Carol Daniel
It’s too early in the school year to be staying up until 10 o’clock at night surrounded by glue, scissors, poster board and assorted washable magic markers. But there we were last weekend, determined to beat the deadline and get a high-flying grade for this, the first major project of the fifth grade. The project was called, “Where my ancestors come from.”
To get the ball rolling, our son had to ask my husband and me where his ancestors were from in the first place. I didn’t want to assume that he knew, and I like to get him into the mode of asking questions. “The Virgin Islands,” said my husband.
“I guess Africa,” was my answer.
But in my mind I was thinking, “Oh great, here we go with the … I don’t really know which tribe I come from because well, you know, that slavery thing made it just a teensy-bit more difficult to frame the family crest in the den above the fireplace.”
I mean, how many of us can say with certainty like U.S. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois that we are from Kenya? And certainly few of us can count on going back to that very village and meeting with relatives in between parades and speeches.
And perhaps a handful of you have ever even used the terminology “ancestral home.” Senator Obama’s ancestral home is called “Nyangoma-Kogelo,” a tiny village in the rural west where his father grew up herding goats and attending tin-roofed schools. He knows all about his village, although he never really knew his father. But most of us don’t. So my son and I put together the best poster on his ancestors that we could, given our limited knowledge.
A part of me wanted to put a disclaimer on the homework assignment. I thought of attaching a letter to the back of the poster addressed to the teacher to explain why we hadn’t included the name of the village of his ancestral home or why we hadn’t included any names of his great, great, great, great, great grandparents or the work they did, like farming or making crafts. The letter would maintain a respectful tone, because it’s not the teacher’s fault that we can’t even rely on our last names (affectionately called “slave names” by some) to easily search genealogy records and find that elusive village.
The letter might say something like this:
Dear Teacher, I appreciate this project on so many levels. First, it’s always good to work with your children on homework, any homework. It builds closeness and gives them a sense of our expectations of them. It also tells them that we care so much that we are willing to help. Secondly, it’s great to be able to talk about family history. That serves to give them a sense of who they are beyond today. It solidifies their foundation and gives them roots.
But I must admit, Mr. Teacher, that there are some questions regarding our history that I don’t have answers to. And there are some terrible questions about our history that I do have the answers to that are difficult to discuss. I admit that I feel somewhat incomplete, and I don’t want to pass that feeling onto them.
So we did the project and gave it a general feel. He learned about the capital of St. Lucia, where his father was born. He learned that they use cloves regularly in African cooking and that meat is used for flavoring. He also learned how many slaves were sold into bondage and what shackles were used for.
I do want to compliment you as well, because any project that gets parents and children talking is a good thing. So we may not have found the ancestral home, but we worked together, talked, laughed, created and got glue on everything. From our research, we learned that there are over 2,000 languages in Africa and we learned how to say “my father” in Swahili. Baba zangu! “Mother,” by the way is mama in Swahili. I wonder what homework is in Swahili?