I am Sierra Leonean

This blog is now officially a collaborative effort! Sara has her first post below:

So Paul asked me to write a little somethingsomething for the blog about my new project, and well I’ve never written in a blog, but tah dah! here’s my best shot…

Today I ran the first session of what I’ve dubbed ‘I Am’, the national identity project that I’ve just recently dreamed up and have since become pretty excited about. Ever since we got here, Paul and I have heard “African” as an adjective to describe nearly everything, from their food to their clothes to their hospitality. I was really struck by this, perhaps only because of the contrast to how it was in Ghana. In Ghana you couldn’t seem to walk a hundred meters down the street without seeing the flag somewhere, and there was much talk about delicious Ghanaian food, warm Ghanaian hospitality, and beautiful Ghanaian beaches. The pride in their country that was palpable, and created an amazingly warm environment for residents, visitors, and tourists alike – I loved it.

When you start talking to people in Freetown, conversation seems to inevitably lead into corruption, deficient infrastructure, and poverty; that’s great in the sense that there is a clear desire for things to improve and the people want to push their country forward, but I’m still struck by what I struggle to put in to words…a lack of warmth, perhaps, that people have for their home. I can only imagine it’s yet another symptom of post-conflict society; what kind of national identity can exist when the country has been in civil war for 10 years? Thus, the people seem to defer to their next closest sense of self – their African identity. Or so my psychology-geek self has mused…

Anyways, the project is set up to let the kids explore different aspects of their personal identity all within the framework of their national identity. My hope is that it will foster some sense of individuality and how each individual is essential to the greater whole, as well as pride in their country. At the end of it all, the kids will have each created up to eight sentences, all starting with “I am”. Each sentence will correspond to different days of the workshop, which will cover personality and hobbies, family roles, national characteristics and traditions, race, ethnicity, and the colors of the flag (this is going to require some abstract thinking and may end up being a total failure, but I’m going to give it a shot anyways). Finally, each kid will finish their sequence with ‘I am Sierra Leonean”.

So during the session today we looked at different definitions of identity and discussed what makes up an identity. We defined “characteristics” and talked about the difference between persisting and transient traits. Using the example of a five person society (a bread baker, a seamstress, a carpenter, a musician, and an artist) we talked about how many different identities create a whole, ie what would the effect would be on everyone else if just one person was taken away. At the end of it all I asked them to create their own definition for national identity, and Moses came up with one that I think really fits what I’m trying to do here….

“The collective concept in which we can identify ourselves and others quickly, and where everyone lives together to make a great whole, a difference.”

Overall I was really happy with how it went…the kids seemed to get it and were interested, which is really all that I was hoping for.

Paul and I are going to join up because what I want to do next is pretty close to his section on self portraits, so it seems this project is on it’s way to becoming multi-media. In the end I want to put together a website using pictures of the kids, pictures they have taken themselves, and their voices saying the I Am sentences they’ve created in whatever language they feel most closely connected too. It feels good to have a project under way, and hope against hopes I think it may turn out pretty well.