educating alice

When I lived and worked in Sierra Leone neither I nor those I taught knew anything about the Amistad story. In fact I first heard about it when the Spielberg film started to be mentioned, controversies and all. Soon after I attended a Friends of Sierra Leone meeting at Mystic Seaport and visited the just-finished replica of the Amistad. Since then the ship has traveled around and now it has made its way all the way to Sierra Leone. The accounts at the Amistad America site are very moving indeed. And here is a recent news report on the visit: BBC NEWS | Africa | Crowds flock to S Leone slave ship.

After having read about and listened to their music I finally got to see the documentary film, Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars when it was aired on PBS recently.

It was personally hard for me at times (especially the footage of Freetown when it was invaded), but it was also wonderful. The film tells the story of a group of Sierra Leonean musicians who connect at a refugee camp in Guinea and become a band — Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars. Their individual histories are heartrending. While some of them are willing to return to Sierra Leone, one (with the most horrific story) is unable to. They will be touring in the US in August and September. And here is a small not-very-good video I made with some clips from the film.

Millions and millions of African people were taken captive during the long and horrible time of the Atlantic slave trade. Mothers and fathers, uncles and aunts, nieces and nephews, granddaughters and grandsons, brothers and sisters, friends and enemies were ripped away from their families and taken to the Americas. Untold numbers died. Countless others ended up on plantations. Very few ever went home.

Sarah Margru Kinson did.

Sarah Margru Kinson was a real person, one of four children on the famous slave ship, The Amistad. The Amistad captives were mostly Mende and came from the present-day country of Sierra Leone, a place I knew well as a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1970s. The devotion to Africa that Margru expressed in her letters coupled with my own fond memories of Sierra Leone and its people, inspired me to research and tell her story.

After a bumbling first attempt to write about her in a time travel story many years ago, I found more success with creative nonfiction. In the letter I sent to publishers along with that version, I wrote:

My vision of the book is one heavily illustrated with primary sources In fact, I see Margru’s story as a perfect vehicle by which child readers could delve more deeply into Mende life, slavery, life in 1800s US, and more. I have this dream of seeing the narrative in the center of each page surrounded by related newspaper articles, maps, letters, drawings, engravings, paintings, photographs, and other firsthand materials as well as sidebars (say a short glossary of Mende words). That way the child reader would have multiple ways of exploring the book. He/she could begin by reading Margru’s story or perhaps by looking at the images. My fourth grade students adore such books.

Unfortunately, while those considering publishing it found her story fascinating, they complained that Margru was too distant. Readers, they said, wouldn’t be able to connect to her. Since they knew there was little firsthand information about her feelings as a child, they suggested I make it up — that is, write it as historical fiction. I was uncomfortable at first — I wanted to be sure that kids knew that she was a real person and besides, who was I to even try to imagine how she felt about her harrowing experiences? (Aha, you say, now I get her obsession with this genre!)

After many more drafts and discussions with editors, I finally came up with a fictional idea that kept her real, but allowed me a way to bring her closer to the readers too — a scrapbook. With that I was finally able to write it as historical fiction — imagining Margru herself putting that scrapbook together and writing down her story as she did so. This idea worked for one editor, but not her house. The next editor had a different idea — turn it back into nonfiction! Her reasons were valid and her suggestions strong. I was all set to do so last summer when I was told I had to withdraw it from the publisher until I was finished with the Newbery. Bummed doesn’t even begin to describe my feeling. I tried to do the revision, but my heart wasn’t in it knowing I couldn’t give it back till January 2008. So I decided to put it away, read and think, and return to Margru some day.

And then I began blogging with my kids and all sorts of ideas came bursting out including one of putting my manuscript on a private blog for my kids to read during our February study of forced immigration. And so I did and so they are and so far it has been great. I wasn’t sure it would be. A few years ago at the suggestion of an editor I read a bit of the manuscript to a class and found that a very weird feeling indeed. But this is different — they are reading it to themselves.

If you are interested in their progress and opinions you can check them out on our class blog and theirs as well. The manuscript is private as I still am optimistic that some day, somewhere, and somehow it will be published as a book. (n.b. Last week I was told that the new ALSC rules now allow me to have a manuscript in consideration with a publisher during my time on the Newbery Committee. Ah well… and so it goes….the never ending road to publication.)

This beautiful place is where I spent Christmas 1974; it happens to be a diamond mine in Sierra Leone.

Conflict diamonds, blood diamonds, these terms had not yet been coined when I lived in Sierra Leone. However, diamonds? Everyone knew about them. In Kono, where the above mine was located, people panned for diamonds whenever possible. At night you had to drive slowly along the dirt roads so as not to run someone over. Everywhere you could see the lights of the miners. Everywhere the necessary equipment was for sale. It was like the North American gold rush; everyone and their brother desperately seeking the diamond that would make them rich.

The stories were wild too — of someone hiding a diamond in his mouth, spitting it into an orange when he feared being discovered, and then the orange tossed and the diamond lost forever. Or of someone who swallowed one and then — well, it didn’t end well for him.

In the early 1990s a group of us former Peace Corps volunteers, Sierra Leoneans, and others began meeting here in NYC and in DC, trying to figure out how to get the world to notice the horrible things that were starting to happen in this beautiful country. It seemed hopeless; attention was NOT paid. We eventually became one group, The Friends of Sierra Leone.

For me the worst time was in January 1999. Americans were paying tremendous attention to the horrors of Kosovo. It was only when Freetown was invaded that they finally paid attention to the horrors that were happening there.

I’m not sure I can bear to go see the new movie Blood Diamond. I understand now why my father cannot see Holocaust movies. I lived in Freetown for two years, it was horrible enough to see the actual images of the invasion, seeing a fictionalized recreation of all of it — I’m not sure I can do it.

But about those diamonds. Just so you know, a certificate that the one you bought is not a conflict diamond, not a blood diamond — don’t count on it. If Kono was wild and unruly in 1974, it can only be worse now. Please keep in mind that there are not policemen on every corner checking that the diamonds are honestly mined, honestly bought, honestly sold. No way. Those stories I remember of swollowed and lost diamonds are propably laughable compared to those of today.

In the midst of the war I was in another country and unexpectedly brought to a diamond factory — a place where they were cleaned, polished, and prepared as jewelry. I refused to go in. The country was far from Africa and my fellow tourists looked at me askance and I did understand how they must have seen me — smug and sanctimonious. But I didn’t care. Just being outside that factory made me sick to my stomach.

I just listened to a NPR program on blood diamonds in which someone mentioned that Tiffany has its own diamond mines as a way to assure their customers that their products are conflict and blood free.

Whatever. Just please don’t give me any diamonds this holiday season. Thanks, but no thanks.

I had a peripatetic childhood; my father’s academic career took us all over the United States and Europe. However, when it came to Africa, I was no different than someone who had grown up in one spot. I remember being titillated by photographs of strangely adorned people in National Geographic, reading about Albert Schweitzer in my Weekly Reader, creating an ancient Egyptian farm out of sugar cubes, and visiting zoos all over the place full of fantastic African animals. If there was more at school or home, I don’t remember it.

In 1974 I applied to the Peace Corps requesting an assignment in Africa. As I waited to hear what my assignment would be, I developed further requirements: I wanted to learn a new language, live in a dry climate with plenty of game parks, and there should be no snakes, please.

Finally I received my invitation — to teach in Sierra Leone, a country I had never heard of. A former British colony on Africa’s west coast, Sierra Leone’s official language was English, the country was riddled with snakes, it was mostly tropical rain forest, and there were absolutely no zebras whatsoever. The invitation emphatically put my sentimental notions to rest: “Peace Corps service is not a junior year abroad nor a romantic adventure….The Peace Corps in Sierra Leone does not exist for the benefit of Volunteers, but rather for the benefit of Sierra Leoneans….So come to do a job, not to find yourself.” On August 9, 1974, I flew off to Freetown, Sierra Leone leaving behind my preconceived notions of Africa.

Two years later I came back to the United States, changed forever. And ever since I’ve looked for ways to help American children gain a deeper more complex sense of Africa, to move them beyond the exotic imagery, past the foreign Albert Schweitzer-like icons to the African people themselves, to real African art not sugar cube farms, and most difficult of all — beyond those admittedly magnificent beasts of safari lore.

One way is through books.

There are more and more good books for children about Africa than when I grew up. But many still do, in my opinion, present the continent as an exotic one, focus on the animals, or on it as a place of deprivation and war. While many of these are admirable and often excellent works for children, I tend to look out for different sorts of books, ones that I feel help my privileged 4th graders make a real connection to the people of Africa.

One that I feel does so beautifully is Penda Diakite’s I LOST MY TOOTH IN AFRICA. Penda was twelve when she wrote this story about her sister’s experiences during a visit to their father’s family in Bamako, Mali. Beautifully and authentically told by Penda with gorgeous illustrations by her father, Baba Wague Diakite, this is a gem of a book. I spent some time in Bamako during my time in Africa and the images and events that Penda and her sister experience feel totally authentic to me. They are small ones, simple elements of daily life, but beautiful ones too. This is a book that helps bridge the chasm between Africa and America for children in a delightful way. I recommend it highly. (For an interesting look at the creation of this book check out this article by its editor Dianne Hess.)