Learning

Bonjour, mes chers amis! (Hello, my dear friends!).

Well, I am happy to report that the same sentiment I had when I wrote the first blog is still with me. I love this place. I love it for the people's warmth, its generosity, its spirit. I am now in Daloa, which is the third largest city in Cote d’Ivoire. Around Daloa are many villages, some with electricity, some without. Our literacy program is focused on these villages. The vast majority of their inhabitants are cocoa and coffee farmers. In fact, 46% of the world’s cocoa supply comes from Cote d’Ivoire, and 80% comes from CI and neighboring Ghana. So the next time you eat “Swiss chocolate,” you’re actually probably eating West African chocolate. It was just made into a candy bar in Switzerland, hence the name. It's better for advertising to say it's "Swiss."

We visited one of these villages called Sokoura. After a bumpy journey we arrived - The roads are so bad I honestly thought we were going to tip over a couple times. Walking through the village, we saw recently harvested cocoa and coffee seeds laid out on huge mats. Our host led us to a little schoolhouse where we met with about 35 members of the community. There, the chief told us their main problem is not having safe drinking water. When rain comes, the people wait for a pool of water to form, then drink from it. He knows this is not healthy, but what other alternative do they have? I actually found out later that 75% of the health problems here are from not having safe drinking water.

Despite this, the people exhibited a generosity I honestly have never seen before. As we left, they brought us two huge bags of oranges. They also gave us bananas and cassava. I couldn’t believe it. We came to help them, and they don’t even have clean water, and they gave us food. Later in talking to Ivoirians, I was told that you can’t receive someone without giving them something, just honoring the fact that they came to see you. As if it was a great kindness just to introduce ourselves. What if we were all like that? The next person we meet, so grateful to have met them, that we gave them a gift, even if we had very little? Doing this, instead of looking someone up and down and trying to discern who they are and what they’re about. Doing this, instead of judging them. Their generosity reminded me of a line from the movie "It Could Happen to You," wherein a couple lost all their money, and “in their darkest hour,” invited a homeless man into their cafe for a bowl of soup. This is not the village’s darkest hour, but it’s the same theme – giving when one has so little. A Christian parable discusses the same type of generosity: A poor woman gives her last penny to the Church, while a wealthier man gave a lot but made sure he had his personal stuff in place, and Jesus pointed to the woman and explained that she gave more.

I am learning so much about how to act out all the positive things about my humanity here. Ironically, I came here to assist with education, yet I am the one being educated. I am so glad that I am here for nine months. I have a lot of time for friends and colleagues and experiences to continu to teach me.

In Abidjan

Picture 1: At the airport in Abidjan, after 30 hours to travel, we've arrived!
Picture 2: Moving into our housing in Abidjan for orientation
Picture 3: At Bassam, a beach town an hour away freom Daloa. The women are frying mashed banana.
Picture 4: IFESH team, 2008-2009
Picture 5: A friend of a friend is an English teacher in Abidjan, and I stepped in and taught a couple classes. here with very motivated and sweet students.
















Salut tout le monde! (Hello everyone!) Well it's been not even three weeks and already an adventure. I'm really happy I made this decision - most of you know it was a rocky summer deciding whether to go or not. But there has been something deep within me for years that has demanded I live in West Africa, and here I am.

A lot of this for me is about race. More specifically, race and power. I don't know exactly what I'm supposed to discover and learn here, but most of you know I have a keen interest in power and oppression - specifically when it comes to the black and white issue.

I thought I would come here and things wouldn't be as strained or problematic as they are in the States in terms of race. I thought people wouldn't be as "aware" of their blackness, because everyone is black here. However, colonialism leaves race-related tension. And globilization, which disadvantages poorer and less powerful countries (which are most often countries with people of color), continues it.

These nearly three weeks in Abidjan, the capital, have been busy, great, and exhausting. I have been blessed to spend time with Ivorian friends of my colleague and friend Lynne, who did this program last year. In this way, I've already gotten to "jump right into" being friends, instead of meeting people myself and having to build up trust. As we've been able to get into "hot topics" (ie: race and power), I've learned so much. Creole is not a dialect, but its own language- and a testimony to the ingenuity of Haitians, who created it so they could communicate despite the fact that slaveowners purposefully put Africans of different tribes (and thus different languages) together so they couldn't communicate with each other. There are ruins of universities in Africa - meaning that higher levels of education were values of ancient African societies. Rasta is not just a culture of weed and dreads, but a religion with belief in the Christian God as the Holy Trinity.

I think it's really important to not just represent Africa to the outside world as a place of child soldiers, HIV/AIDs, civil war, etc. I do not see savage or primitive here. Honestly, I have found a really open, warm spirit among the people here. In the US, we are more distant to our fellow man. Here, I feel embraced by people instead of feeling judged or suspect. For example, a friend of Lynne's is an English teacher and asked me to step in to one of his classes. I did twice - and as a thank you was invited dinner with two students, the teacher, and two admins. They took such care to make sure I had a very authentic meal, explained what everything was and how it was cooked, etc. There was laughter, ease, and openness even among students and admin staff who didn't know each other well. During the course of the meal, I told Yolande I liked her bag. This morning, I gave a final "lesson," and Yolande had offered me her bag as a thank-you. Her own bag! There is a graciousness here, a value of community instead of the individual, which is wonderful.

So I don't quite know how the blog is going to go. At this moment, it seems more reflective. I'll send out pics soon that will tell the story of what I've actually been doing. I'll do my best to document! Hugs to all!