Fulbright Pre-Departure Orientation

Two weeks ago, I went to Wash­ing­ton for the Ful­bright pre-departure ori­en­ta­tion for stu­dents and schol­ars who will be work­ing in Africa, the Mid­dle East, and South Asia. The Ful­bright Com­mis­sion is fund­ing me to work in Ethiopia for 10 months start­ing this fall.

The first day of the ori­en­ta­tion con­sisted of moti­va­tional speeches from the Ful­bright Com­mis­sion.  Between ses­sions, I had the same 7 minute con­ver­sa­tion with every other per­son I bumped into.  “Where are you going?” “What are you doing?” “Damn, that sounds awe­some.”  Projects ranged from study­ing the rise of woman’s bas­ket­ball in Sene­gal to inter­view­ing sec­ond and third gen­er­a­tion Pales­tin­ian refugees in Lebanon about their legal sta­tus to pro­duc­ing a doc­u­men­tary on Indian women act­ing as sur­ro­gate moth­ers for west­ern cou­ples.  It was an honor to find myself among such an ambi­tious and cre­ative group.

Eileen Wilson-Oyelaran, Pres­i­dent of Kala­ma­zoo Col­lege uncer­e­mo­ni­ously ended the rosy, con­grat­u­la­tory tone of the ori­en­ta­tion with her keynote speech at the open­ing din­ner.  She has been keynote speaker for the pre-departure ori­en­ta­tion for sev­eral years now.  Her mes­sage con­sisted of four bless­ings for our trips.  The bless­ings were struc­tured like beat­i­tudes from the Gospel of Matthew and rang more like advice and challenges.

1. Blessed is she who embraces her mother, for she shall be the ben­e­fi­ciary of unimag­ined gifts.
2. Blessed is he who knows him­self, for he will make bet­ter sense of his own responses.
3. Blessed is she who knows the dif­fer­ence between being a guest and a host, for she will refrain from putting her coun­try and her­self in a very bad light.
4. Blessed are those who are flex­i­ble for they will not be tied into knots.

The sec­ond bless­ing stood out as a series of syn­dromes that Wilson-Oyelaran encour­aged us to be on guard for.  Not know­ing one­self could pro­duce dev­as­tat­ing results in the form of these syn­dromes.  First, Mis­sion­ary Syn­drome imbued for­eign­ers with a con­vic­tion that the peo­ple and the ecosys­tems of Africa were in need of sav­ing through out­side inter­ven­tion.  Sec­ond, Curios­ity Syn­drome saw Africa as an exotic place with peo­ple avail­able for scrutiny sim­i­larly to intrigu­ing wildlife.  Those with this syn­drome might find it totally accept­able  to ‘go native’.  Third, Intel­lec­tual Supe­ri­or­ity Syn­drome assumed that since the uni­ver­sity infra­struc­ture is not what it might be in devel­oped coun­tries, it’s wel­come and accept­able for for­eign­ers to tell those at the host insti­tu­tion how they should be run­ning their schools.  Finally, the Home­com­ing Syn­drome expe­ri­enced by African-Americans vis­it­ing Africa leads them to believe that they will be wel­comed as lost relatives.

Eileen Wilson-Oyelaran’s speech got me men­tally on my toes.  I thought about what I needed to do to ward of the syn­dromes and how to ben­e­fit from her bless­ings.  Sev­eral Ful­bright alumni said she gave the kind of talk they wished they had heard before they went to work on their projects.  Her full speech is avail­able here. (I had pre­vi­ously liked to last year’s ver­sion.  The link has been updated at the request of the State Depart­ment.  Sorry about that! — 7/15)

The next day and a half con­sisted of smaller, region spe­cific ses­sions, most of which were just as sober­ing as the keynote speech.  For­mer Ful­bright stu­dents to Africa reminded us of the impor­tance of being prac­ti­cal about what we can accom­plish, pac­ing our­selves, and reach­ing out to the local com­mu­nity.  In the Ethiopia ses­sion, I met the other Ful­bright stu­dent Shawn Mol­len­hauer who will be doing eth­no­mu­si­col­ogy research from the cap­i­tal, and Alice Kle­ment, Ful­bright alumni who lit­er­ally just got off the plane after being in Africa for over a year and a half teach­ing in Addis Ababa University’s Jour­nal­ism and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­gram.  I picked their brains to com­pile a read­ing list and contacts.

I never doubted the need to pre­pare for my time in Ethiopia regard­less of how much expe­ri­ence abroad I might have. The ori­en­ta­tion was a well timed reminder of this.  I still have sev­eral months to imple­ment the insight and ner­vous moti­va­tion I brought back from DC.  In New York, I’ve been read­ing blogs, warm­ing up to the Amharic alpha­bet, lis­ten­ing to the Ethiopiques series, and scow­er­ing a few library sys­tems.  Ethan Zuck­er­man and Erik Hers­man’s blogs have been par­tic­u­larly moti­vat­ing and insight­ful.  A poly­glot friend jumped at the oppor­tu­nity to help me learn the Amharic alpha­bet as an excuse to learn her 4th alpha­bet.   The Amharic fidel will only be my sec­ond alphabet.

I have an ambi­tious list of things to accom­plish before I leave.  Wilson-Oyelaran’s fourth bless­ing comes to mind: “Blessed are those who are flex­i­ble for they will not be tied into knots.”  She told us that Africa taught her to treat her to-do list as a hypoth­e­sis.  I might have to start imple­ment­ing that men­tal­ity now.