My Path to Africa and Back

Teacher. Writer. Fulbright Scholar to Africa. White woman asking really hard questions.

[forafricans]

African Mothers

1. Dogon, Mali. by Frans Devriese

2. Pays Agni, Ivory Coast. by Olivier Martel

3. Karima, Sudan. by Nihal Abdellatif

4. Togo. by Luca Gargano

5. Madagascar. by Steve Evans

6. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. by Jemal Countess

7. Maputo, Mozambique. by Douglas Condzo

8. Uganda. by Akosua Manuela

9. Loiyangani, Kenya. by Brian Msafiri

[mwcfulbright]

“But “Mothers’ Day”—with the apostrophe not in the singular spot, but in the plural—actually started in the 1870s, when the sheer enormity of the death caused by the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War convinced American women that women must take control of politics from the men who had permitted such carnage. Mothers’ Day was not designed to encourage people to be nice to their mothers. It was part of women’s effort to gain power to change modern society.”

SOURCE: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-9-2020?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&utm_source=facebook

IN HONOR OF MOTHERS’ DAY

Frequently these days as I read posts about the Ahmad Arbery killing, I also read comments akin to this one: I think this is awful but I am a white woman and I just don’t know how to help.

Really? This is a white people problem. ONLY white people can help. Black and brown-skinned people have been working diligently for over 300 years trying to convince us not to kill them. Maybe it is our turn to police ourselves, and since the random murder of black and brown-skinned folk just minding their own business is exclusively committed by white men, the policing, ladies, falls to us.

So, white women: you are the only ones who can help. You are it. This is your moment, yet again.

As the plantation mistress, you could have helped. But you didn’t. It cost you too much.

As the suffragette, you could have helped. But you didn’t. It cost you too much.

When the men were off fighting and you were home building airplanes and tending victory gardens and Japanese Americans were being hauled off to interment camps you could have helped. But you didn’t. It cost you too much.

As the figure being defended when the Klan abused and killed Emmett Till, you could have helped. But you didn’t. It cost you too much.

When children were shot and killed in schools and parishioners were shot and killed in church you could have helped. But you didn’t. It cost you too much.

White women, you can help by demanding white men stop killing. Say out loud to your husband, son, brother, father, cousin and all kin that killing unarmed people is wrong. Say out loud that men with brown skin and men with black skin are not any more dangerous than men with white skin. Say out loud that killing, even as a law officer, should be avoided as often as humanly possible. Say all of this out loud often enough that they turn away from you at family reunions because they don’t want to hear your speech again. SAY THEIR NAMES OUT LOUD.

White women, you can help by raising your sons to see those with black skin or brown skin as equal. Demand the boys and men around your sons see those with black skin or brown skin, as equal. TALKING OUT LOUD ABOUT RACISM IS A WAY TO SAY THEIR NAMES OUT LOUD.

White women, you can help by stopping racists comments when you hear them. If you don’t let a man curse in front of you, why do you let him demean another person or an entire race? If you don’t let a man say sexist things in front of you, why do you let him demean another person or an entire race?

White women, you can help by noting and punishing microagressions. You can learn to never assume anything about another based on the color of his or her skin and when your microagressions are called by someone of color you can simply say “Thank you. I didn’t know that and I need to learn it.”

White women, you can help by not making violence and racism cool, acceptable, sexy, powerful, attractive, or a joke. Instead, make violence and racism repugnant, unacceptable, unsexy, weak, ugly, and an insult.

White women, you can help by embracing black and brown mothers as your peers, by standing by them in their grief, by standing between them and your white husbands, sons, brothers, and fathers with guns.

White women, give up the pretense that you don’t know what to do. Give up your pretense of powerlessness. This time, let’s do it. The costs be damned.

“Men always had and always would decide questions by resorting to “mutual murder.” But women did not have to accept this state of affairs, she wrote. Mothers could command their sons to stop the madness.

"Arise, women! Howe commanded. Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country, to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.””

[bakerstreetirregularr-deactivat]

[bookmania]

A Moveable Feast

[mwcfulbright]

A Marathon Event

3:00 a.m. 2/16/17 In each of my six marathon reading events at FSU, I have been asked two questions: "What is this?" "Why do you do it?" I can thoughtfully answer both. This year, however, I was struck dumb for a little while by a new question: "Why are we reading to no one?" Often in the 24 hours or more of a marathon reading on a university campus for which I have only recruited readers and not listeners, we technically "read to no one." People wander in and sit for a bit and people wander away. Some students with a strong conscience sit while they eat the cookies we offer. Some friends come to support a particular reader. But no one ever comes to listen to the story, really. At least not in the past. In the past the story was too long. So initially I had no answer to "Why are we reading to no one?" because it was not a question that had ever occurred to me. The person who asked this question that threw me was a volunteer reader who came, saw the room, asked the question, and left without reading. I thanked the reader for volunteering anyway and then sat so that I could be read to for hours. In the wee hours, when readers are temporarily non-existant, I have built an answer for my colleague about why we "read to no one." It is really two different answers, one for the novel marathon and one for the tale marathon. We read to no one in a novel marathon to get through. We are, after all, a part of a relay team. We do our part to move our team closer to the goal of finishing the entire novel. Metaphysically, we read to put the words into the public sphere so that they cascade across the ears and minds of those in the library who can't help but hear us. We remind them that words are beautiful, even out of context. We remind them that stories matter enough that a whole group of people will change their schedules and some will lose sleep in order to read a powerful story out loud to themselves and each other. An answer that applies to both marathons is that we can never actually read to no one. We are always listening to ourselves and words sound different aloud; ideas travel at different speed and in different keys; our chests and tongues and vocal chords actually embody the words and the words then become a physical part of us. For this year's tale marathon my first response to this question should have been that I would be listening and I am not no one. Beyond that, other readers come and listen. Librarians come and listen. New readers, not yet signed up, come and listen. We take our chances and hope someone arrives while we read and we catch their attention. We read aloud because we want to and because these tales are ordained for oral reading. I also know that theatre and speech students come and read to practice their craft. Students who hate reading aloud come to conquer their fears. Some read to allow their sports team to support the event and others read for extra credit. None of those reasons require an audience other than the self. I am open to the idea that tales read aloud might demand an audience in ways an epic novel read aloud does not, for truly the audience's experience is different. One can wander in and hear an entire tale in a short amount of time. Stay for a bit longer and one can hear three or four entire tales. Because we are not rushed to complete an enormous quantity of reading, and because new listeners are not constantly coming into the middle of something, there is often conversation after tales and explanations before. We hear why someone chose a tale and we exchange what we know about other stories that are similar or contradictory. We tell tales about our telling of tales to other audiences and how they reacted. And tonight we became a group participant in a tale through call-and-response. In a right world, I would host two marathon reading events every year at FSU: one in the fall for an extravagant novel and another in the spring for stories readers select to share. Tonight I have heard a Venezuelan creation tale in Spanish read by the Panamanian son of a Venezuelan mother. I have sung in response to a Yoruba tale told by a Yoruba Nigerian. I have listened to an African American woman sing and dance while she told about Brer Rabbit and the Tar Man. I have listened to a white woman growl in an ogre's voice and another offer up her Irish brogue. I have heard feminist tales, environmental tales, trickster tales, and Herodotus histories made up of oral stories. I have been graced to sit for hours and hear cultures and languages find welcome and offer welcome. I have heard strangers talk excitedly about each others' stories, and I have collected a long list of folk who thanked me for the opportunity, want to do it again next year, and promised to bring folks with them. Stories for me in this event - both as novels and as tales - have always been about community. They draw us together, give us shared a experience, help us see our fears, failures, and foibles in someone else, and show us again and again that resilience is possible and transformation necessary. In the very acts of risking ourselves to read for others, listening carefully to tales not from a childhood like ours, and exchanging ways our stories might fit with someone else's we become community. I am not sure stories can actually be read to no one. I am sure that I will always find new value in words heard from my own voice, felt across my own tongue, vibrating through my own bones. So sign me up for next year. I welcome the stories. I welcome the readers. I welcome the community no matter how large or how small.

[mwcfulbright]

Great Feminist Songs I Sang in my Past as Celebrations because I thought the Cause was Won

My new FB Series starts today: Great Feminist Songs I Sang in my Past as Celebrations because I thought the Cause was Won.

Warning: White privilege alert. This is a story born of my white privilege and my middle-class privilege. I could believe feminism won because my sister had an actual career. My father owned a small business in which he hired my mother who then never once experienced what she identified as sexism in the workplace. I had a lot to learn. I still do.

#1. I Am Woman

When I was in sixth grade, I performed in our all-school talent show. Faulkner Street elementary school included grades one through six. A few years before a friend and I had dressed as little children and sung a nursery-rhyme, hand-clap song. This year, I was older and I chose to sing “I Am Woman.”

My mother gave me lots of freedom in my youth. It never occurred to me to run my song choice by my mother, I simply told her I was going to be in the talent show. I would need transportation and I wanted her and my dad to be there. It was the principal who first told my mother about my song choice one afternoon when she came to pick me up from practice. I distinctly remember she raised her one eyebrow just a bit higher than the other and smirked at me. (Thank God it was not the full eyebrow raise which was the death glare all Cross/Wright women can use at will.) It seems my Southern Belle mama, fully capable of blessing your heart, defiantly against ever bowing before the Queen (yes, the Queen of England, another story), and ever proud that she never once voted for Tricky Dick, just might have been scoffing at the audacity of her twelve-year-old-daughter claiming womanhood. She was probably also a bit pleased. I like to think my principal, Lloyd Anderson, was a little pleased, too and that was why he asked me to sing it again so my mother could hear it. Surprisingly, I simply declined and my mother and I left together.

In my memory, I sang to a packed old-style auditorium in which folks folded their seats up to let new folks join the aisle. The floor lights in red, green, and yellow glared on my carefully selected palazzo pants and halter top and I sang with pride and joy the words below. And you know what? I have not yet forgotten a single syllable.

Hope marks us as deeply as despair, maybe more. Let us mark each other with power and joy and hope today, folks. And let’s mark all of us, no matter the bodies we travel in - black female bodies, transgender bodies, brown male bodies, midwestern white bodies shaped by farming chores. We all know too much to go back to pretend and we all need each other’s knowledge.

And oh, yes. Thanks, Helen. https://youtu.be/rptW7zOPX2E

“I Am Woman”

I am woman, hear me roar In numbers too big to ignore And I know too much to go back and pretend ‘Cause I’ve heard it all before And I’ve been down there on the floor No one’s ever going to keep me down again

Whoa, yes, I am wise But it’s wisdom born of pain Yes, I’ve paid the price But look how much I gained

If I have to I can do anything I am strong (strong) I am invincible (invincible) I am woman

You can bend but never break me ‘Cause it only serves to make me More determined to achieve my final goal And I’ll come back even stronger Not a novice any longer 'Cause you’ve deepened the conviction in my soul

Whoa, yes, I am wise But it’s wisdom born of pain Yes, I’ve paid the price But look how much I gained

If I have to I can do anything I am strong (strong) I am invincible (invincible) I am woman

I am woman, watch me grow See me standing toe-to-toe As I spread my loving arms across the land But I’m still an embryo With a long, long way to go Until I make my brother understand

Whoa, yes, I am wise But it’s wisdom born of pain Yes, I’ve paid the price But look how much I gained

If I have to I can face anything I am strong (strong) I am invincible (invincible) I am woman

Oh, I am woman I am invincible I am strong I am woman I am invincible I am strong I am woman

[mwcfulbright]

American Awakening #1

American Awakening, January 12, 2017 Our arrogance That we are invincible Because right is on our side Has come to roost In a leader As bad as the best dystopian novelist Could have scripted. I cannot watch him Yet I cannot look away. I am called Ceaselessly Mercilessly Intensely To respond To resist. I am white-skinned. I have been luxuriously lazy my years. I address social justice And morality On a personal scale In my classroom In words on a page in cyberspace When it suits me. I am used to walking away Justifying it as self-care Until I am ready to enter the fray again. Now I must do more. Now I must always be ready. Now there is no escaping the fray. I breathe and sleep Sip coffee and toss shots Across lines of resistance. Ah, there are so many! I am tired And the fight has just begun. Mea culpa to all who have gone before me. Mea culpa to all who stand beside me more weary than I. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa in my every deed. M.W.C.

[i-am-america-deactivated2016121]

It’s okay to live a life others don’t understand.

Jenna Woginrich  (via thatkindofwoman)

[mwcfulbright]

Trump Made Words Meaningless; I Will Not

Line in the Sand 1/3/17

The day he won, I drew my line in the sand, the line I will not cross. Maybe the line drawing came earlier. I was so enraged by his abusive behavior during a debate I left the room after thirty minutes and took two days to physically recover from the toll rage takes on my body. I have never watched abuse and not had a means to intervene before. Like my friend told me, what we have learned from our real-life “he-who-shall-not-be-named” is that they hate us. “They” being men and “we” being women; “they” being white people and “them” being everyone else. “They” being the old guard; “we” being the historically silenced, pushed-aside, vilified, coddled, unnecessarily protected everyone else and I am done. The curtain is rent, the wizard is exposed, I am who I am and I will not now or ever again pretend I am anyone else. Line drawn.

It takes great arrogance to believe that if I would just get out of my bubble and visit yours I would completely throw away everything I believe in, “see the light,” admit you were right, and change my ways. Saying I live in a bubble because I am a liberal university professional is a way of mansplaining, of assuming you know more about my thinking than I do. I have carefully listened to your arguments and your experiences and I disagree with the way you define the cause of your problems, with your rationale, with your solutions. That we disagree is not evidence that I live in a bubble and to dismiss my thoughtful disagreement as being “out of touch” is so insulting. I am capable of independent thought that you cannot dictate. You are capable of being wrong while I am right. We will never agree on certain ideas and I will continue to work against those of your ideas that I believe are wrong and harmful. This is not living in a bubble; this is thinking. You cannot silence me or make me feel foolish. Line drawn.

And, for clarity’s sake, what is my bubble? I am a first generation college educated teacher from a small beach town in Florida. My first love was theatre. I was raised a Baptist. My father was a small business owner. The family I married into are South Georgia farmers and factory workers. I am in a thirty-four-year, monogamous, heterosexual marriage. I was a stay-at-home mother for fifteen years. I lived for a year in West Africa as a Fulbright Scholar. I am a Presbyterian elder who appreciates Wiccan theology and animistic traditions. I have faithfully voted the most liberal Democratic ticket I could find. I believe that government should serve the people and that the more we share the better off we are. I study race as it was presented by some of our greatest American white male writers: Hemingway and Faulkner. Exactly what bubble holds me? Line drawn.

The bubble complaint has certain liberals reeling, re-strategizing, re-configuring how they should be. But I make my decisions not on expedience but on intellect and values. The almost incomprehensible reaction to the Obama years confirms everything I value and believe and underscores that “we” are vilified because we are making change happen. I stand for change that is inclusive. Always. Period. When I do so, it is not because I have ignored your argument against inclusivity, it is because I disagree with it and think my inclusivity allows for your dissent. Line drawn.

I accept responsibility for being complacent. I vow one political action every day. My America will have my voice in it. Line drawn.

I will craft a back-up plan out of this country. I will be on guard for fascism. I will protect my children - all female - before I protect my country. Line drawn.

For the record, I do not seek a president with whom I agree 100%. Why would I? I am not the only person in the country. I hope to God that the President actually knows more than I do and has formed opinions on information I will never see. The Presidency isn’t about me or being right or winning. It is about us. Line drawn.

And I, like my mother before me, will never forget. She was always proud that she never voted for Nixon, that she saw him for who he was. I see. I know. I will remember. Forgiveness - if accomplished - does not nullify memory. Line drawn.

I am smart, tenacious, ethical, and have nothing to lose. I am a formidable opponent. Line drawn. Mic drop.

[mwcfulbright]

So This is What Fear Feels Like

I am still shaking this morning and I am having trouble turning away, admitting I cannot stop the abuse. Everything about this presidential campaign mimics an abusive relationship. Acted out on the biggest stage possible, I can hardly avoid watching as a man belittles one woman, brags about assaulting others, and shouts at everyone, male or female. I am really afraid he is going to hit her or someone like her. And we all just continue to watch, shake our heads, do nothing. I have distant family members laughing at every misogynist thing Trump says and then posting references to equally abhorrent behavior about women to continue the joke. Trump’s behavior is not a joke. Trump’s attitude about and treatment of women is dangerous. I have never felt so threatened.

I have been very fortunate. I have had only one man put his hand on my crotch unasked. I was ten years old and he was thirty. But because of who my parents were, I knew he should not have done that and that someone would stop him. My parents did. They took care of the situation and of me, made me feel safe and valued, and made it abundantly clear that I had done nothing wrong. They never once said “boys will be boys” and they never allowed anyone to joke about it.

The men in my family of origin are gentle. They do yell about politics and sometimes they yell over me. But they also listen. I have never seen them physically fight nor even heard of them throwing a punch. They don’t hate, try to get even, or belittle. They heal, help, problem solve, figure out, lift up, and champion people, men and women equally. They are not vulgar. They have intellectual discussions with women. They are not surprised when women are strong and beautiful and smart. They do not put themselves first.

The men in my family are kind and strong. They have refused to live lives of fear or fear mongering. My father is a World War II veteran; my brother-in-law is a Vietnam veteran. My niece’s husband is a highway patrolman. My brother has a black belt in karate. They all love sports. They also all happen to be CIS gender, straight men but they have never belittled a gay man or been cruel to a transgender person. They have taken their various vows to protect and serve very seriously. My father drove his developmentally delayed friend to church for years. My brother takes shoes to the athletes on his basketball team who can’t afford them. My brother-in-law has fed and clothed more strangers in need than he will admit. They are teachers, fathers, businessmen; they have lifelong, close friendships with men and women; they stand up in the public sphere and ask for kindness and empathy. When I am ranting about something I feel passionate about - or my niece the judge is ranting or my sister the school principal is ranting - my brother-in-law chimes in with “Well, you know, Peg, think of it this way” and models empathy, intellect, and kindness for me. This is how I thought the world worked.

As all of you know who read this blog, I spent most of last year in West Africa. There were terrorist attacks moving regularly across the nations there. There was poverty. There was misused capitalism and political instability averted by the newest of threads of democracy. And I always felt safe there because everyone I met treated me as a person worthy of respect. Today, in a place where I am not a stranger, I am more afraid than I have ever been in my life. Donald Trump makes me afraid. Donald Trump makes me very, very afraid.

I acknowledge the fear Trump makes me feel because that helps me control it. I also acknowledge my fear in honor of Hillary. My fear helps me respect all that she has faced during her decades of public service. My fear makes me dumbstruck that she steps on that stage with that man again and again and does not succumb to his tactics. I acknowledge my fear to encourage other women to read Hillary’s policies, pay attention to the calculated way she has been maligned, take note of the independent fact checkers out there, and make up your own minds. Step away from your own abuser. Seek models of kindness, empathy, and strength.

[fuckyeahrebeccasolnit]

How to Be a Writer: 10 Tips from Rebecca Solnit

9) What we call success is very nice and comes with useful byproducts, but success is not love, or at least it is at best the result of love of the work and not of you, so don’t confuse the two. Cultivating love for others and maybe receiving some for yourself is another job and an important one. The process of making art is the process of becoming a person with agency, with independent thought, a producer of meaning rather than a consumer of meanings that may be at odds with your soul, your destiny, your humanity, so there’s another kind of success in becoming conscious that matters and that is up to you and nobody else and within your reach.

[mwcfulbright]

Safety Lessons

9/5/16

When I returned to the States after my year of living in Côte d'Ivoire, I expected to encounter a generally polite, sound-bite interest in my experience. It is the norm in America to treat another’s return from anything - vacation, living abroad, illness, family emergency - with respect and a deep, desperate desire for little information. I worked to have my sound bite ready and it seemed to satisfy. I had two true friends, however, who asked real questions. Just one each. Their questions were so good, I may never stop trying to answering them. The first: “What did you learn about yourself?” The second: “How did you stay safe?” Both questions threw me off my planned path of least resistance. My sound bite of tourist platitudes wasn’t even in the stratosphere of answering these questions.

The first question delighted me. It was the question I daily, moment-by-moment wrestled both in Côte d'Ivoire and during my long re-entry into American life. What was I learning? Why were these my lessons? What was I to do with them? How did they matter? How was I supposed to make use of them in the United States?

The second question confused me.

“How did you stay safe?”

My mind reeled. Safe? I had never for one moment felt unsafe. Not during the first election after the election where chaos reigned and a former leader was charged with war crimes and sent to The Hague. Not after terrorist attack after terrorist attack occurred in West Africa and North Africa and in Paris, the imperial capital of my adopted home. Not after terrorists nearly killed my friends in Grand Bassam, a beach I had enjoyed with my daughter merely seven days before the attack.

I guess I had had many reasons to feel unsafe, yet I never did. Why?

I paused and puzzled over my friend’s question. I am sure my confusion showed a bit. I told my friend that I had never felt unsafe and we talked through my experiences a bit more so maybe I could get on the same page with my friend. I had felt so foreign since returning to the land of my birth that I trusted this was just another of those moments. But my disorientation this time turned out to be more important than my constant relearning of how Americans behave. This question kept echoing in my head. I could not let it go. There was a truth behind this question I could not yet see.

The truth is that my trip to Côte d'Ivoire was never about safety. It was, instead, a trip about risk from its first inception in my brain. I was not a thrill-seeker; I was not hunting danger and had never been known to get high off of an adrenalin rush. But in Côte d'Ivoire I was, intentionally, risking myself. I was pushing against my own boundaries. I was exploring, expanding, seeking to see and understand more. I set fear aside the moment I applied for the Fulbright. I embraced risk and welcomed the unknown instead. I trusted the kindness of strangers. I made myself a citizen of the world and refused to be cast in the role of enemy.

Once one sets aside fear, one learns to see without judgement. If I cease to evaluate your actions in regard to maintaining, safeguarding, protecting my goods, my position, my privilege, or my power, I render fear impotent.

Americans like to fight fear. We use fear for motivation to change our behavior, to purchase more, even to vote. It makes historical sense, I guess. The Europeans who came to the Americas were often the dispossessed, rejected from their lands of origin. They had much to fear. Though we like to deny it these days, we are a nation of refugees from outside of Northern Europe, fleeing terror, full of the fear that motivates survival. We brought Africans to this country, enslaved them, and used fear to control them and to numb our own consciences about the nasty business we had embraced.

But being good at using fear seems different to me than seeking safety. Today’s Americans seem to believe that the bedrock goal of parenting is to keep their children safe. There is logic in that, but what about parenting children with resilience to danger and failure? What about teaching our children to fear less and problem-solve more instead of simply taking them out of the game of living “dangerously”? Many people voiced their concern that I was taking my beautiful, long-legged, white-skinned, fourteen-year-old daughter to Africa with me. Acknowledging the ignorance and sexism and racism inherent in those concerns, I must now also see the strange relationship Americans have with safety. My goal for my own life as a parent is to equip my daughters to live fully and to know themselves. Risk, fail, rethink, regroup. My goal is to empower them not to covet safety. I could imagine no greater opportunity for my fourteen-year-old than living abroad for a year in Francophone West Africa.

One of the lessons about myself I gained in Abidjan was a deeper understanding of silence. As a cultural scholar and woman I have much knowledge about enforced silences, about not being heard or seen. But in Abidjan, where silence was abundant for me, I finally remembered the layers of silence. The deepest layers are essential and healing. There is a silence underneath noise, distraction, the momentary withdrawal of another. This underneath silence grounds me, assures me of a long-term view momentary withdrawals and multiple demands of attention cannot shake. I imagine the same is true about safety. Without a deep sense of safety we cannot risk. For me, that deep sense of safety comes in valuing relationships, experience, and ideas and feeling no need to own any of those as my personal property. Danger diminishes and safety increases when instead of sequestering an idea and battling to protect it as mine only I simply invite people in to take what they need.

“What did you learn about yourself?” That I can do this, whatever “this” is.

“How did you stay safe? I stayed safe by sharing all I had and welcoming everyone in.

[mwcfulbright]

Night sets in Abidjan.

[mwcfulbright]

Good-bye, Abidjan

"We say of ourselves that we live in a world. But it would perhaps be truer to say that we live in a tale told." John Moriarty For ten months, I lived in a tale told about Abidjan, a great city still growing in Côte d'Ivoire, West Africa. Flavored by the West but not yet consumed by it, the West Africans I met welcomed expatriates, were hospitable to our ways and needs, and remained grounded not by commerce or conquest but by stories, traditional stories told to bring forth understanding and truth. Côte d'Ivoire is a spiritual place, where doctors and lawyers know the spirits and the spirits' stories carry value held longer than the value wrestled through laws, elections, or even medicinal prescriptions. There is a vibrancy to life in Côte d'Ivoire, the vibrancy of a story being told by a master teller. I have been back in the United States for a month now. The stories that swirl about me are stories of politics and of politicians crafting a public image. Groups embrace new versions of their own stories in reaction to a story told by another. I am not sensing that any of these stories are seeking to bring forth understanding and truth. Yet I do sense a new awareness that words and public deeds offer the basis for stories that matter. We are beginning to explain why certain stories are palatable and others not; we are beginning to see commonalities between stories long held at bay from each other. Sometimes a demagogue brings these things out in the people who fight him; sometimes evil is conquered by good in ways completely unexpected. I miss the vibrancy of Abidjan. I miss its gentleness and welcome. I miss the colors and patterns that adorn the backs of its men and women. I miss the call to prayer from the mosques and the constant movement of the people. I miss pedestrians crossing freeways and entrepreneurs hawking dog collars at the intersections. I miss water in bags and bissap. I miss wearing sandals every day and a sky so big even a city the size of Abidjan cannot diminish it. I miss oranges and mangos artfully arranged in pyramids and soft-spoken women selecting the best ones for me. I miss bantering with taxi drivers and having Elysé welcome me home. I miss the lack of pretension I experienced and the willingness to learn, the lack of a need to be proven right, shown without flaw. I wish I had brought home more pagnes so that I could both share them and wear them more. I wish I could hear lovely Ivorian French again. Due to an administrative decision, I will not be teaching this fall at FSU. I will miss teaching my American students very much, but I am also missing the students I had in Abidjan. I miss their curiosity and their determination. I hope that between the strikes and in spite of the lack of resources, they are finding what they need to think themselves through to the next level of inquiry. I am missing deeply the luxury of time to translate, time to read, time to think. I am missing who I was allowed to be on that other continent. I am back to schedules with deadlines, to projects defined by someone else. I am also back to friends and family who missed me. I have returned to new problems to solve and new goals to meet that seem truly another world from Abidjan. Their value is not greater, of that I am sure, but their scream is louder and their consequences for failure more severe. Most days, Abidjan seems a dream. How could a place that once felt so familiar now seem so implausible? I was warned that re-entry was difficult but, much like pregnancy and giving birth, one cannot really prepare for it. Now I know, at least the first part. How does one hold on to a past experience so that it vaults one to new heights instead of blinds one from the present? How will I grow relationships in Abidjan now that I am far away? How will I continue conversations interrupted? Maybe in the same ways I did with my American past and relationships while I was abroad. Maybe in a whole new way. Such are the things I ponder these first days of my re-entry. Where next? What now? And most importantly, what difference has any of this made? What will re-entry feel like six months from now, a year from now, ten years down the road? I have no idea. What I do know is this: Abidjan is a thread in my tapestry, spun of cotton by brown hands with a spindle inches from the dirt. It is a colorful thread - azure, gold, amethyst - and it is long, woven more intricately than it appears. It pushes forward some threads and highlights other's hues. It is strong and will not fray. It is African and ancient and binds me with wisdom and love. I am grateful and my tapestry is better for it. Merci beaucoup, mes chère amis de Côte d'Ivoire. Merci, beaucoup. I will tell my Abidjan story, the parts that are mine to tell, bit by bit as I figure it out. For now, I will just work to honor the gift of today by paying attention. Therein lies my story. Therein lie all our tales.

[mwcfulbright]

Abigail and our seamstress. Abidjan, CI 2016

[mwcfulbright]

I have never been more proud

Today was a day I looked at my child and was oh, so glad to know her. Like many parents, I dreamed of providing for my children what I did not have. What I did not have in a nearly idyllic upbringing was the chance to live abroad. My older daughters have each studied abroad with their colleges (the third will join FSU in London this fall). I was glad they could have those adventures, but I was disappointed that I had been unable to take them earlier and live with them. When I learned I had been awarded a Fulbright I was just as excited to take Abigail with me as I was to go myself. I knew she was up for it and she had always readily agreed whenever I would dream out loud about it. I never had one moment of doubt during our preparations that Abigail had all the gifts required to do well in West Africa. Never. Not one. Then we arrived. The first night we were in Abidjan, Abigail and I were jet-lagged, exhausted, surrounded by people we did not know speaking a language we could not speak. My department chair (who does speak beautiful English) picked us up from the airport, brought us to our apartment, introduced us to some colleagues and our landlord, told us he would be back tomorrow, and left. Abigail and I could be the good sports no longer. We wept together, until we fell asleep, and as soon as our door locked and my department chair walked away I heard it: the doubt. What the hell had I done? Was I crazy? I had asked the impossible of my beautiful, competent fourteen-year-old. This might break her. Away from friends, without the skills of language, in the hands of a mother who suddenly had such little cultural competency she couldn't buy food, turn on the stove, or make a phone call, much less find a doctor or hospital. Oh, my god. Flash forward to this morning. I watched as Abigail talked to a room full of her peers in their English class at the Lycee Maurice Delafosse. She moved with ease through her PowerPoint full of pictures of teenage life in the USA; she asked the fourteen- and fifteen-year-old students questions and they asked her questions back. She told them to be quiet when they needed to be told that; she spoke to them in French when they asked. After the presentation, we were hosted to fresh mango juice and mango cake with the Principal and all the teachers of English. Abigail held court with them all and the English teacher whose class we visited, a French woman educated in London with life experience in Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire, told us how impressed she was with Abigail. Abigail told her that she had had fun and I knew she was telling the truth. This afternoon, Abigail and I followed an Ivorian friend to a tailor hauling our pagnes so that we might get dresses made before we leave. Simone is a trusted friend, patient and nurturing with our fledging French skills, gentle, and kind. He took us across town to an area we had not visited before. The taxi stopped in the parking lot of a well-worn apartment building but we headed down a staircase away from the apartments to a village of sorts. This week's rain had made everything muddy and there was a river growing in the middle of the village. Simone explained how houses must be moved to accommodate this river when the rain is heavy and that this rapidly moving puddle will grow as the rains do. We plodded through the misty rain and mud to an enclosure that housed two sewing machines, a pile of fabric, a long bench which was presented to us to sit on, and three women. We looked on the seamstress' Samsung tablet at dress patterns and she helped us choose the ones that would work with our pagnes. We each played with the children while the other looked at patterns and made a selection. We were measured. We took pictures and walked around the village to meet its people. We were welcomed but not celebrated. In other words, no one cared that we were white and this is quite a relief, frankly. All were pleased that we were customers and friends of Simone. The rain made the mud and the river, but it also made the air very cool so it was enjoyable outside. The children played around us without frenzy or fatigue. They talked of school and it was made clear that our seamstress had finished school. Abigail smiled the whole time. She thanked the seamstress and engaged the children. She volunteered to me how peaceful it was there and how much she enjoyed visiting. She told me how happy she was that no one was overly impressed with her whiteness and then bragged at how easily she had ignored the two young men who did note her long legs and pretty face. "Today was a good day, Mom. We saw the good parts of Abidjan." It turns out I was right. My fourteen-year-old expatriate has fierce gifts. She knows how to welcome everyone, regardless of trade or class or education. She can see the beauty in mud and dirty children and manicured private schools and gracious hosts. She speaks eloquently and passionately about politics, justice, West Africa, race, whiteness, and herself. She does seem to know herself, this one. She admits her shortcomings, laughs at her orneriness, figures out how to improve what needs improvement. She houses a joy that she willingly shares with the world. I was proud that she did a good job with her presentation at the school today, but I was so much prouder when she spoke with joy of the peace she felt in the water-laden village. So if you want to know how a fourteen-year-old American expat can possibly survive in West Africa as a home-schooled FLVS student, talk to Abigail Cleveland. She knows how. I am convinced that most of the friends we have made here were first interested in us because they were so impressed Abigail was doing so well. Perhaps I never for a second wavered about bringing Abigail with me to West Africa because she, too, was called. Perhaps part of the purpose of my call to Africa was to get Abigail here. Perhaps it was Abigail all along who needed time in Côte d'Ivoire to see what she has seen and become what she has become. Look out, big sisters. Abigail is not the baby sister you sent here.

[mwcfulbright]

I will miss the goats and chickens of Abidjan. CI 2016