How Did This Happen, Conclusion (I think)

In sum, here are my major "take-aways" from the election in terms of what I can do:

1) Although many factors lay behind the election of a person patently unfit to be President, one of them certainly is fear of the unknown or of the stranger. Maintaining friendships with a wide range of people--and seeking to bring diverse people together--can ease those fears.

2) Much of the electorate feels disrespected by liberal or radical intellectuals--and that is partly by design. Educated white people, especially, commonly distance ourselves from our less educated counterparts by mocking their values and intellects, and they have gotten the message.  This sort of distancing, this assertion of superiority, often happens unconsciously, I think, but it is no less damaging for that.

3) A point related to #2, above: I need to remember that people I disagree with have things to teach me, access to truths I have not learned. My knowledge and understanding will always be partial.

None of the above means that I or others should stay silent or passive in our politics. But all of us need to own our part of the current dilemma for us to have the best chance of working our way out of it.

Like a person falling from an airplane without a parachute, most people in the U.S. have had a great ride since World War II, especially. The ground, it appears, is rapidly approaching.

How Did This Happen, Part III

One of the more striking and, for many of us, disturbing developments of the last campaign was the emergence of what is commonly referred to as "White Nationalism," or, more generally, white identity politics.

This growing attraction to or assertion of a white identity is the product of several themes. Part of it is simply demographics, namely that in more and more parts of the U.S. white people no longer constitute a majority. It also reflects a sort of longing for the sort of identity that people of color seem to possess--or at least that white people think they possess. I've run across many liberals who in fact seem to regret being white, as whiteness is associated with not having a culture or an identity.

In academia, being white is in fact commonly interpreted as a sort of mark of shame, or at least being very uncool. A few months ago I read a book proposal on American identities that essentially identified whiteness with privilege and oppression.

I have two general problems with that assertion or assumption. First, it seems to be a sort of (albeit subtle) form of white privilege to assert that only white people are capable of dominating and exploiting others. To assert that white people are more evil than other groups is to at least imply that we are more clever than the rest, that we are the ones with agency. Second, and on a more practical level, many white students will resent the assertion or implication that whiteness can be reduced to unearned privileges and domination. As one pundit recently observed, white people are apt to vote for the party that is not calling them racists.

President-Elect Trump was very skilled at speaking to the fears and resentments of white people across the educational spectrum. "Make American Great Again" was, for many people, code for "Make American White Again"--or at least that America would be "restored" to the sort of place where white men, especially, called the shots and where their cultural references (from "Merry Christmas!" to the Confederate flag) were enshrined as norms.

Part of what progressive-minded people who are concerned about racism and other forms of prejudice need to do, it seems to me, is to find a way to talk about race, ethnicity, and identity in a way that does not simply reduce whiteness to oppressiveness. When I think of my heritage, what my parents and their parents handed down to me, certainly racism is part of the package. But far more explicit and influential, I think, was a ferocious work ethic.

Of course the problem here is that when white people celebrate their ancestors' work ethic, for example, we commonly go on to assert that our work ethic makes us better than everyone else. White Nationalism asserts that only white people have made substantial contributions to the U.S. or to civilization more broadly defined. Some assert that only white people can even do an honest day's work. This is not simply insensitive; it's patently false.

Can white people build a sense of identity, of culture, that is not tied up in disparaging the cultures of others?

How Did This Happen? Part II

It is interesting to note that so many public intellectuals are now examining white, working-class people as a sort of anthropological exercise. On the one hand, it's a good thing that highly educated, liberal people are trying to understand their less educated counterparts. On the other hand, it's a bit depressing that there is such a gulf between the two groups. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that many academics in the U.S. today find it easier to understand and certainly to have empathy for someone living in the developing world under very different circumstances from our own than we do with the average Trump enthusiast.

One of the discoveries of these cultural anthropologists of the white working class is that the subjects of the study view themselves as middle class. That distinction is a telling one, for I think it's an assertion of both being at the heart of America's identity (a status they fear is slipping away) and that they are not people who need things--though one of the great ironies of modern American politics, I can't help but point out, is that states and areas whose residents express the most antipathy to government tend to be subsidized, through federal and state taxation and expenditure, by places highly populated by pointy-headed intellectuals.

But I think we pointy-headed intellectuals play a leading role in the modern social, cultural, and political divide between highly and less educated white Americans.

I recall years, when I was a young radical, a friend remarking that she felt like she "could not keep up with" me. By the time she accepted one of my positions, I had staked out a new one, farther away from normal people like her. And of course that was the point, to be more radical than thou. It's a very human and understandable impulse, to wish to "distinguish" oneself, to use Pierre Bourdieu's term. Intellectuals like to turn their educational advantages not simply into cash, but into "cultural capital." We adopt ways of living and thinking that set us apart from--and above--our less educated peers in our taste in food, entertainment, and, of course, politics. Hence we are often perceived, by those we view as our inferiors, as walking around with "stick up our ***."

One of the problems with using one's education to assert superiority is that it so often generates humiliation and resentment in those who are made to feel excluded. Another problem is that if you are determined to be in the minority, you won't win many elections.

How Did This Happen?

I apologize to my faithful blog readers--both of you--for this long pause between blogs.

Like many people, since Tuesday I've been trying to come to terms with the results of the U.S. Presidential election. Though certainly there are millions of Americans, at least, who will disagree with me, I believe that we elected someone who is patently unfit for the office, a fact that a large number of conservatives, as well as liberals, have been pointing out for months.

So that raises the question of how he could be elected. There are of course all sorts of economic and strategic considerations here, a sort of perfect storm of antipathy for Secretary Clinton and economic decline among the aging white working class, especially men, who not so long ago were apt to vote Democratic. But I like to focus on variables that I think I can shape more directly, such as my work as a professor, my teaching.

It seems to me that universities contributed to the election of Mr. Trump. Sure, he did great among relatively uneducated white voters. But he also (thanks to men) won most of the white college graduates. How could so many highly educated white voters vote for a candidate who was not only patently unfit for office by experience and temperament, but who also expressed the sort of racist and misogynistic views that university professors so commonly condemn?

1) Universities do a poor job of teaching and encouraging civic engagement. About 45 percent of registered voters did not even vote.

2) We also do a poor job of teaching students to handle intellectual and moral complexity. Many commentators have remarked on the election's false equivalences, such as the notion that since each candidate bent the truth, they were equally guilty of lying.

3) The very fact that university professors in the humanities and social sciences have become so liberal leads to all sorts of problems, ironically, for liberals. When universities become silos of an ideology (no matter how praiseworthy) that bears little resemblance to what most of the country believes, it loses the capacity to communicate with the rest of society. Too many well-educated Americans don't even know someone with conservative beliefs, let alone how to communicate with one. Not only that, but students with more conservative values may "hunker down" and keep their ideas to themselves during class to avoid being labeled intolerant, backward, or bigoted, but this feeling of being censured and ridiculed fosters a sense of resentment. A large fraction of Trump voters admitted (anonymously) to being reluctant to express their support for the man publicly, just as a large number of university students with conservative views about religion or sexuality will keep quiet during class.

It seems to me that at least part of the solution to the cluster of civic problems we now face is to work to foster a sense of civic engagement and responsibility that includes respectful dialogue with those who have very different views from our own. Years ago I co-facilitated dialogues with Oregon Uniting and Uniting to Understand Racism in which people of diverse racial or ethnic backgrounds met in small groups and discussed their experiences of and beliefs around race. I think it changed and opened a lot of minds, at least when we created an environment in which people felt safe to be candid about their views and experiences.

None of us has all of the answers, and we can all learn from each other--especially at times like this, when our first inclination is to start shouting.

Not Quite Fifteen Minutes of Fame

I was pleasurably shocked a couple of months ago to be perusing the book section of Costco and come across a stack of my textbook on Oregon's history. I bought a copy, since the price was good, and I figured that, well, someone had to do it.

A few weeks later I returned to find that it was gone. Maybe I should have bought more than one.

Being an author is interesting. It tends to bring one a lot of respect, deserved or not, and even status. But it's very rare for many people to read one's book, and if I were to add all the money I've earned from my books, it would come to less than $20,000. If I were to add up all the time I have spent on those books, it would be the equivalent of about five years of full time work. So you can do the math. And I doubt that the few thousand books of mine have been passed around, from person to person. I remember the words of a fellow graduate student many years ago, at Northwestern University, who summed up the life of the scholar with this observation: "You'll spend many tedious years researching and writing books that no one will read."

If I had it to do over again, I might well spend those five years on other things. But every year or two, there's a little unexpected surprise--a warm email or, once in a lifetime, a cameo appearance at Costco.

Miss Farida: Loss, Determination, and Inspiration

A few months ago Elizabeth, Wendy, and I had the honor of meeting Miss Farida at ECG School in Tamale. Farida had recently lost her father and seemed very sad. But the school has a fund for such students that was helping her to stay in school.

A few days ago Mr. Joseph, our fine coordinator at ECG, sent us a photo of her with her new books. It's good to see her smile.

I have some friends in developing countries who believe that the only way to get people in the West to pay attention to their problems is to feature children who look forlorn and hopeless. Certainly I have been tempted to use such tactics when trying to raise money that Yo Ghana! uses to help such schools.

But the reality is that Miss Farida, her family, and ECG School are doing the hard work here. She is determined in school and refusing to let sadness overwhelm her life. Her family, despite losing its main wage earner, is paying most of her school fees. Her school had a fund for helping such families long before Yo Ghana! came along to contribute to it.

And it's really not accurate to say that Yo Ghana! came to ECG School. Rather, Yo Ghana! has emerged from ECG and other schools in Ghana and the Pacific Northwest, a family of inspiring people and institutions. There's not really a "we" and "them" here.

Farida is as much a part of Yo Ghana! as anyone else, and her determination and smile are an inspirational gift to us all.

Turning Dreams Into Reality In Dambai

Two years ago Brando Akoto and I visited Dambai Demonstration School in the Volta Region and heard about how the school had become so popular that they were expanding to include another three grades--a junior high school.

But where would the classrooms come from? A big NGO had built them a classroom some years ago that had not met their needs, but they hoped that Yo Ghana! might come to their assistance. Mr. Brando, who had worked in community development for many years before coming to the U.S., said, "why don't you you start something, create a building that will meet your needs, and Yo Ghana! will help." Not only that, but "twenty years from now, Yo Ghana! will still be visiting with and working with you."

So last year the school had laid the foundations for a new block of three large classrooms.  When we visited this June, three months ago, the block had a concrete floor and a sound roof, and the walls were creeping up. So at our last board meeting, remembering Brando's promise, Yo Ghana! awarded the school enough money to just about finish the walls. The school and community will provide doors, windows, and interior finishing. When done, the community will have donated thousands of dollars of money and untold hours of labor to create three large classrooms that meet and express their own priorities. Yo Ghana!'s role will be significant, but secondary.

Brando passed away about fourteen months after visiting Dambai. But not before teaching all of us a lot about how to promote development in a way that respects and encourages local initiative.

One of my life goals is to visit Dambai regularly until at least 2034, twenty years after Brando visited. Each time I'll be fondly remembering a dear friend and mentor.

The Awesome Responsibilities and Opportunities of Being Wealthy

Few people I know in the U.S. consider themselves wealthy. But consider the story of Criscent Bwambale, the boy pictured here, as related by the BBC..

Criscent was born with cataracts and was unable to see. The photo was taken as he's on his way home, looking out the window at a delightful world he is seeing for the first time.

The cost of the surgery? According to the website of Sightsavers, the NGO that funded Criscent's surgery, it's $75.00.  $50.00 for adults.

Yes, that's $75.00.

Wow.

None of this is to say that people with $75.00 to spare should start throwing it at the health problems of developing countries. It is important to choose organizations that have leadership from the nations they are serving and that have a strong record and reputation for spending money ethically and effectively.

But there are plenty of organizations in Uganda, the rest of Africa, and the rest of the developing world doing this sort of amazing work. And the complexity of trying to help is no excuse for not helping.

And look at Criscent's face. Wouldn't you give much more than $75.00 to play even a small role in transforming someone's life like that?!

Nicholas Kristof and Heroes

Nicholas Kristof is perhaps the only major newspaper columnist in the U.S. who writes regularly about developing countries. He long ago learned that writing a column about Africa or poorer areas of Latin America or Asia that people will actually read requires the presence of two stock characters: an attractive victim and a "bridge character" who saves the day, an American protagonist with whom readers can identify.

As Amanda Hess pointed out a couple of years ago in Slate, the online magazine, Kristof makes a good case for his approach, which has drawn tens of thousands of Americans to take a greater interest in problems such as human trafficking in far-away places. Many of these readers have donated time or money to combating problems they otherwise would have ignored. Sure, Kristof knows that local people have been and continue to tackle these problems, often with great success. But Americans are seldom interested in those stories..

One danger of this emphasis on Americans' agency in solving the problems of the developing world is the impact that it has on the people of the developing world. I have myself noticed that it is very easy for Yo Ghana! to do more harm than good if we slide into the role of Western Savior rather than doing the more time-consuming work of listening to, collaborating with, and recognizing Ghanaians on the ground who were identifying and solving problems long before we showed up.

It is very dangerous for Americans abroad to start thinking of ourselves as heroes because of what we have done for "our school" or "our village." That sort of thinking exaggerates our impact and can easily blind us to what we have to learn from our partners. It is even more dangerous if the people in the developing countries start thinking that heroes can only be outsiders. I am frightened by how easy it is for both sets of people--myself included--to slip into those roles. That is one reason we like to honor our teachers in Ghana whenever we get the chance, such as Madam Akoto of Akalove School, shown here, a woman who was instrumental in starting the school in the village a few years ago. Very few people in America may ever read about her. And that's fine. But it's important that the people of Akalove remember and honor their heroes--and remember that if they want great things for their community, they don't need to wait for outsiders to come to their rescue.

My Readjustment to America Problem

As the photo to the right suggests, life is different in Ghana and Africa than in Portland and the U.S. I am noticing this after having been back now for ten days after thirty-two days in Ghana. The roads are better here. People rarely carry heavy burdens on their heads.  The mangos don't taste as good, and they are much more expensive. The humidity is lower. You can't buy plantain chips, water, bread, belts, or a host of other items while stuck in traffic. Traffic moves more smoothly. Drivers are more apt to stop when people step onto a crosswalk. It is much easier to gain weight. I don't worry about keeping my phone and laptop charged in case the lights go out.

I guess these differences could be summed up by concluding that life in Ghana tends to be more challenging and engaging. While working on my history of the U.S. family I was struck by how Americans had gradually drifted away from societies and cultures rooted in an ethos of obligation toward a way of looking at and living in the world characterized by fealty to an Imperial Self. As it has become more and more easy to live without having to depend on others for our survival, we have become more sensitive to individual rights and privacy but also more lonely, defensive, and depressed--"awash in weapons and grievances," as a New York Times reader aptly observes.

So each time I return home, I find myself feeling less at home. I'm sure part of this is the somewhat artificial nature of my weeks in Ghana, which are full of meetings with astonishing people whose dedication to serving others delivers repeated shots of adrenaline and inspiration. But it also has to do with living in a place where the great majority of people are both struggling and happy--more or less the opposite of life in America, where everyone seems to feel entitled and disappointed. I love living in a place where everyone seems to understand that life is difficult AND that we can make it through if we help each other.

I don't think that the solution to my readjustment disorder is to move to Ghana. Rather, I would like to keep working to surround myself and collaborate with the countless people here who are determined to love and serve others, to to look beneath the veneer of comfort and apathy that seems so characteristic of American life to find stories and lives that are more compelling.

July 17: The Hopes of an Accra Taxi Driver

Mr. Frank, who has driven us around Accra--and sometimes quite some distance from Accra--while
we have visited Ghana the past three times not only provides valuable services to us, he represents much of what Yo Ghana! is all about.

Mr. Frank was referred to us by a friend in Ghana who had entrusted his daughter's transportation to him.  In a city well populated with aggressive drivers, Mr. Frank is patient and careful, not to mention dependable, unfailingly polite and kind.

Driving a taxi in Accra is hard, hard work.  The hours are very long, the pay low, and there is more and more competition all the time.  It is also a dangerous occupation, and a vulnerable one.  Drivers are routinely pulled over or stopped by the police, who may, with varying degrees of subtlety, demand a gift of money before letting them proceed, whether or not they have violated any laws.  These are givens.

Mr. Frank puts his hopes in his children.  As someone who has studied the nature of the education system, I know that the odds are stacked against them, that the education system in Ghana, as across the world, is arranged so as to make the road to the top universities smooth for the children of the elite, improbable for the children of struggling parents.  But hope that through hard work one's children might exceed one's own circumstances is a widely shared sentiment in Ghana, one that propels Mr. Frank to make great sacrifices, a characteristic he shares with so many of the teachers and administrators in Ghana with whom we work.  The odds may be long, but there is always hope.

July 16 Dr. Eric Ananga

Saturday I had the pleasure of meeting with Mr. Eric Opoku Agemang and Madam Brittni Howard, who had kindly arranged the meeting after we met at the Ghana Studies Association meeting a week ago.  Mr. Eric heads an organization called Patriots Ghana that works to help children who have been trafficked to the fishing industry.  As so many problems are both cause and consequence of child trafficking, Patriots Ghana works on a host of other issues, too, from economic development to training teachers how to work with students who have suffered severe trauma to how to persuade children how to go to or stay in school.  It’s a remarkable organization, and we hope for Yo Ghana! collaborations in the future.

Then it was off to Winneba for a long meeting with Dr. Eric Ananga, the busiest person I know, and his research assistant, Madam Berthy. 

I met Dr. Eric nearly two years ago and was immediately drawn by his unassuming passion for and dedication to education.  Everyone who had met him attached to Yo Ghana! was delighted when he joined our board, and it was his vision and dedication and connections that made the first Yo Ghana! conference happen in the first place, let alone for it to be so successful.  Eric likes to move behind the scenes to get things done, and he had to be prompted before he would agree to speak at the conference.   He is a delightful person to spend time with, though after doing so I go away feeling like I should be doing more to make the world a better place.

July 15: Anani School Donors and Angel's Academy Oral Histories

The day began at Anane Memorial International School, where I got to do one of my most favorite

tasks: distributing letters of recognition to some of the many parents and school members who contributed goods or services to the school over the past year, such as Madam Joyce who volunteers as a cook.  Nima is a place of both widespread poverty and determination, and the school staff confirmed that these donations, which Yo Ghana! matches, have raised morale considerably.  The community feels much more ownership of and commitment to its school when they are giving time and other resources to it.

I then had the pleasure of watching the Kindergarten students practice their dancing.  They are very dedicated, and the school regularly performs in a variety of venues, such as the airport, to help raise funds for the school.

Then it was off to Angel’s Academy to follow up on Tuesday’s visit by seeing what the students had learned in their interviews of elders.  The reports were much longer and more detailed than I had anticipated.  We started with having the students pair up and deliver their reports to each other, then each read to the group.  We then had a long discussion of how to elicit longer, more

interesting answers, with reflection on what had worked or had not worked in the interviews, and why.  All of the participants seem eager to do a much fuller life story of an elder starting in September, with the assistance of their very dedicated teachers.  Back in the U.S., some students at St. Andrew Nativity School will be doing the same sort of work, so we are excited to see how these two pilot projects work out and what sort of stories the students are able to share with each other—and hopefully the rest of the world.

This oral history project is an example of our desire to go deeper into our exchanges, and it expresses our belief that transformative exchanges can occur not only between nations, but also between generations.

July 14

Today was one of those days when your camera stays in the bag—not because there was nothing of interest to photograph, but because stopping to take pictures would have interrupted the flow.

Mr. Frank’s taxi brought us to Dannacks Senior High School and a meeting with its head, Mr. Justice, teacher Madam Aborgeh, and their students.  Mr. Justice had told me about Dannacks during a meeting a few days ago.  It works with students who struggled in junior high school and would otherwise be unable to attend senior high school.  A high proportion of them then do well on the exams that determine whether or not they can go to university, and many have gone on to excel at university and beyond.  I enjoyed meeting the students, many of whom are keen for the school to join Yo Ghana!  Mr. Justice is also very interested in developing in students a love of poetry in a nation in which rote learning is still emphasized.

We then made our way to my favorite place, Ashesi University, where I had the pleasure of meeting with Madam Carolina and the inspiring students who constitute the very first Teach for Ghana cohort.  This September they will go, in pairs, into fifteen rural, low-performing schools in Ghana and work to transform them.  We are hoping to partner with them, as the prospect of writing to a friend in Ghana can be a great incentive to learn to write for students in such schools.  It was an honor and a privilege to speak with and listen to this band of pioneering educators talk about how they intend to go about the work of providing an excellent education for every student in Ghana.  You could feel the trajectory of Ghana education shift under our feet.

I also had the pleasure of meeting Mr. TK, an Ashesi administrator who in his spare times brings Canadian university students to Ghana to help to activate in them a desire to serve their communities back home and started Future of Africa, a program serving about fifty of Accra’s many street children.  More about that soon.

The long day ended with a nice long visit with board member Dr. Williams, who is also a dear friend.  Years ago Wendy told me that the best way to start and organization is to invite the people you most respect to join it, and when Dr. Williams agreed to join us, it was a wonderful day.

July 13

Today Madam Lucy and I had the pleasure of visiting Kwahu Taho Senior High School.  It was a

long day trip, but definitely worth it!

We learned of the school from Dr. Seth Asare, who grew up in the town and has lived in the Portland Metro Area for many years.  He assured us that the school has a reputation for excellence, and that was certainly the case.

We had an excellent meeting with Madam Alice, the Headmistress, and Mr. Phillip and Mr. Prince.  Mr. Phillip has already started a Yo Ghana! club in the school, even before the school has been paired with U.S. one for the coming year.  That’s the sort of initiative suggestive of a long and dedicated relationship, as is the fact that so many staff members at the school are enthusiastic about our program.

We also got to meet with the students.  There are about two hundred per level or grade, with many coming from villages in the area, others from far away.  The great majority board at the school.  We hope it is the first of many visits.

July 12

Today Mr. Frank got us safely to L & A Academy.  I think it is the first time in my many years of

coming that we arrived on time, and it was a pleasant surprise to see that the very rocky and pitted road on the way to the school is being graded.  I had a good long visit with Mr. Kankam, the school staff—who had some excellent suggestions—and several classes.  L & A was again one of our work-horse schools this year, and Mr. Kankam is the first teacher in Ghana I met, some five years ago.

Then it was off to Angel’s Academy, not far as the crow flies, but a bit of time over the crowded and at times rough roads.  Mr. Justice, founder and proprietor Mr. Ernest, and the rest of the staff game me their usual warm welcome, and the students sang me a lovely song and then stood in the hot sun for one of my “short” speeches.  Some of my African friends tell me that I am perhaps becoming a bit too much of an African man inasmuch as my short speeches are not as short as they might be, but the students were either too engaged or too polite to complain.

Then we tried a grand experiment, as the school’s staff had expressed great interest in having an oral-history workshop.  I’ve done this sort of thing at the university level long ago, but not with students ranging from grade four to eight, or in Ghana, but it was a lot of fun.  The students practiced asking each; other open-ended questions, their teachers were extremely helpful in explaining to them more clearly than I could what it was all about, and on Friday we shall get back together to see what they have come up with, as each are going to write a paragraph or so on some aspect of an elder’s life based on their interviews.  I can’t wait.

Tonight I get to catch up with Miss Dorcas, a recent Ashesi University graduate I met two years ago while doing research on that remarkable institution.  She was very active in an organization devoted to helping rural schools in Ghana that were struggling, and I’m excited to hear what good work she has been up to lately and plans to do in the future.

So it’s another day hanging out with passionate idealists.  Sure beats laying around at the beach!

July 11

After returning to East Legon on Sunday, it was nice to be back ‘home” with Madam Senadza and Madam Doris in their very comfortable home and to have dinner at Chez Afrique, the restaurant that the wife of Yo Ghana! board member Michael Williams has made such a success.

Mr. Frank and I left at 6:00 a.m. to beat the traffic and in three hours were in Akalove, where dear friend Brando Akoto is buried.  It was so good to speak and cry a bit with his mother, from whom certainly he inherited his big heart and great care for others.  I presented her with a Yo Ghana! Kente stole, as her son did so much to form our organization.  I also had the pleasure of meeting with the chief and the elders and telling them of the great contributions that Akalove Basic School was making to Yo Ghana! through their letters to the U.S. and their participation in the Yo Ghana! conference at Winneba a week and a half ago.

I also met with the school staff and the students.  Akalove is a very young school, started just a few years ago by the community. Next year it will offer all three forms or levels of the Junior High School, which is a very exciting development.  The students are a bit on the shy side, but their enthusiasm for the letter writing is very evident, and, as the photo to the right suggests, not all of them are so shy.  It is a pleasure to visit a school that so many people have sacrificed for to bring into existence.

Mr. Frank then got me safely to Accra Girls Senior High School where Mr. Benjamin took time out from his very busy afternoon to organize many of our letter writers for a meeting.  About half of these students correspond in French with their counterparts in a French class at Central Catholic High School, which adds another international wrinkle or layer to our program.

July 8

Today while the other attendees of the Ghana Studies Association Conference were going on tours, I had the pleasure of visiting Ebubonko Basic School.

Madam Felestina, the Headmistress, was so kind to pick me up, and the students who had been writing were well prepared with intelligent questions.  We had an interesting discussion comparing Ghanaian and American schools.  The students immediately pointed out that the U.S. was more developed than Ghana.  But they also noticed some Ghana strengths, from better handwriting to knowing a greater range of languages to close friendships.

So often the differences between the West and Africa are defined by who has the tallest buildings and the largest military budget.  We hope that the letter writing gets at less obvious but very important social and cultural features of life in which Ghana shines.

The students then presented me with place mats that they had woven, which was a wonderful and generous surprise.  Mr. Wisdom has been a very active coordinator for the school, assisted by Madam Lucy.

It was also exciting to see what the school had been doing with its computer laboratory.  Yo Ghana! had provided two laptops a year ago, which the school had augmented with ten additional ones from other sources, as well as providing internet access.  This year we provided some of the materials for strong tables and benches for the room, and the school provided the rest of the materials as well as the labor in putting them together.  Now the school is working on additional improvements to make the building cooler and more secure before adding additional computers.  It is this sort of steady, community initiated improvement that Yo Ghana! loves to collaborate with.

Yo Ghana! at the Ghana Association Triennial Conference

Wednesday I got to present the research that Dr. Eric Ananga and I have been working on at the triennial meeting of the Ghana Studies Association, this year held at the University of Cape Coast. Mr. Wisdom Havor,, our coordinator for Ebubonko Basic School, provided some testimony about the impact of Yo Ghana! at his school.

The paper’s title is “’They Are Not More than Us’: Letter Exchanges between American and Ghanaian Students.” Our research shows that although before exchanging letters, Ghana students widely associate the U.S. with development, the exchanges both lead them to improve their writing and to identify strengths in their own cultures and societies.

The conference itself has been a lot of fun.  There are scholars here from North America, Europe, and of course Ghana, from graduate students to old hands.  It is much less pretentious than academic conferences I have attended in the U.S. or Canada, but the level of intellectual exchange is high.  I’m already looking forward to the next one, in 2019.

Dr. Benjamin Talton, the Conference Chair, noted in his opening that although the GSA started in the U.S., it quickly became a shared enterprise with Ghana.  It struck me that this is also how Yo Ghana! began. And it has been very gratifying to have so many scholars of Ghana take an interest in the work Yo Ghana! is doing.  There were about sixty in our session.

Our Very First Yo Ghana! Conference!

The day before the conference was busy and intense as attendees started arriving in mid-afternoon, with our friends from Dambai.  The action really picked up late at night, and shortly before midnight there were twenty students from three schools packed into a van, traveling from the round-about where the transit bus had dropped them off to the university dorms.  In Ghana, you find a way!  The last group arrived around 1:00 a.m.  Many traveled more than twelve hours in cramped conditions.

But everyone was up early the next morning.  We had eighty-nine staff and students attending. 
Madam Patricia Ananga emceed, Professor Jophus Anamuah-Mensah, for whom the grand conference center is names, welcomed us, and we were soon into our various sessions.

Students learned about how to do math in every-day life, how to write poetry, and exchanged ideas with each other on what they learned from the Yo Ghana! letter writing.  Students from Don Bosco Basic School presented their fine independent research project on a day in the life of a Winneba fisherman.

The teachers and administrators from the sixteen schools spent much of their time listening to presentations from each other and discussing issues ranging from how to discipline without caning to how to improve the educational possibilities for girls whose families require them to work late into the evening to whether or not the national examinations are a worthwhile measure of educational achievement.

Everyone toured the Kantanka Factory, enjoyed dancing and drama from the University of Education Winneba Arts Department, and shared their dreams for their schools and how Yo Ghana! might fit into them.  There were also brief speeches from board members Dr. Eric Ananga—who conceived of and pulled the whole conference together, a massive undertaking--and Dr. David del Mar on Yo Ghana!  Board member Elizabeth Fosler-Jones ironed out a million details, and board member Dr. Eric Donkoh, in Ghana for two months, spent all day Saturday meeting people.

Among the many people who made the event happen, we must mention a few.

Madam Berthy, in the photo to the right, on the left, was the master of many details. Madam Lucy, a recent Winneba graduate, did the very big job of running the dormitories.  Madams Wendy and Lucy of Yo Ghana! worked very hard pulling things together.

Dr. Ananga envisioned this conference as a bench mark in Ghana education, as it is time for teachers and administrators in outstanding schools to be heard on how to improve Ghanaian education.  For me, this amounted to seeing amazing people I had met in isolated schools over many years coming together to educate and inspire each other.

As Dr. Ananga told our teachers and students when we closed: “You are Yo Ghana!”

June 30

Thursday between preparing for the arrivals of our conference attendees Wendy and I visited our two Winneba schools, Don Bosco and St. Paul’s.  The students at both had graduated, so they came in on their vacations and waited several hours for us.  This sort of dedication and patience never ceases to amaze and impress me.

 

We were particularly eager to thank the Don Bosco students for their initiative in undertaking independent-research projects.  It is our hope that more schools will do this sort of work, and the students and their teacher, Madam Cynthia, worked very hard on the projects.

At St. Paul’s we met with Mr. Mills and the students who would be attending the conference, and talked with the students of their plans for senior secondary schooling.  Most students in Ghana live away from home for their three years of senior high school (equivalent to grades 10-12 in the U.S.), so this is a very big step.  Roughly half of Ghana students are able to attend high school, so it is a very exciting time, preparing for this big stage of life and career.

June 28/29

Tuesday afternoon after the drive from Sampa we had the pleasure of again visiting Wings for Life. 

This remarkable institution, led by the Ampofo family, has innovative and student-centered after-school programs. Ghana schools tend to emphasize memorization, and it was delightful to meet and talk with WFL’s students, to witness first hand their curiosity and initiative.  WFL also offers education for special-needs children.  Mrs. Mercy Ampofo and her son, Rudolph, are among the leaders in Ghana in these fields, and their excitement for education in general and child-centered education in particular is inspiring.

Next morning we had the pleasure of visiting a school recommended a few months ago to us by WFL: Mt. Olivet School.  Mt. Olivet was celebrating its twentieth anniversary.  It began as a nursery program, and its founder, Madam Regina, kept expanding in response to parent requests.  Now it serves over 500 students. The students were performing dances, the garden had lovely fragrances, and the staff and students were excited about their work—and to be part of Yo Ghana!

Mt. Olivet joined us a few months ago when one of our Ghana schools dropped out in the middle of the year, and their students did a wonderful job. We are thrilled that they are part of the Yo Ghana! family.

June 27

Monday was a very full day, as we visited five (yes, five!) schools in and around Sampa.

Mr. Brew and his crew put on an extravagant program at Nipaba Brew School.  The staff and students (more than 500) were outfitted in Yo Ghana! school shirts and gathered for a program that featured a sound system and microphone and then a wonderful performance from the school’s dance team.  We could also see the school’s program of expansion, with a second Junior High School building nearing completion, as the school will be offering a full JHS program by September 2017.  If you are ever in Sampa, you absolutely must visit this school, and the hospitality of Mr. and Mrs. Brew is unmatched.  They always take such good care of us.

We then had the pleasure of speaking to and meeting with St. Ann’s Senior High School’s students.  This is a very new all-girls’ high school that expects a total of about eighty students in the fall.  Mother Mary, a nun from India, is the headmistress of the school, and despite limited resources the students are very keen and the staff very dedicated.  We met with this school last September, and we are delighted that they are now part of the Yo Ghana! team and will be writing letters to their friends at St. Mary’s High School in Portland, also an all-girls Catholic school.

Then Mr. Albert and the rest of the staff at Morle Junior High School hosted us.  Mr. Essan Weah, who has visited many Oregon schools for Yo Ghana!, was some years ago the headmaster of this school, and its students write excellent and vivid letters.  Though their numbers are small, they are sending four students to the Winneba Conference.

We closed the afternoon by visiting two prospective Yo Ghana! schools, a young Presbyterian primary school and a Catholic junior high school, both public schools.  Like other countries, Ghana is a place of contrasts.  Many of its schools feature ample and modern libraries, computer and scientific laboratories.  Most rural schools feature students crowded into classrooms that are often open to the elements with teachers who rely on the sun for light and principally on chalk for instruction.  What most of these diverse schools have in common are teachers and students who are exceptionally welcoming to strangers dedicated to learning, and our visits to all five schools left us impressed and inspired.

June 23

Today we had the pleasure of visiting Savelegu Senior High School for the third time in less than two years.  The staff and students are unfailingly welcoming and kind to us; this is always one of the high points of our Ghana tours.  Mr. Nantogma introduced us to the school administration and then led a very useful and informative session with the school’s faculty.  We then met with the students who have been exchanging letters and who hope to exchange letters in the future.  These students write some of the most detailed and thoughtful letters in our exchange and always have incisive questions and observations.

Like many schools in the Northern Region, SAVESS is comprised mostly of Muslim students and staff, and Yo Ghana is delighted that letters from such students are providing American students with a much more accurate and flattering impression of Muslims and Africans than Americans are usually exposed to.  As if to underscore this point, a roadside merchant we had purchased some shirts from last year threw in a free shirt for Wendy after I had purchased two from him—even after Lucy had bargained down the price—because “we are friends.”  Northern Ghana is a special place.

June 22

At Kpandai we were pleased to meet again with Father Mawusi, who has been a personal inspiration
to me since Brando and I met him two years ago.  St. Kizito School is the most isolated one we work with, and most of the students come from families who struggle to make a living.  But with Father Mawusi’s leadership it regularly attains the top marks in its district and among the top marks in the entire Northern Region, despite crowded classrooms and a lack of computers.  And he is involved in much other work in the community and the surrounding area, as well.  We will miss seeing him in Kpandai but were delighted to meet Father Alfonso and to know that Mr. Francis will continue his fine work as Head Teacher.  Father Mawusi will be transferred to New York for several years, so we hope to see him in Portland and that he can speak at one of our gatherings there.

We enjoyed meeting the students of St. Kizito very much, and they immediately demonstrated their high level of discipline and dedication.  Given how difficult it is to get letters in and out of Kpandai, we brought the letters from their partner school, St. Andrews, at the end of the school day, and asked that they bring their answers the next morning so that we could take the letters with us.  The next morning each and every letter had been answered, some at great length.  Mr. Francis took us on a tour of Kpandai in the late afternoon, where we met several students at work in shops helping their parents—and studying while they went about their work.  We got to relax a bit at a local canteen where we enjoyed corn on the cob that Mr. Francis had purchased on the way and pito, a popular drink brewed on the spot that we all found highly distinctive.

Then it was off to Tamale, where thanks to Mr. Kwame’s driving skills and Elizabeth’s map skills, we 

arrived at in time to meet with the students of ECG School before they had to go home for the day.  One of the students had written a particularly eloquent homage to Brando Akoto last last year, so it was a pleasure to thank him for that and to tell him how much it meant to Brando’s family and friends back in the U.S.  We also got to meet and greet the several students at the school that Yo Ghana! helps to support through providing part of their fees.  The school chooses excellent students from families that have experienced misfortune.

As always, we were highly impressed by the curiosity of the students and the dedication of the staff.  Mr. Joseph showed us to the fine accommodations he had made for us, and then joined us for dinner, along with the Hurinas, missionaries from Hong Kong who have played a crucial role in building the school up for many years.  ECG is one of those schools that makes you want to do and give more, as it is full of people who do just that.

June 21

Monday around noon we left our friends in Dambai for a ferry crossing.  Another sign that Ghana's infrastructure is improving is that the wait for the ferry was very short and that it departed without waiting hours past the scheduled time.  The roads are also much improved.  This of course makes moving goods easier and the economy stronger.

The improved road brought us soon to Kete-Krachi, where Yo Ghana! board member Dr. Kofi Agorsah attended school for many years a half century ago.  Headmaster Mr. Hastings and Yo Ghana coordinators Mr. Daniel and Mr. Tande and the rest of the staff immediately welcomed us and made us feel at home at a pleasant and quiet guest house and showed us to what became our favorite restaurant in Ghana, a small outdoor canteen just outside the prison grounds with amazing food and a gentle breeze.  We also got a quick tour of the current and future computer laboratory at John Doeswijck Junior High School.  As you can see from the photographs, the current one is so cramped that the computers don't really fit in it,

and when the students are using the space it is very difficult for Headmaster Hastings to get his work done.

Dr. Agorsah had visited the school just a couple of months before and was very impressed that the school has raised so much money toward the new computer laboratory.  This of course is the Yo Ghana! model or practice, that we help schools with projects that they have started.  Mr. Divine of the school's PTA was kind enough to attend our meeting with the school staff Tuesday morning, and we thanked him for the strong work of the PTA in helping the school.  If schools count on outside NGOs for help, they may wait forever, or they may fall apart when the NGO leaves.  But if they start something themselves, they both attract more support from others and ensure that they can continue to be strong when the NGO leaves.

Under the leadership of Mr. Hastings the school is doing very well in its exams, and we were very impressed by the quality of the discussion we had with staff about how to improve the letter-writing program.  This is a very strong school with very engaged teachers. John Doeswijck has not only done an outstanding job of responding to all the letters they have received from the U.S.; they have also helped two other schools that lack a scanner/printer.  Mr. Daniel has invested many hours of his own time in making this possible.  Yo Ghana! relies on teachers who already have too much to do but are willing to do even more so that their students can learn from and teach their friends across the Atlantic.  We enjoyed meeting with the students very much, then headed north toward Kpandai and St. Kizito Basic School.

June 20

Sunday late afternoon we arrived in Dambai after Kwami Akoto made transportation arrangements for us and then had a very good meeting with Mr. Opong, who is the head teacher if Dambai Demonstration School, and his colleagues. Monday morning we had a fine meeting with a the staff who work with the letters and also the students.  It was a beautiful day and fine meeting.  We were struck by the willingness of the staff and students to persevere with the letter writing despite various challenges, including spotty internet service in the town.  Board member Elizabeth always seems especially at home at Dambai and made an especially good friend.

We were also heartened to see how much progress the school had made, with no outside help, at building a new block of classrooms for its junior high school.  Nearly two years ago Mr. Brando Akoto told the school leaders during out visit that although Yo Ghana! would not simply build them a new building, if they started it, we would help.  Last year the foundation was in place.  Now there is a fine cement floor, a strong roof, and the start of some walls, all because of the work of the school’s PTA, led by Mr. Stephen Benyanase.  Brando also pledged that we’d be partners and friends for decades to come.  It is so good to see the fruits of his vision ripen.

Yesterday was a big day.  We (Lucy, Wendy, and David) had a great time, as always, at Angel’s
Academy, where school founder Mr. Ernest Opoku-Ansah and head teachers Mr. Justice and Mr. Daniel showed us the new computer laboratory that the school built on its own initiative. Yo Ghana contributed a very, very small part to it, well under 5 percent of the cost.  We were very excited to learn that at the school’s graduation ceremony on August 6 the lab will be dedicated to Mr. Brando Akoto, who passed away late last year and was a great blessing to Yo Ghana! and everyone else he met.  We also got to meet many of the students briefly.  Mr. Ernest started this school many years ago in his living room, for poor students who could not afford to go to school otherwise. 

Then it was on to L & A Academy (see photo), where Mr. Kankam hosted us and brought us up to  date on how the Yo Ghana! partnership went this year.  Mr. Kankam is one of our most dedicated coordinators and consistently has more than 100 students writing, which is a massive amount of work.  He is the first  Ghana teacher I met, nearly five years ago, and it is always good to see him. L & A Academy is another school that started out as a free school for poorer students, on a slab of cement, and now has grown into a very impressive institution without forgetting its humble roots.

Then Mr. Frank got us safe and sound to the University of Education, Winneba, where board member Dr. Eric Ananga and his very able research assistant, Miss Berthy, sat down and we worked out the details of the conference to be held there July 1 and 2.  The conference hall is very impressive, a grand building in every way, and we are setting aside classrooms for the smaller sessions.  They have done a wonderful job working with the university to provide excellent facilities (sleeping, eating, and meetings), and we are all very, very excited about the “Sharing Our Stories” conference, the very first one Yo Ghana! will have in Ghana. Dr. Ananga is one of the busiest and most dedicated persons I know, and Yo Ghana! is blessed that he takes so much time for us.

Elizabeth arrived late last night, and it is great to have her energy and intelligence and positive outlook on hand.

First Day in Ghana: Anani Memorial International School

After arriving late Thursday we made our way with our old friend, the taxi driver Mr. Frank, to Anani
Memorial International School.  I first visited this school in Nima five years ago, and it is a remarkable place. Scholars of development and a bit of observation tell us that slums in developing countries are full of hopeful, hard-working people who often succeed against great odds.  Anani School is one of the reasons that they do. It is one of Nima's strong institutions that provides a very strong education in both the fundamentals of education and the arts; its children are skilled dancers, for example. They have also, for the second year, been the leaders in letter exchanges, this year sending five sets.

Lots of fine dancing was on display for Wendy, Lucy, and I. The welcome was a bit overwhelming. Then we had the pleasure of presenting the school's Principal, Mr. Kofi Anane, with his Yo Ghana! star award, as he was one of six awardees this year. Mr. Anane started attending the school as a child; his father started the school to educate children from poor families after being cheated in a financial transaction. The school survives against great odds, somehow offering a first-class education to families who struggle to pay the fees.  The students embraced the award as their own, and shortly after the presentation poured onto the floor in a celebratory dance.

It was a special occasion for a wonderful and unique school and person.

"There Are Other Kids in the World" and Let's Hear it for Teachers!

It's that time of the year when Yo Ghana! disseminates and then receives back roughly 2,000 student questionnaires.  One of my favorites answers so far, responding to the prompt of what she or he had learned about Africa from exchanging letters wrote: "There are other kids in the world."

Our world faces daunting challenges and stunning inequalities.  Smart, good people who devote their lives to studying these issues often disagree profoundly with each other on what course of action we should take.  But certainly an essential first step--and one that Americans, in particular, often neglect--is the realization that there are, indeed, "other kids in the world."  Who knows what that realization will lead to?

This is also the time of year of graduations when, in my role as Yo Ghana! go-fer, I drop by some schools at the year's end here in the U.S.  Today I got to see a student who had graduated the night before thank a teacher who had played, it seemed, a critical role in keeping him in school and helping him to graduate.  Our teachers in both the Pacific Northwest and Ghana and, for that matter, across the world, are often privy to a lot of suffering that the rest of us get to ignore.  But they also experience the satisfaction of knowing that their stubborn devotion to a student can be the difference between success and failure.  One of the very parts of being part of Yo Ghana! is getting to hang out with teachers.  Thank you, teachers for inspiring not only your students, but the rest of us.

I'll soon be in Ghana, along with our co-founder Elizabeth Fosler-Jones and with my life partner, Wendy, and we'll be traveling and meeting with hundreds of members of the Yo Ghana! community there, so in about week I'll be blogging every day or two.

How Do We Know When We've Been Successful?

One of the reasons that I don't think that sports necessarily prepares us very well for real life is  the dramatic difference in how success is measured and recognized.  When I prepared for a marathon, for example, I could measure exactly how successful I was simply by noting my time at the finish line.  As a parent or husband or writer, success has been much more difficult to measure, much more subjective.  That is also true of teaching and particularly of online teaching.  There is something artificial about communicating with people via emails and discussion boards but seldom meeting them.

So I was presently surprised this week when not one but two of my students appeared during office hours for a chat.  I was struck by their dedication to learning and to their families, and it was very, very encouraging to hear them talk about both how the course has prompted them to think and write more precisely and how they have applied elements of the course to their own lives in ways that I would not have predicted.  It was a wonderful gift they bestowed on me.

I had two take-aways from this experience.  First, I resolved to more often let people know when they have taught me something worthwhile, as these two generous students did.  Second, I was struck that in the midst of performing what can sometimes seem like an extended clerical exercise (constructing a syllabus, building a website, answering student emails, commenting on student post, sending feedback on student work) I was in fact facilitating, at least occasionally, something much more profound.  It is a bit unsettling to realize that we probably unaware of when were are doing the most good--or bad.

Every day we are presented with innumerable opportunities to contribute something meaningful to each others' lives; often our largest contributions will pass without us having any idea of their occurrence.

Yo Ghana! Celebration a Week Ago

Some 180 of us honored Mr. Brando Akoto at Yo Ghana!'s second annual celebration May 14 at Africa House.

Brando believed strongly that we--that is, human beings--are here to care for each other, and there was a lot of that going on.  Djimet Dogo opened the program by telling us that Africa House was our home, Madame Victorine put a lot of love and care and energy into her food, and the ladies of Portland International Church donated a dozen diverse and delicious West African dishes.  The Obo Addy Legacy Project threw themselves into a thirty-minute set that had everyone clapping along.  Lilly Akoto (above) helped us to remember the man we miss so much, her husband, as did one of Brando's friends from childhood, Ibrahim Abubaker (also pictured above), who drove down from Canada to be with us.  Among our many volunteers, we are particularly grateful to Aaron Jones and Wendy del Mary for somehow being everywhere at once.  We are also grateful to the more than fifty generous people who donated to us before or during the event and to Agbey Gedza, President of the Ghana Assocation of Oregon, for taking such amazing photographs.

We honored six big-hearted people with Yo Ghana! Star Awards: teacher Ginny Hoke; headmaster Kofi Anane; volunteers
Dominic Fordwour and Essan Weah; and founding board members Dr. Kofi Agorsah and LeeAnn Bronson. Board Member Komi Kalevor emceed with his usual grace, co-founder and board member Elizabeth Fosler-Jones showed her vivid video from her trip of last year, and TreNeasha Shearer of St. Andrew Nativity School spoke on what sharing letters with a student at St. Kizito Basic School in Kpandai, Ghana had meant to her.  Board Member Harriette Vimegnon presented each of our attending teachers, and two students standing in for their teachers, with Kente stoles that Dr. Agorsah had arranged to be woven for us in Ghana.

One of Brando's many slogans was: Take care of relationships, and everything else will take care of itself.  Saturday's celebration was a beautiful illustration of that adage.  Brando, we miss you so much.  It was an honor to honor you.  And thank you for showing us the important things to remember, both as individuals and as an organization.  We shall never forget you.

Brando Akoto: A Life Poured Out

When I think of Brando Akoto, whom Yo Ghana! will be honoring a week from tomorrow, at our Annual Celebration, I think of a bucket that never runs dry.

Think of your life as a bucket of water.  Most of us would be worried about losing any of it.  We would want to wrap our bodies around the top of the bucket on a sunny day to keep any from evaporating.  We would want to make to make no sudden movements, lest some of the water be jostled out.  Certainly we would not want to share our water with a thirsty stranger or friend.  It's our water, after all.  We need to make it last!

Brando was forever pouring out his water to the rest of us.  He loved giving things away: his time, his attention, his possessions, his care.

My wife likes to talk about the "scarcity model" of life in which he hoard and guard our resources.  Brando followed the anti-scarcity approach.  And for all the water he poured out on the rest of us, his bucket always seemed to be full.

I get to hang out with a lot of people like Brando in Yo Ghana!  People like Mr. Daniel, who took time out from the preparations for his father's funeral to personally print and deliver letters to a school that lacked a printer, or Ms. Ginny who makes time between her extensive work and family commitments to coordinate more than 100 letters, or Ms. Elizabeth, our young co-founder who lavishes her time and hard-earned money on us, or Mr. Essan, who sets aside entire days to visit our classrooms.

I hope you can join us May 14, 3-5 p.m. at Africa House in NE Portland.  Here's a link to purchase tickets.  We'll be honoring Brando, a man who poured out his life for others, and the room will be full of others who do the same.

May 14 Yo Ghana! Celebration in Brando Akoto's Honor

On May 14, from 3:00 to 5:00, Yo Ghana! will be honoring Mr. Brando Akoto in its annual celebration at Africa House.

I had known Brando for less than three years when he passed away six months ago, but he left a big mark on how Yo Ghana! goes about its work.

As this photo suggests, Brando attended closely to children. I remember visiting one day last winter when he was obviously in a lot of pain but still enthralled by and attentive to the toddler who was bouncing all over the room and him. He brought the same level of attentiveness to every interaction, whether you were a life-long friend or a boy selling bananas alongside a dusty Ghana road he would never see again. Being around Brando made one feel as if you should expect more of yourself.

Brando brought an acute intelligence and many years of experience in doing grass-roots development in Ghana to Yo Ghana!  But most of all he brought a relentless focus on relationships, on caring for and about each other. Brando always wanted more time with whomever he was with. To a school administrator in Ghana who was regretting that a large nonprofit had quickly built them a cookie-cutter classroom that did not fit their needs and then moved on, Brando replied: "We won't build you a classroom. But if you start one, we will help, and twenty years from now we will still be visiting and working with you." When we returned to the school a year later, they had, indeed, started building some classrooms all on their own, to their own specifications.  In two months we will visit them for the third time, and the teachers and students will ask after Mr. Brando.

I hope that you can join us May 14.  You can get tickets (just $20.00 for over age 10, $10.00 for ages 5-10) by emailing Yo Ghana! or by registering through our Eventbrite page.

There will be dancing and drumming from the Obo Addy Legacy Project, West African food from Madam Victorine and many other West African ladies, awards to some of our amazing volunteers and teachers, and we shall hear from a few of our 2,000 students.  And we'll light a candle for and say some words about the dear man responsible for bringing so many of us together and lighting our way.

Book Two: The Life of the Writer is Not Just About Writing

The contract from Harvard University Press got me a job at the University of Northern British Columbia, and when the book appeared a couple of years later it got me promoted to Associate Professor and then tenured.  By then I was hard at work on book two, which would be a comparative history of interpersonal violence in Canada and the U.S.

My idea was to compare Ontario and Michigan.  My wife's idea was that we would be spending our summers in Portland.  So when I wrote a grant for the Canadian government explaining why my comparative history would be based in the Pacific Northwest, I wanted to write: "because that's what my wife wants."  But I had to come up with a more scholarly rationale.  Academics are not supposed to have spouses or other responsibilities beyond the life of the mind.

Anyway, I was never that happy with the book, and it wasn't very well received.  I found some really detailed and intense accounts of assaults in the British Columbia Archives and Records Center in Victoria and scattered in the regional archives of Washington, including a harrowing and disgusting account of incest in rural British Columbia.  I remember spending day after day slogging through arrest records in Portland from the early twentieth century to establish that black men were fined about twice as much as white men for assault and battery.

I think the main problem was that I was in a hurry.  Academia is about production.  Even at a small university like UNBC, status derived from turning out scholarship.  I was on a schedule.  I had a three-year grant and research assistants.  Once the book appeared, I would duly be promoted to full Professor and get a raise.  Very few people were likely to read the book whether nor not it was mediocre, good, or excellent.  I wasn't sure that most readers would know the difference.  I wasn't sure that I knew the difference, truth be told.  I think the book would have been better if I had just let it sit for a couple of years and then came back to it with fresh eyes.  But that option was never on the table.

The prospect of spending many more long days at archives to keep writing books that very few people would read and that I wasn't too excited about led me to leave my tenured job to return to Portland.  It would be a better place for us to raise our son.  My plan was to move out of the mainstream of academia where, as the son of a commercial fisherman, I had always felt like an imposter,and to write for a broader audience.  It didn't quite turn out that way.