The Other African Child, from Hawaii, etc

Performers from the Hawaii group

Top, left, performers from the Hellenic Pride Greek group.

Left, performers of Mexican origin from the Latin American Club of the Bridgeton High School.

The other African Child, in Hawaii, etc
By Azubike Aliche

Last Friday, May 1, 2009, the Millville Public Schools sponsored an event to mark the end of what it called a Multicultural Week. It was tagged Millville’s Multicultural Night 2009. Apparently, to underline the place of art in culture, it staged the events at the Glass Town Plaza, on High Street. Anyone who knows this small New Jersey town knows that much of High Street is Millville’s arts district. Here, all art forms, including photography, students’ art works, and glassware were in display. Winners of the Millville District multicultural essay contest were announced, too. However, it was dance that captured the most interest for me. My kids attend public schools and since the event was heavily promoted by the school district, I couldn’t but take my kids there. But, it was worth the time and other resources that I put into attending.
Although it was billed to be a multicultural event reflecting the rich and diverse cultures of the people of Cumberland County, for me, it was essentially the African culture, the African dance forms that were on display. Attending the event, also, showed me that the African child comes in a variety of forms, in America. As a matter of fact, only one group of performers, the Hellenic Pride Greek dancers, did not remind me of my roots in Africa – I mean the dance forms that I had witnessed in Africa in over 30 years before relocating to the United States, a decade ago. It is important to state, here, that all performers were children of school age and most were in high school.
The first group that entertained was the Latin American Club of Bridgeton High School. Its first performance was presented by students of Mexican origins. As I watched their costumes and other forms of dressing, their dance steps and patterns, as well as the entire ensemble, I was reminded of the traditional dances that I had witnessed in parts of Rivers State of Nigeria. I also had the same feelings when the group that comprised students of Puerto Rican descent performed. In that group, I looked at one girl in particular, how dark complexioned and fat she was, and what struck me most was how she could not be distinguished from any other African girl, say on the streets of Lagos Nigeria or Accra Ghana.
However, it was the troupe that has its origins in Hawaii, the Aloha Village Polynesian Revue, that had the most surprise for me. It reminded me of the Nkwa Umu Agbogho dance that is popular in Afikpo area of Igbo land and the various dances by maidens across Nigeria and Africa. Unlike the other troupes before it, this one included drums and drummers. To the adoration of the audience, the men on the ensemble danced “dirty,” shaking and twisting their hips and waists, gesturing and showing other body language in ways suggestive of love-making. The girls among them also gyrated and shook their buttocks, just as you’d see it in parts of Igbo land and the rest of Africa when maidens dance. To cap it all, admirers could walk to the dancer and paste dollar bills on her, in appreciation of her choreographic acumen, akin to the “spraying” of money on dancers that is the hallmark of African traditional dancing.
On the whole, what mattered to me that evening was not the art exhibition, entertaining and enlightening as it was, but the dances that provided me with information about the existence of the African child in areas that I never really knew of, particularly in Hawaii, the birth place of our current president, Barack Obama, an African child, himself.

Uche, my son, now plays Tee Ball

Right: YMCA Coach teaches Uche how to hit.

Uche, hitting the ball off a batting tee set on home plate. YMCA coach demonstrates proper positioning before hitting the ball. Right, Uche takes a break from it all, bat in hand.

“Specifically, the document established that wide disparities in enrolment still exist. It stated that in Early Childhood Care and Development Centres (ECCDE) only two million children find their way there, with a whooping 20 million others in the lurch. Under primary education, the document noted that while 24 million children were already enrolled, 11 million others were not. In junior secondary schools, six million children were still roaming the streets while only three million are in school. Under the Nomadic Education Scheme, according to the document, over three million nomadic children are still out of school.”

- Excerpts from a report by The Guardian (of Nigeria) published in its online edition of April 25, 2009. The report was based on a 150-page document, released by Dr. Sam Egwu, Nigeria’s Minister (secretary) of Education, on what he called the Road Map for Education for 2011.

Uche, my son, now plays T-Ball
By Azubike Aliche

The last time, on March 3, 2009, that I wrote about Uche, my four-year-old son, he was playing soccer. Today, he plays T-Ball. T-ball is the kids’ equivalent of baseball. More appropriately, for kids, it’s a get way to baseball for boys and softball for girls. It’s like base ball but without a pitcher. T-ball is meant to imbue kids with such baseball skills as hitting, running, fielding and throwing. Part of what kids do in T-Ball is to hit a ball off a batting tee set on a home plate.
This is not about announcing that Uche has joined the 2.2 million other kids playing T-Ball around the USA. It’s also not about a lecture on T-Ball, otherwise called Tee ball. It is about offering a perspective on why many an African Child has little or no opportunity to be involved in organized sports at an early age, today. It is pertinent to mention that the YMCA of Vineland was responsible to giving Uche access to learning to play soccer and, now, tee ball. It is instructive, too, that what I paid to the YMCA on both cases is, most probably, a small fraction of the commercial value of such training. The YMCA is able to less than the normal cost of training because it is a nonprofit organization. That status not only allows it to attract funding to run its programs, charging minimal fees, it allows the YMCA to attract volunteers who work at every level to make possible the kind of training that Uche and other kids receive.
Again, this is not about praising the YMCA. It is about stating that the absence of voluntary organizations such as the YMCA is responsible for the stagnated development of the typical African child, in the African continent. One major source of the crisis of development in Nigeria and many other African countries is the fact that while traditional institutions are giving way in the face of increasing Westernization and globalization, modern ones, particularly from the nonprofit sector, are not coming up to replace them. Indeed, at a time when it is obvious that government cannot meet all the needs of everyone in society, the place of viable and creative non-governmental organizations cannot be over-emphasized. Even as the richest country on the earth, the United States of America still has a lot of room for the voluntary and nonprofit organizations who cater to the needs of the needy and vulnerable in society such as children, the elderly, the disabled, ex-convicts and the sick. In fact, the importance of these agencies is underscored by the fact that governments at the federal, state and county levels often funnel funds meant for social services through them, in effort to reduce corruption, inefficiency and the red tape associated with bureaucracy.
When I wrote about Uche’s soccer training in March, I had indicated that when I was growing up in Nigeria, in the 1960s and early 1970s, the task of providing training in sports rested with teachers. Each school had a games master who also had a class to teach. I had, also, indicated that teachers, also, used to provide “continuation” classes in the evenings, after regular school hours. At that time, in Nigeria’s history, inflation was very low and the local currency had value. Consequently, teachers formed the bulk of the middle class. And, as I indicated, too, the schools were owned and run by the missionaries, who enforced a strict code of work ethic. A combination of these made it possible for teachers to combine teaching and extra-curricula activities and still achieved satisfactory results. Nowadays, however, inflation is in the double digits, the local currency is near worthless, the schools belong to the governments, and there is a race for crass materialism. What we find, therefore, is that the teacher is preoccupied with the thoughts of making ends meet such that he can barely put in the usual eight hours a day, much less return in the evening for any after-school lesson or sports. In this circumstance, does anyone still wonder why stands in education and sports have fallen? This makes the absence of such organizations as the YMCA that can mobilize money and volunteers to provide what the teacher cannot provide very poignant.
In the small town America where I live, there is a day care center where I’ve had my kids go in the last four years. At any one point in time, I’ve had two kids attend the center. The center, also, provides wrap-around care for my kid in preschool. With my modest income, if I was to pay the full cost of the quality of early childhood education that the center provides, it could break my back. But, because of its nonprofit status, the center is able to attract funding and volunteers to supplement what we pay, just as the YMCA. Besides, it is supported by the local chapter of United Way. Do we have organizations like the United Way in Nigeria and other African countries?
As we hope that African governments and peoples see the need and organize to provide voluntary and nonprofit charitable organizations to supplement what their governments provide in the area of social welfare services, relief can come from nonprofit organizations based outside the continent that are committed to raising and providing the funding needed to provide social services. The Power Education Foundation, PEF, can be one of these. With like-minded fellows, we founded the PEF, which has a tax exempt status in the United States. The PEF is committed to promoting access to free or affordable quality early childhood education in Nigeria and Africa, by making grants and other resources available to local early childhood centers, so they can develop their capacity to offer quality programs for the all-round development of Africa’s children. Please, visit our website at www.powereducationfoundation.com, for information on what the PEF is doing and how you can help.