Celebrating an African Experience
I have returned from a journey. This journey has moved me further along my journey. Winter Woods. Then creeks and ponds. Rolling Illinois borderlands. More winter wood flash past. Small Illinois towns where one could stop awhile and spend time in geneological research. I could say I got lost. I could say I missed the…
Wole Soyinka So here I am at the Wole Soyinka Symposia at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, about as happy as a girl can be and still remain in her skin! The brainpower in this auditorium hooked up to electrical generators could solve the world energy problems and light up every nation around the world….
Wole Soyinka defies categories and boundaries: Scholar, poet, playwright, actor, human rights activist, Nobel Prize winner, former political prisoner. Born in 1934 in western Nigeria. He studied at Government College in Ibadan. In 1973, he earned a doctorate from the University of Leeds. Dramaturgist at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1958 to 1959….
Alex Detrick pulled together another fine evening last night at the Missouri History Museum, featuring Independent Lens film “Iron Ladies of Liberia” which will later air on KETC/Channel 9 April 6th at 11 p.m. Click here for video clip and political background on Liberia and the film. Click here for 2005 Washington Post article written…
When I received this full letter sent by Kenyan Friends (Quakers) to the two disputing leaders about the state of Kenya and the election and the contextualizing comments from David Zarembka, I felt moved to share it on Riehlife. As Dawn L. Rubbert from the St. Louis Quaker group says, “This is important history. It…
II. Africa Maun, Botswana Afternoons, I teach schoolchildren to swim in the flooded waters of the Tamalakane. Two fingers support wiry bodies that sink every chance they get. “Arch your back! Spread out your limbs! Float! Kick! Paddle!” Until one student travels under her own speed. We collapse on the bank, gasping with sputtered water…
Janean sent this blended memory from her childhood that made its way into a recent conversation with her older son. Today, my first big snow day in St. Louis, seemed like a good day to post this. When we were growing up on the homeplace in rural Illinois, on the bluffs above the river, all…
Sankofa can mean either the word in the Akan language of Ghana that translates in English to “go back and take” (Sanko- go back, fa- take) or the Asante Adinkra symbol. A cloth supporting Adinkra symbols is termed an “Adinkra cloth” and has its own particular uses and meanings. As a young woman in the…
For me, the difficult part of storytelling as a career was telling the stories I wanted to tell, in my own way. Locally, there is a growing movement towards the telling of indigenous stories. You’d think I would fit within that movement, wouldn’t you? Yet, I feel like a square peg in a round hole….
Damaria Senne We begin by enjoying the cover of Damaria Senne’s adult reader titled BOITSHOKO (meaning “perseverence” in Setswana). The book was published by Heinemann Publishers, and was translated into a number of local languages. The book is of interest (in the context of the essay about the story) because Damaria named the title character…