Fulbright Hays Participants: African Travel Stories and the Construction of Inner African Observers Saidou Mohamed N’Daou Fulbright Hays Mano River participants have learned to cross cultural bridges, in order to meet the African Other in the African cultural environment. This is what I told myself after I read the stories that the Fulbright Hays participants have written about their one-month-travel in Guinea and Sierra-Leone in the summer of 2008. It is my final general assessment of the cultural impact of the study abroad project, organized and implemented by Donald West, of Trident Technical College (South Carolina). I participated in all the important stages of the project, as a guest speaker before the field activities; a liaison with the Guinean Government; and a travel guide and advisor in Guinea and Sierra-Leone. I intend to tell a short story of my participation, focusing on the intellectual development of the Fulbright Hays participants. The story is structured to reflect these two forms of participation and the insights I got from them. As a guest speaker, I engaged the participants in a debate that challenged them to transcend the limitations of their academic training by answering two questions about the 1871 Foton War between the Fulani and the Dialonka of Sangalan (Guinea). The two questions are concerned with the outcome of the war and the identity of the producer(s) of the text on the 1871 Foton War. After reading the story about the 1871 War, the Fulbright scholars were asked to answer these questions: “Who won the war?” and “Who (is) (are) the author(s) of the story?” I was certain that, until they had discovered the perspective of the producer(s) of the story, they would not have answered correctly the two questions. Failing to do so, they could have only projected and consequently rediscovered their own intellectual perspectives. This hypothesis was confirmed by the answers to the related question, “is this (story) history?” Because of the fact that the characters in the story were not only human but also animal and supernatural beings, with the capacity to influence the outcome of historical events, all the participants believed the account of the 1871 Foton War to be partly legend, myth, and even a tale. Considering the dates and the names of people and places used in the story, the Fulbright scholars also believed that the story was partly history. Almost all of them considered the Fulani to be the winners of the war because these are the characters that are presented as “military troops” -- with ample military supplies, benefiting from the resources and the drafting of soldiers in all the nine provinces of the theocratic Empire of the Futa Jalon --compared to the natural and human resources of Sangalan, not bigger than one Fulani province. As another supporting material for their argument, the scholars also used the fact that the Dialonka of Foton committed a collective suicide after their military commander was caught and killed by the Fulani. The majority of the scholars dismissed the idea that a living-dead ancestor of the Sangalanka reversed the course of the war by inflicting a military defeat on the Fulani by drowning them in the Dimma River. But how can we make sense of the ending of the story, which emphasizes the idea of the Fulani’s defeat and the return of only few of them to Futa Jalon to serve as the witnesses of the Sangalanka’s victory? The scholars who accepted the definition of the ancestor as a living force declared the Sangalanka as the winners of the war. However, they did not know how to account for the impact of the collective suicide in Foton. During the debate, the scholars complained that the story does not tell the reader how many soldiers died and how many of them survived. The concern for numbers, people, names, dates, places, recorded events, historical figures, visual images, words, and concepts reflects the difference of perspective between the Fulbright scholars and the Sangalanka, which one can trace back to the two groups’ cultural training. The scholars have been trained to value the material and secular aspects of life, whereas the Sangalanka believe in the spiritual essence life. What is implicit in the account of the Foton War is the belief that only the descendants of the ancestors who own the land and have continued to protect Sangalan against its enemies deserve to be leaders of Sangalan. The story gives the Keita Dombiyane all the credits for the successful past resistance of the Sangalanka against the Fulani. It makes the claim that this group and its ancestor were the defenders of the Sangalanka, during the 1871 Foton War. In the context of the political struggle for power in pre-colonial and colonial Sangalan, the Keita elite used their account of the Foton War to position themselves as the owners of the land and the legitimate leaders of Sangalan. The port of entry of the story is the first paragraph that defines Foton as a social entity that was integrated in Sangalan, through the Keita group of villages. The Fulbright scholars, who did not have this vital knowledge concerning the sociology of Sangalan, could not understand that the story is artistically constructed, with the aim of representing the 1871 Foton War as a war between the Keita Dombiyane of Foton and the Fulani of Futa Jalon. In the story, the other Sangalan groups of villages are either ignored or simply represented as just those of the other Sangalanka, who did not come on time to help the Dombiyane in war with the Fulani. A collective impact of the story is that the Keita have constructed a usable past, which would have transformed a negative outcome of the 1871 Foton War into a victory, a source of pride for all Sangalanka. This claim of victory is the outcome of a cultural logic, rooted in the Sangalanka’s ancestral beliefs. The Fulbright scholars needed to transcend their cultural limitations, in order to cross the bridge that leads to the Sangalanka’s cultural space (i.e., their inner and outer worlds). Is this possible? There is a debate over this issue that does not seem to end. It is not my intention to revisit it. My story is about what I did to help the Fulbright scholars meet Africans in their own cultural settings and interact with them, without unconsciously projecting their culture during the encounter. My presentations at Trident Technical College were all about social representation and identity construction, which best draw attention on visualization through the concepts and other material supports of ideas-images used by the cultural producers. Like these presentations, the story of the 1871 Foton war is a text, consisting of one system of ideas-images that is associated with one system of material supports of ideas-images. The material supports of ideas-images illustrate, materialize the ideas-images. The constant immersion into constructed texts produces culture, an ensemble of the producers’ valued ideas-images and material cultures. The deconstruction of the story of the Foton war allowed the Fulbright scholars to “meet” mentally the African Other on his/her own cultural ground. They learned that reading the story of the Foton war is essentially dealing with the Sangalan cultural producer(s) on an unfamiliar mental territory. In Africa, I used many examples to demonstrate this idea of cultural encounter with the Other. In Sierra-Leone, I used my joking with the Fulani to reveal the culture that justifies it. At the market, I told the Fulbright scholars that the group of Fulani with whom we were dealing were my “slaves,” and I added that by “nature,” they are thieves because of their ancestors. I also used my knowledge of the traditional technique of negotiation to cut better financial deals for the American guests. I always went for half of what the Fulani asked for and negotiated to get what was acceptable for all of us. The scholars learned that the joking with the Fulani was not racism, stereotyping, or ethnocentrism. It is a device that creates peace and unity between two different groups (king and his subordinates, Fulani and Susu, Mandinka and Kisi, man and woman, old enemies etc). The Fulani and the Sangalanka were old enemies because of the Fulani’s conquest of Futa Jalon and their numerous attempts to conquer Sangalan. Today, they are allies, thanks to their culturally-invented joking alliance. Because of my mother’s Fulani tradition, the Fulani are my “uncles” with whom I can joke and even “insult” without making them angry. To the contrary, the Fulani can easily guess on the identity of the joking ally and find the appropriate “defense” against his culturally constructed “opponent.” It is this type of alliance that I had with Alpha Bah, in the Fulbright group. The Fulbright scholars became very comfortable with the joking, after they understood its meaning. For example, the Fulbrighter Lisa was my “Fulani” onto whom I projected my “anti-Fulani jokes.” She defended herself very well, exhibiting her “Fulani” pride. Through bargaining and joking, the Fulbrighters deeply immersed themselves into the African culture. They did not only know, but they also experienced the African culture, combining the ideas and the feelings associated with them. The papers that the Fulbrighters wrote about their experiences in Africa provide the evidence for the positive impacts of their deep immersion in the African culture. They did not become Africans, but they have cultivated an inner space in them that will always allow them to meet and deal with Africans, their human fellows. All of the written stories are about the producers’ personal experiences and their capacity for self-expression. All the topics focus on the African Other and the Fulbrighters’ perception of Africans in Africa, classroom and/or in the texts. The authors have found their own way of seeing Africans and relating to them. They have elevated their understanding to the level of a rational discourse that will certainly reflect itself in the lives and professions of the Fulbright scholars.