A continent away
A January course in Africa reveals as much about Wheaton students as it does about the concept of "Africanness."
They endured a 16-hour flight. Some found themselves questioning
their own identities. Others were shocked by the openness
and acceptance of racism and squalor. Some just cried. For
a group of students and faculty who visited Africa during the
January break, these feelings were the measures of a successful
educational experience.
"I wanted a strong reaction," said Michelle Harris, assistant
professor of sociology. "When I teach about race and social
movements in the classroom, there is sometimes no reaction.
Witnessing is an invaluable teaching tool."
Harris, Assistant Professor of English Shawn Christian and
Associate Dean of Student Life Claudia Bell led a group of
14 students to Africa for a 19-day course on "Witnessing
Contemporary 'Africanness:' Ethnic Identity, Language and
Mobility in South Africa and Botswana." By visiting townships
and neighborhoods and museums, and meeting local politicians,
journalists and university students in two unique settings˜postapartheid
South Africa and the most stable southern Africa
democracy, Bostwana˜the professors hoped to help students
understand the range and complexity of African identity.
"We deliberately wanted to debunk several myths about this
continent," Harris said. "Students often view Africa as a monolith,
rather than as a collection of very different cultures and
people. They also believe that everyone in Africa is suffering,
and that they truly understand African identity."
Identity was central to the experience of Leykia Brill '06. She
left Boston believing that the January course wouldn't be long
enough to gain significant knowledge about African people and
culture. Today she calls the trip "the most valuable experience
I‚ve ever had."
"In America, I'm considered black," said Brill, who identifies
as African American. "In South Africa, I was considered colored
[mixed race] because of the color of my skin, and definitely not
African American; I'm an American to them.
"In South African society, you can see the very different living
standard of whites, coloreds and blacks, in the neighborhood and in people's beliefs; it's everywhere. One colored taxi
driver told me that affirmative action only helps blacks, so
he was against it."
In Gaborone, Botswana, it was the perceptions about
American culture by students at the university there that
surprised Brill and classmate Jennifer Lev '08.
"The university students see and hear the 'N-word' used
in American popular culture, and they don't understand
it," Lev explained. "They consider black Americans 'slaves'
because they use that word."
Lev emphasized that the Wheaton students' experiences
visiting historical sites like Langa and Soweto townships and
Robben Island, and speaking with peers in Botswana did
indeed help them understand how different each African
culture is.
"Africa contains 50 countries and millions of people; it's
difficult to grasp," Lev said. "I still have a difficult time understanding
where I've been and what I've experienced."
In designing the trip, Harris said she thought about her
own first trip to Africa, a journey that shook her because
it revealed how little she knew about the continent. She
wanted her students today to experience that same sort of
jolt by studying the idea and history of African identity in southern
Africa; identifying how contemporary social issues˜such as
changing gender roles, orphanage, migration and urbanization˜
impact identity formation; learning about and identifying ways in which globalization, technology and various social problems˜such as
AIDS˜interact with expressions of African identity; collecting and cataloguing artifacts that illustrate such expressions; and engaging in critical reflection in order to name, analyze and write about the differences between contemporary
African and American identity.
Students read two texts in advance of the trip˜Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom and The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith˜to frame their in-country discussions and the paper and projects they completed upon returning to Wheaton.
Harris' plan seems to have worked.
"This trip is something I think about every day," said Robert Lock
'06, who was born in South Africa. "Raw conversations with people
resonate with me. I think about them every time I take a test, write
a paper, read the newspaper. Little parts of the trip keep coming
up everywhere."
