Carleton Students Head to West Africa for Cultural Study

Carleton College French professor and self-described expatriate Chérif Keïta is going home. He will return to his native Mali in January, bringing 19 of his students with him for a three-month stay, his longest visit since he left the West African country as a teenager to pursue his education in 1972.

This is the first time an American college has established its own off-campus study program in Mali, a landlocked country southwest of Algeria.
One of the poorest nations in the world, 80 percent of its labor force is engaged in farming and fishing. According to Keïta, since its transition to
democracy in 1992, Mali has been closely observed by the U.S. as a successful model of the democratic process in Africa. He hopes that in
introducing these “future decision-makers” to Mali, the students will realize their duty toward the African continent within the context of globalization.

A traditionally oral culture, Keïta notes that Mali is a close-knit, interwoven society of clans which learned to live in harmony within the medieval
empire of Sundiata Keïta, a hero figure still venerated today. The clans form rich layers of a complex society that makes Mali a fascinating study
for foreigners.

“Africa remains an unknown land-many clichés and myths still abound for the ‘dark continent,'” Keïta said. Carleton’s Francophone seminar in Mali
will provide students with the unique opportunity to demystify this “terra incognita” through the emotional and intellectual eyes of a native son.
They will do this through a variety of experiences-living with Malian families, learning the conversational language of Bamanan, studying Malian
social change through literature and film, hearing firsthand from Malians struggling with the challenges of nation building, and traveling to historic
sites like that of Jenné-jeno, one of the world’s oldest cities, where they will receive a personal tour by the American archaeologist who exhumed
the site.

Headquartered in the capital city of Bamako at the fledgling, two-year-old University of Mali, the students will spend the first several days at a
“cultural orientation” in Nana-Kenieba, a tiny village nearby that is the birthplace of Keïta’s father. There they will receive initial instruction in
Bamanan, as well as learn simple rules of etiquette.

Upon their return to Bamako, the students will meet their host families, who were chosen by Keïta because they represent a “non-European family
unit,” or a middle ground between a small nuclear family and a mass of extended relatives. The students, who are all proficient in French, will be
given a Malian first name and will adopt the clan name of their family. According to Keïta, this will allow the students to become full participants
in Malian society, not simply observers.

“To know Africa, you must experience the African family. The human relationships are key to the richness of the culture,” and will account for 50
percent of the students’ experience, he said. Being able to identify with a particular clan will enable the students to navigate one of the more intriguing aspects of Malian society–that of the clan-joking relationship. Keïta himself is a member of one of the main clans in Mali-he likened the
name Keïta in Mali to the name Johnson in Minnesota.

Each clan has “joking cousins”–members of other clans who, once identified, can freely exchange jokes (which can be derogatory, and often gross) with each other. These jokes provide humor in everyday situations and alleviate tension in difficult times. The clan-joking relationship cuts across all class lines, and pays no attention to political status, gender, or age. Perhaps it also provides a key to what Keïta hopes his students will learn about Malians: “that happiness is naturally built into the African and Malian worldview, enabling the people to withstand amazing challenges.”

All coursework will be taught in French, and classes will range from studying the expression of social change through traditional and modern
forms of literature, music, film and art, to discussing various issues in Malian history and the process of political and economic change. Guest
lecturers, such as economists, bankers, teachers, and rural sociologists, will be drawn from different levels of Malian society.

Establishing the program has been a long road for Keïta. Since his first days at Carleton in 1985–he admitted he came to teach here partly because his colleagues valued what he could bring to the department that “was not just France”–Keïta has been planning an off-campus experience in West Africa. During vacations home to Mali, he put “feelers” out about possible programs in several countries, but each time his efforts, including a program in Togo that had to be aborted at the last minute, were frustrated by political or economic instability in the region.

With the end of the Cold War, many of these nations, including Mali, began to dispose of their one-party regimes and undertake the struggle toward
democratic rule, which eased the way for Americans to travel there. Through his many contacts in Mali, including Alfa Oumar Konaré, a childhood neighbor who is now president of the country, Keïta has created a one-of-a-kind experience for his students (Konaré is on the list of Malians who will meet with the students).

“I am reconnecting with my roots and connecting my students with those roots at the same time. I can give something back to Mali by opening it to
another realm of experience,” he said. With hopes that the program will recur every two years, Keïta dreams of a true intellectual exchange. “Someday we will integrate American and Malian college students together in the program.”