I know how to get free passes to DisneyWorld and I want to make sure you get ‘em too.” Jesus. I’m starting to perhaps make connections on why I hate DisneyWorld, too.
I’m like this with West Africa: “Have you been? Wanna hear a story? You should go…maybe your trip to Europe wasn’t enough…ever considered West Africa?”
And since blogs are entirely self-indulgent, this is my time to do just that. And even though they’re pretty much like diaries that are read by anyone with an intrawebs browser, something about my blog feels cozy. Like if you’re taking the time to read this stuff every few weeks, you might actually like me. Or enjoy my ranting and raving about the world. Or think I have something intelligent to say. Or you’re just someone who accidentally stumbled across it and is now obsessed (this is my secret hope that you’re all strangers out there building a cult following of me. In reality, I know it’s just you guys).
I decided to start blogging last fall because I was sad. My grandmother was dying and I was filled with sleepless angst. I’d sit in my living room at three in the morning wondering how I’d make it through my 8 hour work day (9, let’s be honest) and my grad class, and still manage to be the bubbly, happy Lindsay that my friends and colleagues know me to be. I started writing. Tons of it. Ever since I learned how to write sentences this has been my coping mechanism. When shit hits the fan, I start writing about the shit. And the fan. And the people who get hit with the shit from the fan.
When my parents divorced. I wrote.
When my siblings got married. I wrote.
When I graduated high school. I wrote.
When I had my heart broken. I wrote.
When I lost myself. I wrote.
When I found myself. I wrote.
When I lost myself, again. I wrote.
You get the picture. So I thought I’d give this “sharing it” thing a go, as I’m pretty sure my friends were tired of waking up to word documents in their inboxes with headlines like “couldn’t sleep…read this and tell me what you think.”
So when I studied abroad for the first time in Ghana, I wrote. I wrote things that were appallingly self-righteous and myopic; things that now, frankly, embarrass me to read (even in my head, where things are safe). But I was doing what we all do as humans—I was shifting from one place to another. From a smaller circle to a bigger one; one with bigger ideas, harder realities, and steeper consequences. We learn. We grow. We change. Amen, hallelujah.
Some part of me has always desired to become a famous writer. I have a fantasy that someone will discover me—think I’m brilliant—and offer me a lot of money to sit at small café tables and write what I think about the world. That I’ll be given travel allowances and take off for weeks at a time with a laptop in my leather satchel (you know, the one I'll buy when I can afford it?) and a big fat expense account. What a dream—to be someone who gets paid to be a person with things to say; someone who others look to for advice and support. Someone who can churn out words that carry meaning and weight and power in the most challenging of moments. Someone who can sense silent words, too.
But this fantasy also carries a fear—a fear about what this kind of writing can do to you. Does it lose its cathartic value when it’s being demanded by an editor or a greater public? Would I ever really want to ruin what I've got here for myself? I’m thinking about all the times I’ve used my insomnia to process the things I see and hear into short stories or pieces of poetry; all the times I’ve taken my deepest fears and insecurities into a leather-bound journal and written sentences that make no sense and follow no rules of grammar but translate everything I need to say into letters and words and spaces on paper so that I can feel better about tomorrow.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure the journals and journals of angst-ridden writing, processing my own adolescent and post-adolescent struggles with racism and classism and “finding myself” are quite worth the read. It’s mostly a lot of garbled words struggling to describe this feeling I’ve had for most of my life—this desire to do more, learn more, and understand. To embed myself in really hard places and think my way out of them. Crying and cursing all the way out.
And this thing with West Africa was in me from day one (I feel sure of it). It’s not that I just woke up one day, watched the Lion King, and decided to become obsessed with Africa. No. In typical Lindsay fashion, it was a much more long-winded, complicated story. With a lot more dips and bends and uncanny coincidences. I didn’t dream of going on safari as a child or hold onto some colonized vision of traveling to an uncultured, uneducated land and teaching the masses of my great knowledge and heritage. No. It was more a whisper. A thread that seems to have woven itself into parts of my life that I’m just now beginning to recognize. A rhythm in my day-to-day that I can’t ignore.
An opportunity to go for the first time and three weeks of walking around with my mouth hanging wide open. And seven years of processing and going back again and again and learning more and growing. And finding deeper roots.
And it isn’t really Africa itself, so much as how life is enacted there. The way people live. The culture. Which I suppose is inescapably connected to “being African”. But from my limited scope, it’s about music. And struggle. And community. And pain. And beauty. How communities celebrate together and mourn together. How people find ways to sustain despite access to critical resources like clean water and nutritious food. How people can learn about things like astronomy and mathematics and biology from working fields and harvesting crops and raising livestock. How family means everything and how much corruption can damage a person’s sense of themselves. How powerful wealth is and just how dangerous power can be. How little we know about the rest of the world. How intolerant we’ve all become to darkness and anything “other”. And what this all means to me. In my heart. In my life here in Baltimore. In my work with urban youth. In my work with college students who are just beginning to lose themselves and find themselves again.
Mostly I think it’s been about how me going to Africa doesn’t mean anything to the universe at all. This journey is mostly about me and me learning how to strike the balance between “this is what I can do” and “that’s bigger than I am”. Learning to bite my tongue as much I love using it. Learning how to just watch and observe before offering suggestions for change. Learning how to be uncomfortable. Learning how to be faithful, honest, and humble. Or perhaps just learning how to do those things better than I did before.
Feeling heat in places you didn’t think you could feel it. The sound of drums reverberating up your spine and around your heart, coupled with the exquisite preservation of tradition lingering in formal ceremonies. The hair on your arms standing up straight because you’ve never seen something so beautiful—something so simple and so pure. Witnessing poverty in a staggeringly real way but in a way that doesn’t leave you feeling empty like it does here in Baltimore. Feeling scared and unsure, stripped of all my usual defenses. The adventure of it all. The realness.
In flipping that calendar, I’m allowing my brain to go places I don’t normally allow it to go on a workday. And even though I’m working while I’m traveling, I can’t help but take it somewhere deeper, somewhere more powerful. Seven years ago I woke something up inside of me and I can’t get her to sit down and shut up. Something inside of me that make me feel anxious and excited and scared and thrilled all at the same time. Something that I can’t seem to quit.
I started this entry with a quote that I love because I was feeling reminiscent, but I realize now that maybe I only love it because I get what she means. I’ve felt it. I read this book by Sarah Erdman in between my first two visits to West Africa. She spent a year in Mali with the Peace Corps, came back and wrote a book about it. Her book, along with several others in the same genre, have been enormously useful in helping me frame what I think about what I’ve seen and felt and experienced. She’s no New York Times bestseller, but she wrote this book as she was going from a smaller circle to a larger one; as she was growing and processing and starting to understand better who she really was in the wake of feeling all these things you feel when you spend a lot of time in what the big fancy sociologists call a “collective society”.
She summarized all the things I’ve been trying to say for years about my time in West Africa in just a few succinct sentences.
People ask me now, 'What was Africa like?' I tell them that the place I came to know is laughing yet troubled, strong yet crippled, and dancing. Africa was like nothing I had known before, until I knew it better. But to really explain it, I have to start from the beginning.
I’d make one quick change to this statement. I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to explain it. And I'm not sure anyone else really cares as much as we do. And I’m pretty sure that’s okay.
In flipping my calendar this morning to the bright and shiny month of July, several things happened.
One: I relished in the fact that June was over. Normally I don’t feel this way about June—such a sweet, warm, school-ending month. But this June was an exception; a terrible month of car accidents, driving rental cars, and bad feelings in the pit of my stomach over stupid things like money and material possessions.
Two: I sighed that my one week of vacation had come and gone so quickly and that although I am tan, and relaxed, it never seems to be enough time to do all the things I think about when I’m drafting those “things I’ll do on vacation” mental lists.
Three: I glanced down at the bright purple note on July 28th that I depart from Dulles Airport at 11 pm for Accra, Ghana. My fifth (FIFTH) trip to West Africa since 2002.
Four: I crapped my pants because I haven’t even started thinking about my 10 day site visit to the motherland. Or the malaria pills I’ll need. Or located my yellow fever vaccination card.
(Sidenote: However, I do use my annual trip to West Africa as a year-round excuse to buy cool, light-weight, earthy/artsy looking clothing, insisting, "…this will be just PERFECT for Benin!” and then promptly losing said clothing to the great abyss that is my closet and dirty laundry pile and going to Target three days before my trip and cursing why Target doesn’t sell short skirts and tank tops during December.)
For those of you who don’t know me, perhaps you’ll find this fascination of mine with West Africa charming. Or perhaps even kitsch. You’ll probably assume I’m way cooler than I really am and that I’m so well-traveled and probably really smart. You’d, for the most part, be pretty wrong on all fronts. You probably also think I’m the luckiest girl on the planet that I get to travel so much for work—and well, I can’t argue you on that one. Working in higher education has its perks. This is definitely one of them.
For those of you who do know me, however, you’ve probably already stopped reading because you just can’t stand to hear me talk about it anymore. And that’s okay. I understand. I’d hate me too. But I can’t help but talk about it. And think about it. And find ways to weave it into stories. I’m starting to understand how the fundamental religion-nuts feel.
I remember in middle school, so sick and tired of being asked had I been “saved” and did I go to church—saying, yes, I was baptized as a baby and, yes, I go to the Presbyterian church on Main Street, and being met with “well have you considered OUR church?”—I finally cracked and blew up. WHY THE HELL IS IT SO IMPORTANT THAT I BE SAVED IF I PRAY AND TALK TO GOD AND GO TO SUNDAY SCHOOL ALL ON MY OWN!? I was met with a response: “I just want to make sure you make it to heaven, that’s all. It’s like I know how to get free passes to DisneyWorld and I want to make sure you get ‘em too.” Jesus. I’m starting to perhaps make connections on why I hate DisneyWorld, too.
I’m like this with West Africa: “Have you been? Wanna hear a story? You should go…maybe your trip to Europe wasn’t enough…ever considered West Africa?”
And since blogs are entirely self-indulgent, this is my time to do just that. And even though they’re pretty much like diaries that are read by anyone with an intrawebs browser, something about my blog feels cozy. Like if you’re taking the time to read this stuff every few weeks, you might actually like me. Or enjoy my ranting and raving about the world. Or think I have something intelligent to say. Or you’re just someone who accidentally stumbled across it and is now obsessed (this is my secret hope that you’re all strangers out there building a cult following of me. In reality, I know it’s just you guys).
I decided to start blogging last fall because I was sad. My grandmother was dying and I was filled with sleepless angst. I’d sit in my living room at three in the morning wondering how I’d make it through my 8 hour work day (9, let’s be honest) and my grad class, and still manage to be the bubbly, happy Lindsay that my friends and colleagues know me to be. I started writing. Tons of it. Ever since I learned how to write sentences this has been my coping mechanism. When shit hits the fan, I start writing about the shit. And the fan. And the people who get hit with the shit from the fan.
When my parents divorced. I wrote.
When my siblings got married. I wrote.
When I graduated high school. I wrote.
When I had my heart broken. I wrote.
When I lost myself. I wrote.
When I found myself. I wrote.
When I lost myself, again. I wrote.
You get the picture. So I thought I’d give this “sharing it” thing a go, as I’m pretty sure my friends were tired of waking up to word documents in their inboxes with headlines like “couldn’t sleep…read this and tell me what you think.”
So when I studied abroad for the first time in Ghana, I wrote. I wrote things that were appallingly self-righteous and myopic; things that now, frankly, embarrass me to read (even in my head, where things are safe). But I was doing what we all do as humans—I was shifting from one place to another. From a smaller circle to a bigger one; one with bigger ideas, harder realities, and steeper consequences. We learn. We grow. We change. Amen, hallelujah.
Some part of me has always desired to become a famous writer. I have a fantasy that someone will discover me—think I’m brilliant—and offer me a lot of money to sit at small café tables and write what I think about the world. That I’ll be given travel allowances and take off for weeks at a time with a laptop in my leather satchel (you know, the one I'll buy when I can afford it?) and a big fat expense account. What a dream—to be someone who gets paid to be a person with things to say; someone who others look to for advice and support. Someone who can churn out words that carry meaning and weight and power in the most challenging of moments. Someone who can sense silent words, too.
But this fantasy also carries a fear—a fear about what this kind of writing can do to you. Does it lose its cathartic value when it’s being demanded by an editor or a greater public? Would I ever really want to ruin what I've got here for myself? I’m thinking about all the times I’ve used my insomnia to process the things I see and hear into short stories or pieces of poetry; all the times I’ve taken my deepest fears and insecurities into a leather-bound journal and written sentences that make no sense and follow no rules of grammar but translate everything I need to say into letters and words and spaces on paper so that I can feel better about tomorrow.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure the journals and journals of angst-ridden writing, processing my own adolescent and post-adolescent struggles with racism and classism and “finding myself” are quite worth the read. It’s mostly a lot of garbled words struggling to describe this feeling I’ve had for most of my life—this desire to do more, learn more, and understand. To embed myself in really hard places and think my way out of them. Crying and cursing all the way out.
And this thing with West Africa was in me from day one (I feel sure of it). It’s not that I just woke up one day, watched the Lion King, and decided to become obsessed with Africa. No. In typical Lindsay fashion, it was a much more long-winded, complicated story. With a lot more dips and bends and uncanny coincidences. I didn’t dream of going on safari as a child or hold onto some colonized vision of traveling to an uncultured, uneducated land and teaching the masses of my great knowledge and heritage. No. It was more a whisper. A thread that seems to have woven itself into parts of my life that I’m just now beginning to recognize. A rhythm in my day-to-day that I can’t ignore.
An opportunity to go for the first time and three weeks of walking around with my mouth hanging wide open. And seven years of processing and going back again and again and learning more and growing. And finding deeper roots.
And it isn’t really Africa itself, so much as how life is enacted there. The way people live. The culture. Which I suppose is inescapably connected to “being African”. But from my limited scope, it’s about music. And struggle. And community. And pain. And beauty. How communities celebrate together and mourn together. How people find ways to sustain despite access to critical resources like clean water and nutritious food. How people can learn about things like astronomy and mathematics and biology from working fields and harvesting crops and raising livestock. How family means everything and how much corruption can damage a person’s sense of themselves. How powerful wealth is and just how dangerous power can be. How little we know about the rest of the world. How intolerant we’ve all become to darkness and anything “other”. And what this all means to me. In my heart. In my life here in Baltimore. In my work with urban youth. In my work with college students who are just beginning to lose themselves and find themselves again.
Mostly I think it’s been about how me going to Africa doesn’t mean anything to the universe at all. This journey is mostly about me and me learning how to strike the balance between “this is what I can do” and “that’s bigger than I am”. Learning to bite my tongue as much I love using it. Learning how to just watch and observe before offering suggestions for change. Learning how to be uncomfortable. Learning how to be faithful, honest, and humble. Or perhaps just learning how to do those things better than I did before.
Feeling heat in places you didn’t think you could feel it. The sound of drums reverberating up your spine and around your heart, coupled with the exquisite preservation of tradition lingering in formal ceremonies. The hair on your arms standing up straight because you’ve never seen something so beautiful—something so simple and so pure. Witnessing poverty in a staggeringly real way but in a way that doesn’t leave you feeling empty like it does here in Baltimore. Feeling scared and unsure, stripped of all my usual defenses. The adventure of it all. The realness.
In flipping that calendar, I’m allowing my brain to go places I don’t normally allow it to go on a workday. And even though I’m working while I’m traveling, I can’t help but take it somewhere deeper, somewhere more powerful. Seven years ago I woke something up inside of me and I can’t get her to sit down and shut up. Something inside of me that make me feel anxious and excited and scared and thrilled all at the same time. Something that I can’t seem to quit.
I started this entry with a quote that I love because I was feeling reminiscent, but I realize now that maybe I only love it because I get what she means. I’ve felt it. I read this book by Sarah Erdman in between my first two visits to West Africa. She spent a year in Mali with the Peace Corps, came back and wrote a book about it. Her book, along with several others in the same genre, have been enormously useful in helping me frame what I think about what I’ve seen and felt and experienced. She’s no New York Times bestseller, but she wrote this book as she was going from a smaller circle to a larger one; as she was growing and processing and starting to understand better who she really was in the wake of feeling all these things you feel when you spend a lot of time in what the big fancy sociologists call a “collective society”.
She summarized all the things I’ve been trying to say for years about my time in West Africa in just a few succinct sentences.
People ask me now, 'What was Africa like?' I tell them that the place I came to know is laughing yet troubled, strong yet crippled, and dancing. Africa was like nothing I had known before, until I knew it better. But to really explain it, I have to start from the beginning.
I’d make one quick change to this statement. I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to explain it. And I'm not sure anyone else really cares as much as we do. And I’m pretty sure that’s okay.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Dirty Roots
Back in October, the NYTimes published a fascinating article about the First Lady's ancestry. I was struck by what this article symbolized for America: That perhaps we can begin to acknowledge the power slavery has had on the 21st Century; the grip racism has had on the human race. Having a black President and First Lady has certainly given America a chance to grow up a bit about the black and white issues—I think we’re all more aware of what it means to truly live in a global community.
But I couldn't ignore this nagging feeling that the article had invaded Michelle Obama’s personal history—like her husband’s role in office had somehow stripped her of any of her own rights to her own life. Though many refuted this and strongly supported the story, I wanted to hear it from her. I wanted to hear her own story. This is my response.
Mrs. Obama
I’m sorry they played you out like that
I’m sorry that they put you out there
airing your roots
like they were anybody’s business but your own
listening to the disheartened gasps of all
as if it were such a shock to find
that four generations back
a white man created life
with a black woman
that the lines were blurred
the stories lost
names unknown
that a legacy of sold bodies
“negro girl Melvinia, $475”
couldn’t destroy a family’s sense
of connectedness to their own history
but I know these roots of mine
are tangled and
deep, too.
I feel it in those places
I’m told I’ll never connect with
that I’ll never understand
these roots
must be more than what I can see
because I feel the spirits of more than just me
these roots
they contain stories I’ve never heard
people I’ve never met
Growing up I thought they told me
that our roots are made of boxes and straight lines
fake trees clearly linking lines to relationships
suggesting that roots aren’t designed to mingle underground
grow mold
collect dust
or rot in places that get too wet
we live surface lives
without reverence for
the deep and tangled roots
that anchor our souls
to our stories
our skin to our bodies
the maps get musty
lines smudged
circular coffee stains that wash out words
like a game of telephone
the stories grow tall
bending in the middle and spurting new growth
from creaky limbs
and rusted sockets
(and some just hide like mice from cats)
But mine are deep. and tangled.
and complicated.
and beautiful.
Like yours.
But I couldn't ignore this nagging feeling that the article had invaded Michelle Obama’s personal history—like her husband’s role in office had somehow stripped her of any of her own rights to her own life. Though many refuted this and strongly supported the story, I wanted to hear it from her. I wanted to hear her own story. This is my response.
Mrs. Obama
I’m sorry they played you out like that
I’m sorry that they put you out there
airing your roots
like they were anybody’s business but your own
listening to the disheartened gasps of all
as if it were such a shock to find
that four generations back
a white man created life
with a black woman
that the lines were blurred
the stories lost
names unknown
that a legacy of sold bodies
“negro girl Melvinia, $475”
couldn’t destroy a family’s sense
of connectedness to their own history
but I know these roots of mine
are tangled and
deep, too.
I feel it in those places
I’m told I’ll never connect with
that I’ll never understand
these roots
must be more than what I can see
because I feel the spirits of more than just me
these roots
they contain stories I’ve never heard
people I’ve never met
Growing up I thought they told me
that our roots are made of boxes and straight lines
fake trees clearly linking lines to relationships
suggesting that roots aren’t designed to mingle underground
grow mold
collect dust
or rot in places that get too wet
we live surface lives
without reverence for
the deep and tangled roots
that anchor our souls
to our stories
our skin to our bodies
the maps get musty
lines smudged
circular coffee stains that wash out words
like a game of telephone
the stories grow tall
bending in the middle and spurting new growth
from creaky limbs
and rusted sockets
(and some just hide like mice from cats)
But mine are deep. and tangled.
and complicated.
and beautiful.
Like yours.
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