My traveling companion for this trip was my husband, Leonard Goering, someone who had always before politely declined to tag along with me on speaking trips, lured into this tagging by the lovely prospect of visiting Africa for the first time. We flew out of Kansas winter toward what I'd been told had been "an unusually hot and dry month," in Uganda. At about 8:45 a.m. on March 10 (2003), Leonard and I jostled each other for a first peek. I stared out the airplane window at land I'd expected to be yellow, crispy at the edges, a little over-baked--the way Ethiopia gets at the end of dry season--and was startled by gorgeous green. By that afternoon, we were floating down the wide and handsome Nile River just past Jinga.
Cathy, the resourceful librarian at Lincoln International School in Kampala, refusing to be daunted by the expenses of bringing in an author from the U.S., had found a sponsor, Mary Jeffers, the public affairs officer at the American embassy. Mary and her family also hosted us in their home--a house we decided had to be the safest spot in Uganda because it sits between President Yoweri Museveni's house and the presidential office building. When we had moments of relaxation, we lounged on the porch with Mary and Martin, her husband--originally from Tanzania--and their children, Matthew and Malika, gazing out at a big, tropical tree and the birds that fluttered from its branches.
Mary and Cathy crafted a fascinating four days that included two days of speaking at the Lincoln International School but also an author presentation at two Ugandan schools, Sir Apollo Kaggwa Primary School (private) and a government school, and a workshop for Femrite, a group of Ugandan women writers.
Femriters
In an interesting twist, several of the writers had submitted stories or poems for Memories of Sun: Stories of Africa and America an anthology I edited (to be published Greenwillow Books in winter 2004). As we went around the table, Beverly Nambozo was the first to add to her introduction the announcement, "and I have been rejected by Jane Kurtz." Several other participants, alas, spoke up to say they could claim the same honor.
Jane with writer Monica de Arc Nyeko, a member of Femrite in Uganda.
Luckily for my ferocious image as the Big Bad Editor, one of the participants, Monica Arac de Nyeko, was one of the seven African writers whose story made the final cut. Susan Mugizi Kajura, winner of the MacMillan prize for her book for young readers, Daudi's Dream, added her voice to the discussion, as did Ben Zulu, a film-maker from South Africa.
"Does it break your heart to visit Africa?" someone asked me recently. I know what she meant:
In Uganda we drove through the forest where Idi Amin used to make people "disappear."
At a lunch in Nigeria, I sat and listened to the teachers and parents from Grange School heatedly discussing local politics, until someone turned to me with an apologetic smile and said, "Whenever Nigerians are together for more than five minutes, they start talking about 'we have more natural resources and the most resourceful people in Africa, so why can¹t we make our country work?'"
This year, about 12,5-million Ethiopians will need foreign food aid to survive, and, according to one news report, recently Dr Demissie Tadesse, Ethiopia's Deputy Health Minister, "reminded the world that 70% of Ethiopia¹s population did not have access to clean water and four-fifths had no access to safe sanitation. Only 50% of the girls in the country were enrolled in primary schools, while vaccinations reached about half of the population."
Yet on this journey we spent three or four connection days in Kenya and found people there to be strongly optimistic about their new leaders and thrilled that they had effected peaceful governmental change. During every trip I've made to Africa, I've been caught up in admiration at how resourceful people can be. In Uganda, for example, I saw three amazing things:
- Femrite;
- A local radio show where I was a guest along with Dr. Chukwuemeka Eze Onukaogu from Nigeria and Loy Tumusiime from Fountain Publishers in Uganda, and was struck by the way readers all over the world grapple with remarkably similar issues; and
- Cornerstone, run by Tim and Cathy Kreutter.
Leonard was able to visit Cornerstone's homes for street children, forging communities for kids who have none, and Tim and Cathy Kreutter just started a Cornerstone Leadership Academy for Girls in a country that now has more women in Parliament than maybe any other country.
One of my thrills in Uganda was to pick up a local newspaper and not find the U.S. or Iraq mentioned until page 24. It was a lovely reminder that other places have their own conflicts and obsessions. By contrast, I was in Nigeria when the U.S. war with Iraq (March 2003) started. The American International School there closed for two days to do a wait-and-see check. I, however, was speaking in a Nigerian private school that week. Dolopo, the brave, committed, and story-telling principal, told me she would be astonished if Lagos had any anti-American demonstrations--Lagosians having their own issues to fret about, including up-coming elections. Jane with some of the staff of Grange School - Lagos
The Eye, the Ear, and the Arm a novel by Nancy Farmer (Penguin, 1995) set in present-day Mozambique with a marvelous odyssey across Zimbabwe 200 years in the future
Dolopo was right from anything I saw. I was overwhelmed by Lagos...a city of 16 million where I saw a surreal scene of people walking on acres of rubbish that seemed straight out of The Eye, the Ear, and the Arm... but not scared.Nigeria was an explosion of the senses from the first ride through Lagos streets to the last. It was the taste of pounded yam and bean curd, smooth as paste. Every morning, I woke at 5:00 a.m. to the melancholy sounds of the call to prayer outside my window. When I stepped outside, it only took minutes before I was drenched in the salt of my own sweat, and the air smelled of the sea. But the Olympic-sized swimming pool outside my apartment at the American International School was cool and sweet.
Decorated entry to an 8th grade English classroom
at the American International School in Lagos, Nigeria.
Nigeria is, indeed, a place of great irony...and no small amount of chaos. I never got tired of watching the lizards with their bright heads or the delicate white birds that sped across the baseball field, heads jerking in slow motion as if they had been instructed to "walk like an Egyptian."
On March 16, Dolopo arrived early so her driver could transport us to the Chapel of the Healing Cross. There, she promised, I would see--perhaps not every one of Nigeria's two hundred ethnic groups represented, but enough. Enough for great beauty. And beauty there was: head cloths and bright patterns and layered robes. "If I'm reincarnated," one friend told us on this journey, "I would like to come back as a Nigerian man. They have the most gorgeous clothes."
(The picture on the right shows Dolopo as she arrived at the apartment where I was staying while in Lagos, Nigeria.)
A Note from Jane:
Every day my first week in Nigeria, I spent several hours sitting in the back seat of Dolopo's car. Dolopo is the courageous, determined principal of Grange School, and as her driver wove his way through the horrendous Lagos traffic, I heard bits and pieces of her fascinating life story. That week, I wrote down one of these bits--so that the students of Grange School--and now you--could see the way writing material is all around us every day.
Dolopo's Story: The Power of a Word
Although Nigeria is an oil-rich country, refineries haven't been maintained, and lines of cars wrapped around the blocks for miles at every gas station. The electricity flicked off so often that students didn't even look up when it happened. When Leonard and I made a trip to the national museum, we were told that we wouldn't be able to see anything--no lights that day.
The kids I spoke to were like kids everywhere, watching, listening, twisting the puzzle pieces this way and that. "After the third explosion my mum said we should get out of the house," Andre at Grange School wrote about the day something set off a nearby ammunition dump. "My dad said we should take all the important stuff we need. My sister took her homework and pencil. She said if it got burnt her teacher would punish her. Instead of thinking about her life, she was thinking about homework and punishment." Some of them will inherit the puzzles--if their families don't flee or get crushed by the on-going turmoil. According to a recent news report, "a plot by some unnamed groups to mar the inauguration of President Olusegun Obasanjo for a second four-year term on 29 May has been unearthed, Nigerian police reported on Tuesday. The plot involved mass demonstrations and planting explosives around Nigeria, they said."
Children at the Grange School in Lagos, Nigeria perform their version of Jane's book, Trouble.
On the final morning, we tore loose of people we by now felt bonded to--strangers who had weathered intense times together--and lumbered into the armored embassy vehicle for the trip to Murtala Muhammed airport. I smiled to see the pedestrian crossing sign with the silhouette of a person in glorious Nigerian robes. The next sign sobered me right up: "The Federal Ministry of Health warns that smokers are liable to die young." We checked in hours early (necessary because of constant and massive overbooking), wandered our way down D Finger, and survived the long flight to Nairobi, where the stewardess reminded all passengers to take care when opening the overhead compartments, "because luggage may fall onto you." |
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