The Beyond Footnotes series of KPSU radio station and the PSU History Department recently interviewed Yo Ghana! President David Peterson del Mar about his book: African, American: From Tarzan to Dreams from My Father--Africa in the US Imagination. 

Click here to listen to the forty-five minute interview. Much of the content is about Yo Ghana!

The book will appear in mid-July and is dedicated to Mr. Brando Akoto, a Yo Ghana! board member who passed away late in 2015.

​For more information about the book, consult the Zed Books website.

Tuesday night had already been a full day when I arrived at the Troutdale City Hall. I was there to talk a little bit about Yo Ghana!'s partnership with Reynolds High School, but mainly I was there to support two of our students. One of them was Rando, a small and determined Muslim girl from East Africa who has been interviewing family elders to relate their journey through civil war and refugee camps to America. Her voice started very faint, then became stronger and stronger as she shared the remarkable story, and the council members' eyes filled with respect.

About two hours later I boarded a transit train and heard the voice of Diana calling to me, another one of our students, a girl from the Democratic Republic of the Congo who in the rainy night was in charge of her little brother and wheel-chair bound mother, all of them struggling to understand a new language and new skills such as how to negotiate the transit system in a wheelchair. But they seemed much more resolute than frail.

​Then I joined an apartment full of Ghanaians full of joyful expectation. The wife and children of a leading volunteer were about to arrive, ending a separation of nearly five years. When they stepped into their new home it exploded with noise and joy. The eyes of the three young children were wide. Twenty years from now they'll still remember that night, and by then they'll be doing great things.

​Americans often ponder going to Africa and helping Africans. But Africa is also coming to us, and Africans' resilience, warmth, and determination are helping us now, will help us far into the future.

Some 80 people gathered Wednesday for our Student Showcase at the St. Andrew Church Community Center. Students of Deb Tavares (shown above) shared compelling stories. A boy from the Democratic Republic of the Congo who is just learning English related how his father survived and escaped war; a Muslim girl from East Africa spoke of how she has come to love wearing her hijab; and a student from Mexico showed a photograph of the truck his father uses for his landscape business, a job that leaves him exhausted, but "this is how we make a life."

Yo Ghana Board member Dr. Labissiere shared the delights and fears of growing up in Haiti and how coming to the U.S. brought new challenges of racial and personal identity. Yo Ghana Project Coordinator Ibrahim Ibrahim emceed, young Maddie from Fowler Middle School read some fine letters on overcoming hardship from Ghana, and a bunch of students received awards. Students and teachers from Reynolds High School, Vernon School, St. Andrew Nativity School, Fowler Middle School, George Middle School, Campfire Columbia, and Judson School--all the way from Salem!--attended.

​Kwame Anthony Appiah, the distinguished philosopher born to an English mother and a Ghanaian father, remarks in Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers: "when the stranger is no longer imaginary, but real and present, sharing a human social life, you may like or dislike him, you may agree or disagree; but, if it is what you both want, you can make sense of each other in the end."

Thank you to our students for their courage in sharing their stories and the attendees for listening. I think we are well on our way to making sense of each other--and much more.