Opened gates, alleyways and passageways intrigue me. Who gets to pass through, what is on the other side? Where do they lead? Glimpses from the outside in, from the inside out, from the roadside into the mysterious and ordinary activities and features of human habitation are visually and metaphorically captivating to me. Do they separate public space from private space? Do they lead to a garden, a privy, a well or beyond? Am I welcome there? May I pass through?
In preparation for Ghana, the 2024 Witness Tree cohort recently met with Elsa Wiehe of BU’s African Studies Center. She encourages “reverent learning” while in Ghana, and has given me a new lens to look through while I am here for the 13th time in my 39 years of going to what has become my second and beloved home. A welcoming place of joyful and relaxed people, traditions and cultural norms still have a place, even as western ways begin to take hold.
As “carriers of history that came before us,” we are to “tread very carefully” on the continent where enslavement, imperialism, colonialism and neocolonialism have done/are doing great harm. Elsa reminds us to take a “learning stance” and to carry our western privilege with humility; to know what is on the inside of us - our own “deep culture” of values, our spirituality, ethics, relationships to others, to nature, to animals, to time etc, all unique to one’s self. We are invited to lean into difference, to recognize when our “deep culture” is being challenged, and to connect with the “inner stranger” within us. Travel will rearrange some of our beliefs about the world and about ourselves, so we are invited to pay attention to shifts in our positionality as we experience Ghana with a group of fellow teachers. Things that matter at home may be unimportant in Ghana. Things that Americans take for granted could carry significance in Ghana.
What will we discover? Where will our learning lead us? How will it reach our students, and lead to the joining of hands? The answers are ahead, down the winding paths and through the opened gates for this group of seventeen teachers! Let the learning in Ghana begin!
Elizabeth Updike Cobblah, retired art teacher Fenn School, Concord, Massachusetts