Late last night, lying in bed and thinking about all the Halloween debauchery I had witnessed in Fells Point, my blackberry buzzes from my bedside table. I’ve become accustomed to this nightly buzz, as the early morning’s onslaught of the day’s coupons and sales and news stories begin to fill my inbox, and I generally ignore it, waiting for the next morning to purge most of it over my morning coffee. I happen to still be awake, and pick up the phone to see what Williams Sonoma has put on sale or what Bluefly.com is demanding I must have before the week is out. I see it’s a message from a dear friend in Benin, and I quickly sit up and read it. It’s titled “flood”. He started his email, “As I’m sure you know by now, the rains this year have caused so much havoc to us all. My roof has been touched and water is entering the rooms; the sewage system and the compound have been flooded.” He goes on to talk more about what’s happening, and more importantly about what’s not happening. There is a sense of urgency in his tone, desperately trying to figure out how he can try and fix this for himself and his family. Wondering, very innocently and almost embarrassed by it, what role I play in that, as his good American friend.
I pick up my laptop, and swing it open as my heart sinks. I quickly open the browser and Google: “floods in Benin”. Three or four articles pop up at the top, with headlines like “Floods ravage Benin” and “Floods generate humanitarian crisis”. I cringe and wait for my heart to stop pounding. I didn’t know. I had no idea.
Benin has become a place I love; a place I consider a second-home. To think of this place under water, and people dying, I’m suddenly feeling like throwing up. Amidst feeling sick, I start to feel guilty, too. I, like most of my well-educated and politically engaged friends, like to stay abreast on what is happening around the world. I actively read the newspaper and watch the BBC. I check the NYTimes updates all day long. I read political blogs and international headlines and I like to think I can carry an intelligent conversation with most people on domestic and international issues. I’m finding myself angry that this news story, now days old, hadn’t trickled into a single one of my feeds. Hadn’t made it to a front page of anything that I read every morning. That I didn’t hear about it and more importantly, that most people wouldn’t even begin to notice. I forced myself to lie back down, ignoring the gnawing agitation in my gut, and prepared myself for another restless night of sleep, knowing my loved ones, 5000 miles away, were fighting a natural disaster. And more importantly, that this country’s lack of infrastructure was ultimately it’s largest enemy. And that just a few months ago, I sat on those shores, drinking beer and eating local nuts, journaling about the rustic beauty and the traditional charm of these dusty, rural villages.
Upon waking, I read many of the articles I’d thumbed through at 2 am and really let this news settle in. I respond to Alex, wondering what the state of his health is and if his family is okay; I ask, “How bad are the cities?” My colleague also writes to him, almost simultaneously, as if we’re in each other’s heads, asking many of the same questions. And now I wait. And check the web obsessively for updates. Waiting for a time-delay to catch up, so that I can correspond more.
In the mean time, it seemed an appropriate time to begin lesson-planning for the upcoming class in a few weeks on slavery and racism in West Africa. In January, my colleague and I will take 18 undergraduates to West Africa, Benin included. In this time, we do our best to teach an intensive course in History and Culture and, naturally, slavery and the slave trade are a necessary element of that. It’s probably the most difficult portion of the program, for a wide variety of reasons.
For starters, race is something everyone talks about and thinks about on different levels; the conversation is often based in an individual’s own personal story and experience and encounters with race. Secondly, the history of slavery in America is grossly distorted, and most North American children learn the history of slavery as only a companion to the Civil War and largely in association with the Deep South, the cotton industry, and plantation life. Rarely is the true story of slavery told; the story that includes most wealthy families that dotted the entire East coast, the critical role of the North, and the trade of slaves that spurred American commerce well past the abolition of slavery. Lastly, this conversation is hard because it involves blame. And emotions that have yet to be quelled. Conversations that have never happened and a desperate need for a paradigm shift.
Today I decided to preview a documentary I’d like to show in class. I’ve read the accompanying book, and the story outlines a family in Rhode Island coming to terms with it’s own past as the descendants of one of the largest slave-trading families in North America. The documentary is quite good, albeit largely based on some serious white privileged guilt, but I find it relevant. The story outlines a journey of a family to Ghana and then to Cuba and then back to Rhode Island, and documents much of their experience. I couldn’t help but relate as I watch them stand awkwardly in the slave dungeons; knowing the feeling I’m seeing on their faces as they try to discern what their role is and why it hurts so bad. Watching young Ghanaians challenge their presence: Why are you here? Don’t you feel bad? Hearing stories of the way they’re treated by African-Americans on those shores; the way they’re rejected and battered as if they’re continuing to commit a crime just by being present in such a sacred place. I’ve done that journey five times now. I’ve sat on those white-washed walls and felt the aching in my center over something that I inherently feel responsible for and simultaneously searching my heart for resolution. For reconciliation. And felt the same sense of embarrassment, and of guilt, as I attend events intended for descendants of the African Diaspora. The same sense of displacement, which has taught me more than anyone could ever understand, but perhaps is still inherently selfish of me.
I couldn’t help but start tearing up as an intense dialogue spurred between these desperately overwhelmed white Americans and a frustrated black American woman. She argued, “If white people were paying more attention, they’d be just as pissed as we are. The fact that they aren’t reads that they aren’t paying attention. That there is no sense of urgency.” The conversation is heartfelt, and not hostile, but strong. The racial intensity in the film is tangible; I can feel it in my own heart. In my own memories. In my own experience.
I can’t count how many times I’ve thought the same thoughts. How many times I’ve desperately questioned, “Why aren’t people more outraged?” As I’ve counted quarters out of my own wallet for city school kids who don’t have enough money for the bus or as I’ve listened to parents who work three jobs and can barely make rent. As I’ve watched the way a system ignores an entire class of people; and how easy it is to forget what privilege affords you. As I’ve watched young women and men of color struggle in a world that still caters to the white. And to the elite.
Lately, this has been about the rest of the world, as I’ve tried to make sense of how easily we can shut off the bad news. How American media has been designed to sing and dance until we forget that we’re at war in two countries. That Americans, and our insatiable hunger for cheap products, fuels some of the most incredible worldwide hunger and poverty and yet we continue to buy it, because we don’t see it. It’s 5000 miles away in a small, hot building that’s currently under water.
They symbolism of my entertainment choice this afternoon is biting.
There is no sense of urgency. I didn’t know about Benin. It took a frightened, sad email from 5,000 miles away for me to understand what was happening there.
In just a few days, America votes in the primary election. This election has been nasty, and the nation’s wickedness seems to have ratcheted up to near-toxic levels. In an election that has been increasingly fueled by polarized parties, racially-charged commentary, and large quantities of mud and feces slinging , I find it ironic that we’re still not talking about things that really matter. We’re still not focusing on what it takes to get bread on a table, how to go to college when you’re a homeless teenager, and how to bail water out of your flooded compound. How to prevent Cholera from killing your children. We’ve watched the whole world experience tragedy over the last few years. From Chile to Haiti to Pakistan, we’ve seen quick clips of tragedy in between America dancing with the stars, and occasionally, we host a telethon and pat ourselves on the back for our American humanitarian efforts. For the overwhelming generosity of our country.
And then we attend the funerals of the young men and women who are so bitterly bullied about their sexuality and their gender that they take their own lives, and we question: Where is our sense of urgency? Where is that overwhelming American generosity?
A part of me doesn’t even want to participate anymore. Doesn’t want to go to the polls. To vote for a governor and a senator, who regardless of their party, will still not answer my questions. Will still not drive through the boarded-up blocks of my city without judgment, attempting to seek solutions to what slavery REALLY did to this country. To most urban cities.
There is no sense of urgency.
And I admit it's crushing, even for myself, to have these feelings. This is coming from me, a girl who so ardently talks about civic engagement and building community. A girl who fundamentally believes in justice and in effective systems. Who can watch 200,000 people from all races rally in Washington, D.C. to "restore the sanity" and feel inspired and then turn around and feel so uninspired. So cheated by my own home. And I can't do anything but write about it.
And wake up tomorrow and continue to fight for justice in a place that feels bigger and more enormous and more complicated, everyday.
Showing posts with label urban education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label urban education. Show all posts
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Lessons in Knot-Tying
For the last week, I’ve felt tested in my patience and in my capacity for understanding. Once again I find myself tangled in systems that have been designed to serve people who need help; who need assistance; who need a system to start working so that they, too, can start working. These have become familiar feelings over the last five years, as I’ve fought, sometimes hand-in-hand, with angry parents and incongruous systems and frustrated and displaced people. As I’ve tried to understand what it all means from where I sit in the world. To empathize, to grow, and to hopefully do something about the injustices I encounter. But it’s never that simple: identify the problem, propose a solution, and enact it. Step one, step two, and step three. Because these tangled, mangled webs we call “systems” make such a mess of these "social issues" as they loop around these problems like string; wrapping and weaving until tight, unruly knots form and somewhere in the tangles both ends get lost. Suddenly the problems no longer have beginnings and ends but soft, rounded edges that go on forever.
Sometimes I can’t name the things I feel. I feel a series of words that live somewhere in between outrage and disbelief; sadness and embarrassment; fear and intimidation; courage and faith; idealism and hope. They’re words that don’t always exist in the English language; words you can only feel in the way a child who is scared grips your hand or the way it feels when someone who is hungry looks you in the eyes. These are words that get lost in human connections, because hunger has a hundred meanings and fear has a thousand sources. Sometimes they’re things you can only feel. And sometimes the words do exist but they’re ugly, nasty words like racial discrimination and educational inequality. Ignorance and bigotry. Domestic violence and substance abuse. Racial profiling and gentrification.
And sometimes I feel downright strange feeling the way I feel, wondering if I really have the right to get so angry or to get so outraged about issues that aren't even mine to begin with, as I drive away in my car. As I stir the pot of my dinner and contemplate what failed to happen today that could have done something for tomorrow. As I sit inside my house, in my warm bed, and process my anger, my frustration and my disgust over people's ignorance and over middle-aged-white-men-and-their-corporations through this blog, on this laptop, with this wireless internet connection (knowing full and well that I come from a long-line of middle-aged white men, and probably am destined to marry one, too).
This is when I really start to beat myself up. Perhaps I don’t suffer enough to ever understand the half of it. These are the moments I remember the first time I got cussed out by a parent, got called a “white bitch”, and felt like I honestly deserved it. The first time I honestly felt scared walking to my car at night. The first time I witnessed police brutality, and I wasn’t the recipient. These are the moments when I challenge my intentions the most: Why AM I here? What AM I doing?
Earlier this week, I went to hear Sister Helen Prejean, an anti-death penalty nun in the Roman Catholic Church, speak to a room full of Catholics, college-students and activists. She’s a talented and powerful speaker. After just twenty minutes of hearing her strong New Orleans' accent share stories about her book, Dead Man Walking, why she’s been called to God’s work, and why we all have to wake up to the injustice in the world, it becomes obvious why she’s such a good spiritual adviser to men on Death Row. She's funny and smart AND a woman of God. And while her talk mainly focused on the issue of the death penalty, speckled with some tragic and incredible stories about her interactions with death row inmates, she embedded an overall message into her platform about social justice that left everyone in the room changed, if not somewhat shaken. She’s inspiring. She makes it all seem okay. Despite all she’s seen, and all she’s done, she still maintains hope for the future.
I always feel like there is no mistake made when these things all happen at once. I'll refrain from the obvious serendipitous religious reference. Here I am, having a horrible week, feeling all kinds of conflicting feelings about everything I’m doing. I’m thinking I’ll take a quick break and just pop in to hear this nun tell a little story about the movie she inspired, and bam: I’m sitting there listening, letting all the anxieties and to-do lists of my life hang loose around my body, my over- caffeinated limbs practically twitching with exhaustion, and I’m having one of those god-damned light bulb “ah-hah” moments that I generally detest (can you say god-damned in a sentence about a nun?). Her words hit me so far into my heart that I could hardly sleep. I laid awake half the night thinking about all the things that were wrong with the world and consequently, all the things I wasn’t doing to fix any of it (okay, that’s a lie. I do a lot, but sometimes it feels like nowhere near enough).
Turns out, the world is kind of falling apart. And turns out that I’ve decided to love a city that so many have written off as too violent and too dangerous. Turns out I’ve decided to care about kids that so many have already decided have failed. Turns out I’ve decided to continue to try to solve problems that so many have written off as unsolvable. Turns out I’ve decided to turn in my brain and my worker-bee skills to be overworked and underpaid because I can’t seem to think about doing anything else for a living.
Part of the complexity of this whole thing is just how easily these problems can seem to disappear. How seemingly invisible these communities can be and how comfortable people can be on the outside. How unengaged. How unaware people are of what exists just beyond their reach and how sometimes the people just beyond their reach are truly suffering; are truly hungry and living in a world that doesn’t even look like America, even if you got drunk and squinted.
How I have to make a conscious choice to see what I see, to dig where I dig, to engage. And these feelings I get are embedded in this choice. A knowing that I’m not always welcome where I go and that it takes time for people to trust me because I’m an outsider. And I’ll always be outsider on some of these issues. And how the issues can feel so huge. All the -isms can feel so heavy. And yet it all seems so simple: all humans should have access to all the things they need to be safe, to be successful, to be healthy and happy.
How sometimes working in urban education, I feel like I’m just trying to unravel the knot. I’m playing that game where everyone holds a part of a massive piece of yarn and we’re told to roam around the room, winding and tangling ourselves (with the intention of unraveling ourselves later). Except the room is a really, really big room, and the people holding the yarn didn't listen to the instructions, and without talking we’re supposed to figure out how to unravel ourselves from the massive human knot we've formed by bending around each other and non-verbally communicating and someone you don't trust has to crawl between your legs, while the yarn around your arm just gets tighter and tighter. And every time we get one piece of the yarn untangled, a knot forms on the other side.
And there are days when I only wish I had scissors. But something tells me, the Sister would advise me otherwise.
Sometimes I can’t name the things I feel. I feel a series of words that live somewhere in between outrage and disbelief; sadness and embarrassment; fear and intimidation; courage and faith; idealism and hope. They’re words that don’t always exist in the English language; words you can only feel in the way a child who is scared grips your hand or the way it feels when someone who is hungry looks you in the eyes. These are words that get lost in human connections, because hunger has a hundred meanings and fear has a thousand sources. Sometimes they’re things you can only feel. And sometimes the words do exist but they’re ugly, nasty words like racial discrimination and educational inequality. Ignorance and bigotry. Domestic violence and substance abuse. Racial profiling and gentrification.
And sometimes I feel downright strange feeling the way I feel, wondering if I really have the right to get so angry or to get so outraged about issues that aren't even mine to begin with, as I drive away in my car. As I stir the pot of my dinner and contemplate what failed to happen today that could have done something for tomorrow. As I sit inside my house, in my warm bed, and process my anger, my frustration and my disgust over people's ignorance and over middle-aged-white-men-and-their-corporations through this blog, on this laptop, with this wireless internet connection (knowing full and well that I come from a long-line of middle-aged white men, and probably am destined to marry one, too).
This is when I really start to beat myself up. Perhaps I don’t suffer enough to ever understand the half of it. These are the moments I remember the first time I got cussed out by a parent, got called a “white bitch”, and felt like I honestly deserved it. The first time I honestly felt scared walking to my car at night. The first time I witnessed police brutality, and I wasn’t the recipient. These are the moments when I challenge my intentions the most: Why AM I here? What AM I doing?
Earlier this week, I went to hear Sister Helen Prejean, an anti-death penalty nun in the Roman Catholic Church, speak to a room full of Catholics, college-students and activists. She’s a talented and powerful speaker. After just twenty minutes of hearing her strong New Orleans' accent share stories about her book, Dead Man Walking, why she’s been called to God’s work, and why we all have to wake up to the injustice in the world, it becomes obvious why she’s such a good spiritual adviser to men on Death Row. She's funny and smart AND a woman of God. And while her talk mainly focused on the issue of the death penalty, speckled with some tragic and incredible stories about her interactions with death row inmates, she embedded an overall message into her platform about social justice that left everyone in the room changed, if not somewhat shaken. She’s inspiring. She makes it all seem okay. Despite all she’s seen, and all she’s done, she still maintains hope for the future.
I always feel like there is no mistake made when these things all happen at once. I'll refrain from the obvious serendipitous religious reference. Here I am, having a horrible week, feeling all kinds of conflicting feelings about everything I’m doing. I’m thinking I’ll take a quick break and just pop in to hear this nun tell a little story about the movie she inspired, and bam: I’m sitting there listening, letting all the anxieties and to-do lists of my life hang loose around my body, my over- caffeinated limbs practically twitching with exhaustion, and I’m having one of those god-damned light bulb “ah-hah” moments that I generally detest (can you say god-damned in a sentence about a nun?). Her words hit me so far into my heart that I could hardly sleep. I laid awake half the night thinking about all the things that were wrong with the world and consequently, all the things I wasn’t doing to fix any of it (okay, that’s a lie. I do a lot, but sometimes it feels like nowhere near enough).
Turns out, the world is kind of falling apart. And turns out that I’ve decided to love a city that so many have written off as too violent and too dangerous. Turns out I’ve decided to care about kids that so many have already decided have failed. Turns out I’ve decided to continue to try to solve problems that so many have written off as unsolvable. Turns out I’ve decided to turn in my brain and my worker-bee skills to be overworked and underpaid because I can’t seem to think about doing anything else for a living.
Part of the complexity of this whole thing is just how easily these problems can seem to disappear. How seemingly invisible these communities can be and how comfortable people can be on the outside. How unengaged. How unaware people are of what exists just beyond their reach and how sometimes the people just beyond their reach are truly suffering; are truly hungry and living in a world that doesn’t even look like America, even if you got drunk and squinted.
How I have to make a conscious choice to see what I see, to dig where I dig, to engage. And these feelings I get are embedded in this choice. A knowing that I’m not always welcome where I go and that it takes time for people to trust me because I’m an outsider. And I’ll always be outsider on some of these issues. And how the issues can feel so huge. All the -isms can feel so heavy. And yet it all seems so simple: all humans should have access to all the things they need to be safe, to be successful, to be healthy and happy.
How sometimes working in urban education, I feel like I’m just trying to unravel the knot. I’m playing that game where everyone holds a part of a massive piece of yarn and we’re told to roam around the room, winding and tangling ourselves (with the intention of unraveling ourselves later). Except the room is a really, really big room, and the people holding the yarn didn't listen to the instructions, and without talking we’re supposed to figure out how to unravel ourselves from the massive human knot we've formed by bending around each other and non-verbally communicating and someone you don't trust has to crawl between your legs, while the yarn around your arm just gets tighter and tighter. And every time we get one piece of the yarn untangled, a knot forms on the other side.
And there are days when I only wish I had scissors. But something tells me, the Sister would advise me otherwise.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Africa is Hell
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Damaged Goods
Every now and then I just have a hard week. My work gets under my skin. The infinite injustices around the world come over me and I find myself overwhelmed with questions and not enough answers. I have these days when my words don’t always come out correctly because I can’t seem to grasp what it is I’m actually trying to say or what I’m trying to process. And this steady stream of thoughts and moments and experiences flow through my brain in a schizophrenic furry. And I go back and forth on what I’m really feeling—because I can’t actually pinpoint what it is except some combination of anger and frustration and compassion and an honest attempt at understanding. So bear with me here.
For weeks now the babbling in my head has been about race and class and all the things in between. Between health care reform and the Tea Party and the economy, I hold my breath every morning as I read the New York Times, convinced I’ll stumble across something that will make me cuss. Before 8 am. And almost every morning it happens. (The cussing)
Today the question was posed to a group of 7th and 8th grade students by a mentor and colleague: “As a young African-American, what negative assumptions do you feel are made about you?”
The words starting stumbling from these young kids mouths—real, fresh, cutting words that didn’t come from some artificial canned place but from real experience. From real feelings.
My eyes were groggy with my last three nights worth of work-related events, restless sleep, and anxiety over too-much-to-do-and-not-enough-time. The coffee in my hand had just barely begun to create the chemical reaction I needed to be alert and then this:
“That I’m ignorant, untrained, impolite, and loud.”
“That I’ll never finish anything I start.”
“There are people who don’t think I deserve an education.”
“That what happens in the neighborhood happens in the school.”
Okay. Awake.
My guttural response was immediate. There was something powerful happening in this room. I let out air from my mouth, quick and fast, and made that sound old ladies make in church when they’ve heard something that moves them—something that cuts right to the heart.
The students continued, each adding to each other’s thoughts, creating this list that could have been in a textbook. All the worst-of-the-worst stereotypes of black, urban America.
Earlier this week, my alma mater hosted Ed Burns, co-creator of The Wire, The Corner, and a variety of other television shows. I’ll note that I wasn’t there, because I was at a benefit for Wide Angle Youth Media, but I’ve heard nothing but bubblings from my students and colleagues about his talk—mostly negative. It seems Burns is pretty much over being hopeful about the Baltimore City Schools (that is assuming that he ever really had hope in the system to begin with). And there is one resonating subject I cannot seem to shake from my system. From what must be a very bitter, burned place, Burns insinuated that most of these children are too damaged to be capable of learning after age 4 or 5. That a kid raised in the inner-city was too damaged to learn. Incapable of success. These weren’t his exact words, but they were easily inferred. And the message that was taken home by a lot of people from this event was dangerous.
For someone like me, who spends her days and nights and all my money trying to think of better ways to get these kids to succeed—supporting people and organizations and teachers who BELIEVE in these children, these words strike me as so painfully despairing. And infuriating.
And the subtlety flows like water—this infectious disease of assumption. When these words feed fuel to fires that need no help burning. When the news reports the latest rash of youth violence, of murders, of drug busts—these words feed the hungry people sitting on the sidelines: the hundreds of thousands of people sitting around waiting to say, “I told you so.” The people who haven’t given up—but the people who never had faith to begin with.
And I'm the first to admit the flaws. The system is large and unorganized and completely mangled. My friends who are teachers and principals and administrators come home exhausted and burned and seething with bitter contention for the machine that is the public school system. It's hugely damaged. But to think that these children are somehow unreachable. Unteachable. It seems so archaic.
And furthermore, to think these kids don’t know where they fall in the pecking order. That somehow they’ve managed to ignore it and not fall fatal to the painfully well-thought-out role they’ve been given: the black, inner-city teenager. To think that doesn't play out in real life, with real-life consequences like babies and addictions and death.
In a matter of moments, these young people generated a powerful list of all the things the world thinks of them. A list that contained dark truth and painful subtext. It hits you like a ton of bricks. This “thing” we’re fighting. This enormous beast of ignorance and racism and classism rolled into one big nasty –ism.
And it struck me as so powerful that here are these children—these supposedly damaged children. Who were talking with such confidence and such authority. Who raised their hands when they spoke. Who spoke clearly and used articulate vocabulary. And who seemed to exercise a subtle defiance towards those who assume they’re damaged. They’re broken.
The moderator also asked them about codes—rules they live by in the neighborhood and rules they live by in school. Maybe two or three rules overlapped while the others remained staunchly planted in direct opposition to each other. These children know more rules about more places and how to navigate between them than most adults.
As I lay in bed last night awake for the third night in a row, I heard something in the background that sounded like a gunshot. It occurred to me that it very well could be—it’s never outside of the realm of possibility. And it occurred to me how rare this moment is for me—the moment where I have to decide if I’m in danger or not. And how little my roles change from home to work to school. And listening to these kids today it confirmed all the things I’ve been thinking lately. How infinitely lucky I am. And how hard it really can all be. And how complicated. And messy.
I’m reminded of my favorite Thomas Hobbes quote: Life is nasty, brutish, and short.
But shouldn’t we all have a chance at being successful while we’re in it?
For weeks now the babbling in my head has been about race and class and all the things in between. Between health care reform and the Tea Party and the economy, I hold my breath every morning as I read the New York Times, convinced I’ll stumble across something that will make me cuss. Before 8 am. And almost every morning it happens. (The cussing)
Today the question was posed to a group of 7th and 8th grade students by a mentor and colleague: “As a young African-American, what negative assumptions do you feel are made about you?”
The words starting stumbling from these young kids mouths—real, fresh, cutting words that didn’t come from some artificial canned place but from real experience. From real feelings.
My eyes were groggy with my last three nights worth of work-related events, restless sleep, and anxiety over too-much-to-do-and-not-enough-time. The coffee in my hand had just barely begun to create the chemical reaction I needed to be alert and then this:
“That I’m ignorant, untrained, impolite, and loud.”
“That I’ll never finish anything I start.”
“There are people who don’t think I deserve an education.”
“That what happens in the neighborhood happens in the school.”
Okay. Awake.
My guttural response was immediate. There was something powerful happening in this room. I let out air from my mouth, quick and fast, and made that sound old ladies make in church when they’ve heard something that moves them—something that cuts right to the heart.
The students continued, each adding to each other’s thoughts, creating this list that could have been in a textbook. All the worst-of-the-worst stereotypes of black, urban America.
Earlier this week, my alma mater hosted Ed Burns, co-creator of The Wire, The Corner, and a variety of other television shows. I’ll note that I wasn’t there, because I was at a benefit for Wide Angle Youth Media, but I’ve heard nothing but bubblings from my students and colleagues about his talk—mostly negative. It seems Burns is pretty much over being hopeful about the Baltimore City Schools (that is assuming that he ever really had hope in the system to begin with). And there is one resonating subject I cannot seem to shake from my system. From what must be a very bitter, burned place, Burns insinuated that most of these children are too damaged to be capable of learning after age 4 or 5. That a kid raised in the inner-city was too damaged to learn. Incapable of success. These weren’t his exact words, but they were easily inferred. And the message that was taken home by a lot of people from this event was dangerous.
For someone like me, who spends her days and nights and all my money trying to think of better ways to get these kids to succeed—supporting people and organizations and teachers who BELIEVE in these children, these words strike me as so painfully despairing. And infuriating.
And the subtlety flows like water—this infectious disease of assumption. When these words feed fuel to fires that need no help burning. When the news reports the latest rash of youth violence, of murders, of drug busts—these words feed the hungry people sitting on the sidelines: the hundreds of thousands of people sitting around waiting to say, “I told you so.” The people who haven’t given up—but the people who never had faith to begin with.
And I'm the first to admit the flaws. The system is large and unorganized and completely mangled. My friends who are teachers and principals and administrators come home exhausted and burned and seething with bitter contention for the machine that is the public school system. It's hugely damaged. But to think that these children are somehow unreachable. Unteachable. It seems so archaic.
And furthermore, to think these kids don’t know where they fall in the pecking order. That somehow they’ve managed to ignore it and not fall fatal to the painfully well-thought-out role they’ve been given: the black, inner-city teenager. To think that doesn't play out in real life, with real-life consequences like babies and addictions and death.
In a matter of moments, these young people generated a powerful list of all the things the world thinks of them. A list that contained dark truth and painful subtext. It hits you like a ton of bricks. This “thing” we’re fighting. This enormous beast of ignorance and racism and classism rolled into one big nasty –ism.
And it struck me as so powerful that here are these children—these supposedly damaged children. Who were talking with such confidence and such authority. Who raised their hands when they spoke. Who spoke clearly and used articulate vocabulary. And who seemed to exercise a subtle defiance towards those who assume they’re damaged. They’re broken.
The moderator also asked them about codes—rules they live by in the neighborhood and rules they live by in school. Maybe two or three rules overlapped while the others remained staunchly planted in direct opposition to each other. These children know more rules about more places and how to navigate between them than most adults.
As I lay in bed last night awake for the third night in a row, I heard something in the background that sounded like a gunshot. It occurred to me that it very well could be—it’s never outside of the realm of possibility. And it occurred to me how rare this moment is for me—the moment where I have to decide if I’m in danger or not. And how little my roles change from home to work to school. And listening to these kids today it confirmed all the things I’ve been thinking lately. How infinitely lucky I am. And how hard it really can all be. And how complicated. And messy.
I’m reminded of my favorite Thomas Hobbes quote: Life is nasty, brutish, and short.
But shouldn’t we all have a chance at being successful while we’re in it?
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