I have never been on an African safari.  I still haven’t seen any lions in the wild, no giraffes, zebras, wildebeests, or mountain gorillas.  But in 1974 that was the Africa I wanted to visit.  I’d read Born Free and endless National Geographic articles.  I haunted the African animal exhibits at the zoo and natural history museum, drawing my favorites, the zebras and lions, over and over. And when I was accepted into the Peace Corps I knew where I wanted to go  --- to the Africa of Joy Adamson, the one of the gorgeous animals.  That Africa.

I had lived overseas a lot as a child, but always in Europe.  Now I wanted someplace completely different and Africa, that Africa, I thought would be it. Instead I went to Sierra Leone and discovered a very different Africa, a most wonderful one. I lived in Freetown and got to know a variety of remarkable people --- the teachers, parents, and children at my school; my neighbors; friends of friends; Peace Corps staff; government officials; and many others.  I met more people as I traveled throughout the country: farmers and diamond miners, merchants and bakers, and many more.  I became comfortable in busy Freetown, heading to the beautiful beaches on the weekend.  But I also went upcountry to visit friends and spent time in small villages, provincial capitals, and saw many other aspects of that beautiful country. I got to know Mende, Temne, Limba, Fula, and Krio people, to name just a few of the many ethnic groups in the country. I saw weaverbirds, buzzards, blue mambas, and other animals.  I heard drumming, saw wonderful dancing, heard stories, saw artisans at work, and many other aspects of the rich culture of the country.  I ate groundnut stew, tasty mangos, and thirst-satisfying green oranges.  I slogged through the intense downpours of the rainy season, delighted in the cool breezes of the harmattan, and managed the heat of the dry season.   And so I spent two years seeing and listening and watching and tasting and experiencing one part of Africa.  This Africa.

But then I came home to an America that continued only to show interest in that Africa of safaris and lions. Or, occasionally, one of famine and war.  As for Sierra Leone, wasn’t that a country in South America?  Then in the early 1990s reports began to trickle out of horrible things happening in Sierra Leone. When Freetown was invaded in January of 1999, Americans did take notice --- newspapers were full of articles about atrocities, about child soldiers, about blood diamonds, and about senseless war.  And so Americans came to know something about that Africa of Sierra Leone --- as a place full of brutal and horrific acts of violence, where children were kidnapped and drugged into functioning as child soldier; a place, one person told me, where people were less than animals. And so, for Americans that Africa was either a place of exotic animals or a place of war with people who behaved like animals.  Always that Africa.  Never this Africa. 

It was a terribly painful time for me. This was not the Africa I knew -  but how to communicate that to those who only knew that Africa? Yes, there were horrible people there just as there were horrible people here and everywhere.  But for Americans who had little enough to go on about that Africa, the dreadful reports coming out of Sierra Leone simply reinforced preexisting stereotypes of African people as seemingly less than human.  Better, some of them thought, to take care of the mountain gorillas than those people west of them who were so barbaric. 

Worried that it was all too much for them, I was reluctant to talk of Sierra Leone to my fourth grade students. As upset as I was, I didn’t want to frighten them. After all, there were children their own age involved in something beyond our imaging.  But in spite of myself I occasionally touched upon it; I did mention my time there and my anguish as to what was going on. Knowing that, the children started to bring it up on their own and so, carefully, I told them about this Africa, this one I knew.  And then one day a boy came to school and mentioned that he had seen an article about Foday Sankoh, the elusive rebel leader.  Somehow our conversation went deeper that day and before long my class made it clear to me --- they wanted to help this Africa.  And so we did.  The children researched aspects of Sierra Leone, held a bake sale (to raise money for solar-powered radios for villages), created an exhibit of information about Sierra Leone, put together a website and were completely amazing. They learned and told about this Africa with total commitment and passion.

Today there is peace in Sierra Leone.  I hope it holds; I hope nothing as dreadful as that ever happens in this part of Africa ever again.  Today I do bring up this Africa to my fourth graders every year. And to do so I look carefully for books and resources about this Africa I knew, an Africa that is still there today. 

Here are a few titles that have worked especially well for me:

I Lost My Tooth in Africa by Penda Diakite, illustrated by Baba Wague Diakite (Scholastic Press)

Losing teeth is the universal childhood experience, a rite of passage all over the world.  Evidently in Mali, Penda and her little sister Amina learned from their Malian-born father (illustrator of the book), the tooth fairy brings chickens.  Eventually Amina loses her tooth and indeed gets a chicken!  Author Penda Diakite was eight when she first wrote the story and thirteen when the book was published.  The book is a marvel, a simple but clear description of life in one Bamako home today. 

Boundless Grace by Mary Hoffman, illustrated by Caroline Binch (Puffin)

In this lovely book, a sequel to Amazing Grace, Grace goes to The Gambia to visit her father.  Having visited the Gambia myself, I can attest to the authentic feel of the story and the illustrations.  Like Diakite’s book above, the book offers a simple and clear view into one African place in a way that children far from there can easily appreciate. 

Talking Drums: A Selection of Poems from Africa South of the Sahara edited and illustrated by Veronique Tadjo (Bloomsbury)

This is a absolutely lovely collection of poems, some traditional and some not; all illustrated by Tadjo herself. 

A great resource for good books on Africa is the Children’s Africana Book Awards. And for educators and all those interested in connecting children to "this Africa," the Peace Corps rich website should prove very helpful.  

Posted November 2007