From Our Archives: Guests From Africa

By Gudrun Hutchins

 

Satang Jow from Tanzania, Margaret Allen (Bennington Librarian and Project Coordinator), Lucille Leamon (Branch President), Hulda Kibacha from The Gambia, and Frances Carman (Program Committee Member).

In October 1980 two Educators from Africa visited our Bennington AAUW Branch for five days. The Branch visit was arranged through national AAUW and we applied to be one of the host branches. Some of us hosted small potluck dinners and afternoon “teas” in our homes so that all branch members could meet them without overwhelming our guests. Other members escorted them on various trips within the area. The photo above was taken during one of the teas. It was quite faded and a scanned copy has been “refreshed” a little with Photoshop.

Most of us knew very little about their home countries. So we looked at maps and tried to gather as much information as we could before the arrival of our guests. This was not as easy in 1980 as it would be now – there was no internet service, and I only bought a fairly primitive computer a year later. So I composed a geography lesson for our monthly AAUW newsletter on a typewriter and one of the secretaries at work duplicated it for me before it was mailed to our members by our corresponding secretary.

Margaret Allen, the Bennington Librarian, chaired the project. After our guest had left, she used her weekly column in the Bennington Banner to tell the community about our project. What follows is a transcription of her column about our African guests. 

Out of the Stacks (weekly column title)

By Margaret Allen, Librarian, Bennington Free Library

This has been a very short week for me, and a very exciting one, but my activities have had very little to do with the library. I belong to the Bennington Branch of the American Association of University Women, and this week the branch has been entertaining two visitors from Africa.

The African/American Educators Exchange Program is jointly sponsored by the AAUW, the Sierra Leone University Women and the International Communications Agency. Five American educators have gone to Sierra Leone, and 12 African educators have come to the United States, all with the intent of promoting international communication, knowledge, and interest.

The visiting African women will spend a total of two months in the United States. Their first four weeks were spent at the University of Pittsburgh, where they were given a general rundown about our educational system. Then, traveling in pairs, the women will visit host AAUW branches across the country.

Our branch applied last spring for this privilege and was chosen along with 23 other branches from something like 200 applicants. We told our national headquarters what Bennington could offer and how we thought the branch could benefit from the experience.

It must have sounded good, because last Saturday Lou Leamon, president of the branch, accompanied by yours truly, drove to the airport in Albany, New York, to meet our guests, Hulda Kibacha from Tanzania and Satang Jow from The Gambia. Bennington was their first stop after their stay in Pittsburgh, and they were both delighted to be here rather than there.

Until they left on Thursday, we did our best to show them just a little bit of what it is like to live in New England. We had teas, potluck suppers, and an open meeting for the community at Southern Vermont College. They talked with Bennington College students, visited the Women’s Services Center in Pittsfield, saw the Bennington Museum, Fairdale Farms (a local dairy at the time), and Harwood Hill Orchard, and went to Sacred Heart School with their hostesses’ children. They had maple syrup, cheddar cheese, cider, and apple pie – even dill pickles.

In return, they patiently answered our questions about their hair, which is in corn rows (No, they can’t do it on themselves. Yes, it is traditional in Africa. Yes, they have heard of Bo Derek), their families (both of them have small children who are expecting presents when Mama returns), what movies have they seen (Saturday Night Fever, Airport, Jaws, and more westerns than they care to remember), and what they think of our fall foliage (they have nothing like it, and they think it is beautiful). We have also learned more about Africa in five days than most of us learned in our entire educational careers.

Satang is the assistant head mistress at Gambia High School. The Gambia is a tiny country in West Africa, with the Gambia River running through its center. The whole country is half the size of Vermont and has about the same population as does this state – about half a million people. Their capital city of Banjul, where Satang lives, is about the size of Burlington.

Hulda is from Tanzania, a large country on the East Coast which has an area equal to that of Texas and Mexico combined. In her job as zonal inspector of education, she acts as a liaison between the teachers in her zone and the State Ministry of Education.

Tanzania has a population about equal to that of New York State, the famous Mount Kilimanjaro, and huge game reserves. Hulda feels much the same about game animals as we do about leaves. They’re nice to look at, but why anyone would drive hundreds of miles to see them is a bit of a puzzle.

From here our guests will go on to visit Vinton, Iowa, which is a small (4000+) town outside Cedar Rapids; Glendale, California, which is part of the Los Angeles megalopolis; and finally Atlanta, Georgia. After that they will, with all the other visitors, spend a final week in Pittsburgh trying to digest all they have learned.

Meanwhile, back in Bennington, we’ll prepare a written evaluation of the visit and try to assess what we have learned. Mostly we have learned how little we know, but how fascinating it is to learn more. From now on when we listen to the news on TV or read a magazine, information about Africa will have a special interest for us.

And I, of course, have come to realize how little the library has which is up to date and interesting and am going to do my poor best to rectify the situation. The library may have missed me this week, but it will benefit in the long run.