INTERVIEW: the SALIMA Project on Radio Veritas, South Africa

A few days after arriving in Johannesburg, South Africa - our wonderful host, Mila, got us an interview on a local radio station, Radio Veritas, to talk about our documentary and theatre work in Malawi.

Anna and Mila getting ready for the interview

We had a great time, and met a lot of really nice people there.

Our on-air chat was really fun - including talking about the fact that "everything is bigger in America".

But here is an edited down version of the interview that really gets to the roots of the Salima Project.

Without the comfort of linguistic structure

7/1/13

We are halfway through the first day. I am having a mix of emotions and thoughts. I am not sure how many of our goals are being met due to the language barrier - teaching concepts and using leading questions is infinitely harder when you need a translator for your words. It's like there are two conversations happening - one between me and Verepi, and another between Verepi and the group.

After just a few hours of work, I am noticing slowly that there seems to be very little connection between the body and emotions here. When I ask questions about emotions during the exercises, I get blank stares - maybe it has to do with cultural assumptions about being open with emotions.

I am just concerned that we are not achieving our goals. The "opposite of Jackson" game became more like "Simon says" and it went very quickly. All of the morning exercises went very fast actually, and they weren't maybe so serious as they normally are. There seemed to be a bit of joking around, which is part of what makes me nervous about the kinds of things that are being retained. But I'm not sure how to do this better.

The language barrier is more difficult and more frustrating than I thought it would be. So much of my teaching revolves around gauging responses from the students to my words and body language, but when they don't understand either of those things there is a huge gap to fill.

Questions for today: what is the relationship between student and teacher without language? Without the comfort of linguistic structure? ... Forces you to find other ways of communicating.

Finding an ally and contemplating the work at hand

Due to the lack of a reliable internet connection while we were in Malawi, I wasn't able to post anything to our blog. To make up for that, I kept a detailed field journal with thoughts and reflections on the workshop. I'll share bits of it here in the coming weeks.

6/30/13: 1 day before the Salima Project

The workshops are starting tomorrow. Today was a mix of emotions and thoughts. Excitement, nerves, confidence, trepidation, relief. I went over the whole schedule with Genna and she seemed very positive about the curriculum which relieved some of my nervous energy. They will love it, she says. I guess I am not so sure. I am anxious that it will not go well - that people won't participate in the games, that they will be too shy.

I also sat down and spoke with Mphatso today about the schedule and the discussion produced a number of emotions for me - I felt calmed to know that I have an ally in him - I hadn't been so sure when we met yesterday because he is so shy. I got quite nervous talking to him - I felt rushed - so I spoke too fast. I'm not sure he understood everything I meant to say about the work. I think he got the general idea, but I'm nervous about the question we need to ask to generate the forum plays. Posing the question correctly is the whole point, after all - if you pose the wrong question, or pose it the wrong way, you maybe aren't as effective as you could be in doing this work.

But then another part of me wonders if I am getting too caught up in small details. Genna keeps saying that just being here will be immensely beneficial for the group. Then again - I never want to be complacent in my work - it is in that moment of complacency that it risks amounting to less than its potential, doing less than it could, or worse - doing the opposite of our intentions.

Other things to remember: human dignity - keep asking - what is the other person's experience? what am I not seeing? Remember to look with love and compassion. JOY.

A teacher's packing list

I'm getting ready to get on a plane in just two days to fly quite literally half way around the world to teach theatre as a means of facing the oppression of living with HIV/AIDS in Malawi and to film a documentary about this work.

Here are some of the things I'm dragging with me from the United States:

• a couple of shirts - not sure why I'd need more than two or three. I'll wash them in the sink... or in the lake.
• 2 long skirts - it's not culturally appropriate to show your knees in Malawi.
• 1 pair of hiking shoes
• some socks
• 1 pair of sandals
• 2 bottles of insect repellant - to keep away mosquitoes
• medication to prevent malaria - for when the insect repellant doesn't work
• a head lamp - for when the power goes out and we need light
• a new composition book and 2 pens - for writing reflections on the process
• my curriculum and months of extensive notes - to keep myself grounded 
• hopes and dreams for social change - to keep myself inspired
• an open heart - to keep myself prepared to learn more than I can ever hope to teach

This last one is perhaps most important. When setting out on a journey like this it's important to orient yourself as much as a learner as a teacher. It takes humility. It takes courage. It takes honesty.

Theatre for Development in Malawi - A Movement

     Theatre for development (TfD) has taken root in Malawi in many shapes since the early 1980s.  It began as an academic movement, based in the pedagogical thought of Paulo Freire and the theatrical theory of Augusto Boal. International educators and artists brought the techniques to Malawi, and to other African countries, in the late 1970s and early 1980s and conducted what African theatre scholar David Kerr calls “experiments” in theatrical techniques. TfD experiments usually involved students from the University of Malawi’s Dramatic Arts department, which now is heavily influenced by TfD pedagogy, who would work with rural communities to create plays about community health issues.   

Mphatso leads a theatre for development workshop in Salima.

     Eventually, due to the links between TfD and health issues, TfD found roots in rural health clinics, which are funded by the government.  Each community health clinic has a government employee called a Health Surveillance Assistant (HSA) who is responsible for educating the community on health issues. Recently HSAs, like our partner in Salima, Mphatso Diyele, have begun using TfD techniques because of their particular ability to communicate with a population that has very low literacy rates and because of their ability to engage community members in participatory storytelling.

     In terms of independent TfD organizations, a number of international, mostly European, non-profit organizations and governmental entities have taken on work in Malawi to aid in cultural development. One of the best examples of international collaboration for cultural development is the Nanzikambe Arts Development Organization. The Norwegian Embassy, USAID, and several non-profit organizations helped finance the organization, which produces plays at its theater house in Blantyre, the country’s commercial hub.  Nanzikambe Arts has also created what it calls an “activator network,” which is a network of theatre artists who are trained in Theatre for Development (TfD) techniques and who are spread across the country working on social issues in the community ranging from HIV/AIDS prevention to malaria to food security. The Salima Project is incredibly fortunate to have Verepi Madise from Nanzikambe Arts joining us for our weeklong program. 

     In many ways this project is about bringing people together. Bringing people together from across international borders, from across Malawi, and from across widely differing life experiences. We're hoping that some of our drama group in Salima will continue working in theatre for development after we leave and that they will be able to make connections with the professionals at Nanzikambe. And we're certainly hoping that the documentary will serve to bring people together to do more projects like this - at the intersection of cultural development and healthcare education. 

On writing pedagogy

Writing a curriculum plan isn't easy. And, really, it shouldn't be. When you have a certain skill set, and you're asked to teach those skills to other people, it can be tempting to make haphazard plans for lessons and workshops because you know what you're doing. You know the material, as well you should if you're teaching it, and, like most teachers, you're pressed for time, so planning takes a backseat.

Post-it notes, books on theory, and scribbled notes on pedagogy.

But, by sketching quick plans with little to no theoretical justifications, you're doing yourself a disservice, and worse, you're doing your students a disservice. Educators need to practice critical reflection on teaching methods because we have the immense and immeasurable responsibility of influencing lives. Knowing the ground on which we stand and the positions that situate our knowledge frameworks empowers us to make conscious choices about not only the way we teach, but why we do it. To that end, continually asking ourselves "why?" ...have I structured my lessons as I have, ...do I hold the views that I do, ..am I teaching at all, encourages us to be open to transformation. After all, education is not just about passing on facts from teacher to student. At its best, it is a process of humanization, by which teacher and students become, as Paulo Freire wrote in 1985, "more conscious of their presence in the world."

As I was sitting at home with a cup of coffee and revisiting my curriculum plan for The Salima Project, I began to ask myself what this project is about. I began thinking about how I'm going to introduce myself and my team and how I'm going to frame the week-long program in those nervous first few moments when I walk into a room full of people with whom I won't share a spoken language and who, no doubt, will have all sorts of expectations for me and for this program that, I have to admit, I'm scared I won't be able to meet. Where do we come together to begin this work?

The answer, I think, rests in love. For my part, I come to this project with a deep sense of love for the human capacity to create art that can be transformative on both an individual and a collective level. By 'love,' I don't mean a kind of puerile happiness or infantile optimism; rather, I mean a love that is rooted in humility and courage because both are required of teachers and students, and in particular of artists, who wish to confront oppression and open themselves to transforming society.


For a fabulous overview of Paulo Freire's pedagogy, see Antonia Darder's Reinventing Paulo Freire: A Pedagogy of Love.