Greg Tuke of Passport to Global Learning NW, a project affiliated with iEARN www.iearn.org, is a member of the Washington State Coalition for International Education. Greg traveled to Senegal to attend the 2005 iEARN Conference and sent this email update about his experience.

Dakar, Senegal
July, 2005

Dear Traveling partners,

It’s 3:45am and the Great War of the Mosquitoes has been firmly resolved. I have abandoned my hotel room, along with a full pint of fresh blood, to the victors and collapsed into a white plastic chair under a full African moon. The warm summer breeze coming off the nearby Atlantic provides respite from my thirsty warriors.

I look out across the sea and see the faint lights of Gorie Island, the closest point of Africa to America. And world-renowned site of the infamous prison, the point of no return, for millions of people brought to America as slaves. Here are some photos:

 

 

 

 

Slave House in Senegal

 

 

 

 

Gorie Island

 

 

I am in Senegal this week for a unique annual gathering, along with more than 500 teachers from around the world. These teachers are part of a network of more than 20,000 teachers from 120 countries who are engaged in direct global learning collaborations among students in their classrooms. It is all part of the International Education and Resource Network (iEARN), a 17 year old organization I now work with. And we are learning about ourselves and our world in a way that was impossible when most of us went to school.

I am in Africa for the first time in my life. It is not at all what I imagined when I first studied this continent back in 5th grade at Westview elementary in Spokane. I still have the colorful map I created of Africa back then, with each country neatly colored in. My crafty innovation was to color each country’s border with a dark heavy line, and have the chosen color fade as I colored into the center of said country. There I carefully printed the name of the identified place. We learned about the pyramids, about the minerals and gold there, and slaves coming over and that was pretty much it for Africa.

This week I have attended a bunch of workshops led by teachers who are demonstrating how they are teaching their students to learn now about the world we live in. For example, in one workshop the teacher demonstrated that instead of learning about the transatlantic slave trade in books alone, students talk directly (using the internet) with students in Senegal and Gambia and Benin and compare notes and experience. I learn that its French colonialism more than the slave trade that is more on the minds of present day West Africans. I learn more details about the black tribal chiefs who played pivotal roles in promoting the slave trade and Senegalese women who were slave trade jailers along with the Portuguese guards. I have met teachers from Sierra Leone, Togo, Gambia and Uganda, countries that I don’t at all remember being on that earlier African map of mine.

Most of all, I keep being reminded about how this kind of collaborative learning is about gaining insights into one’s own country and self as much as it is about learning about other countries and their people.

Wendy, the history teacher leading this workshop, said her students often ask “why do we have to study such ancient stuff?” (Sound familiar?). One of the reasons, she noted, was to see the parallels to current dilemmas students may now face. Take the native women jailers who collaborated with the Portuguese in jailing the slaves. How could they do such a thing, she asked? Turns out the only hope they had to win their freedom after they were captured as slaves and awaiting sail to America was to become pregnant by the jailers. In so doing, they could serve in this new role and avoid a lifetime of slavery or death on the voyage over. Wendy’s students, 3 of whom came to the conference and presented with her, told us that they examined how they might be collaborators in some way with present day oppression in the choices they make. They talked with other students around the world using the internet through iEARN, and identified current day sweatshops and related consumer purchases they make as the issue they would work on. Then went on to carry out a strategy to persuade others in their community to examine their consumer purchases.

It is pretty incredible to find out how much you don’t know when you start communicating with others around this world. One day this week we took a bus trip out to Pink Lake (a lake as salty as the Dead Sea, and a brilliant pink hue), stopping at a giant turtle reserve along the way. We looked like the United Nations on wheels, and I was sandwiched in between women from Iran, Egypt and Slovenia. I was dead-on in knowing where Iran and Egypt were, but try as I might, I struggled with Slovenia, despite my tenacious African topography from Westview elementary days. I finally succumbed to asking them the location of their country, to which they replied, “That’s OK; we have been asked that before by Americans. Let’s see, do you know where Europe is?” they asked impishly.

(What ever happened to those fine teachers who said there is no such thing as a dumb question?!)

Turns out it was once part of Yugoslavia, and gained independence in 1991. The teacher, Nives, works at the local university and trains teachers all over the country to get involved in iEARN learning collaborations. She handed me some brochures showing a country of astounding beauty, (plus a couple of really fine water parks they have-which I have a real weakness for- that would humble our own Enchanted Village water park!).

Nives is one of 25 country coordinators that Jennifer Geist, one of my colleagues in this project, and I met with this week. The countries with country coordinators engaged in this work astounded me. From Muslim countries like Morocco, Iran, Senegal and Iran, to countries like Taiwan, Japan and Argentina, the range is both broad and deep. When I embarked on this idea over a year ago to link our schools in the northwest with schools around the world I thought I would have to find the schools one by one outside the US, and piece together the curriculum ideas to start the engagement. The beauty of iEARN is that they have spent more than a decade already doing that, and the evidence was so clear as Jennifer and I got to know all of these teachers and country coordinators. I am excited about matching up these teachers when I return with the teachers in the Northwest that are now working with us to learn in this new way.

Travel like this is full of personal disappointments. I was walking down a dusty street in Dakar earlier in the week, seeking out a pharmacological answer to a common travel “issue”. As a light-skinned traveler in Senegal, one feels the burden of not really blending in too well. (And no, I did not where my bright red shorts this time, Peter, as I did in Nicaragua that first year!). The local vendors descend on you quickly, and you begin to feel a little like fresh meat. I was keeping my head down, and trying my best to keep eye contact to a minimum, and not accept any “free gifts” as the vendors call them, as they force trinkets in your hand as a gesture of brotherhood (and a highly refined methodology of keeping you engaged with them till you relent and buy something-anything). The vendors usually are competent in 4-5 languages, with another 2-3 languages they can fake pretty good, so acting like you don’t know what they are saying is pretty tough, but I was trying my hardest. By the end of the two block gauntlet it was clear that I was being treated as a “walking wallet”, and I was treating everyone approaching me as a leper. The last person I passed on that street called out to me “bon jour” from across the street and I gave him a sharp “don’t come near me” look. Something caught my eye as I walked quickly past that caused me to give him a second look. Maybe it was a color in his shirt, I don’t know. But after a few more steps I turned and realized he was the Senegalese hotel clerk who had one hour earlier pulled some strings for me to get me out of the Malaria Room (site of the Mosquito War noted above) and into another hotel suite. I walked briskly across the street and shook his hand, saying enthusiastically in my best French, “merci, mi amigo” (I speak a sort of fluent Spango-French, I am told). I know I just got lucky with that one. How many people did I walk by in the past week, leaving in the wake a reconfirmation of a preconceived stereotype of Americans as stand-offish, egotistical and above it all?

I am pretty humbled by all this. At times I think that if we can only use the new communication tools we now have available to us, we can reach a deeper and more cooperative understanding with each other around the world. Yet, despite our new ability to write, talk and even see and interact with each other virtually anywhere, using these new, low-cost technologies, we still face the daunting task of overcoming our own ability to see what we want to see. A friend sent me an article this week on the latest brain research that shows how we filter and dramatically alter what we see everyday. Things that are right in front of us are completely missed if we are not looking for it. And I see, even here, when I am trying my best to engage in authentic relationships, it is so easy to fall into seeing only what I expect to see.

And so, just communicating is not enough. We need ways to keep opening our own personal lens wider and wider to see more of what is really there. Practice helps. So does having a good teacher who can help us keep looking for the story behind the story.

Travel like this is also full of triumphs of encouraging discovery. I had heard that the banjo had originated in Africa and brought over by slaves, so I brought my own backpack banjo to see if I could get in a jam or two. And while I did not find any bluegrass bands on the beach, I did jam one morning with a guitar toting Senegalese, and saw some evangelical Moroccans strumming on the old banjo to a crowd in Marrakech, prior to giving a fire and brimstone sermon on Islam. And yes, even in Africa, the sound of the banjo still makes people smile.

 

 

 

Banjo players in Senegal

 

 

 

I have seen many things I did not expect. The vast majority of people I saw in Senegal, despite being the 17th poorest country in the world, look in incredible shape and the beaches are filled with young men running, doing marshal arts and doing push-ups in the sand. Despite very dusty streets, the women dress beautifully in clean, bright clothing, and look like they came out of modeling school with their captivating looks and posture. I body surfed in an Atlantic warmer than my brother’s hot tub, but also discovered that jellyfish like it too and the forty stings they inflicted upon me one morning are not easily comforted by mere benadryl. Next time, I wear a shirt. And I came to appreciate the sense of shared community that is nurtured by prayers done 5 times a day, and broadcast by speakers that eventually felt somewhat comforting rather than off-putting. It seemed to slowly replace the undertow of fear about the Muslim world I have little experience with. More than a handful of Africans came up to me on the street and unprompted, quickly made it clear that they were Muslim but strongly opposed the violence and terrorism now being waged by those who professed to share their faith.

The past two weeks while gone in Africa, I learn that more terrorist bombs have gone off in England and Egypt. But also in the past two weeks, over 500 teachers from all parts of the world have made new personal connections and will now begin linking thousands of students to each other to look at the world together and hopefully find new paths to peace and maybe a little more justice. The mosquitoes and jelly fish may always be at war with us, but maybe we can find a different way with each other.

See you all in Seattle,

Greg Tuke

Director, Passport to Global Learning NW
A project affiliated with iEARN www.iearn.org
(International Education & Resource Network)
gtuke@earthlink.net
work: 206-547-5416 cell: 206-372-2015
620 N. 34th Suite 311 Seattle, WA 98103

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