I Am Because We Are: African Wisdom in Image and Proverb

Foreword

2 I Am Because We Are: African Wisdom in Image and Proverb is a stunning collection of photographs taken by Betty Press while she lived and traveled in Africa. One hundred and twenty-five photographs have been paired with African proverbs compiled by Annetta Miller, an American born in Tanzania and living in East Africa most of her life. In proverbs, philosophy and poetry have a fine marriage. Such is the relationship between Press’ black and white photographs and the proverbs that root these images in our collective mind and spirit. Though these images are of people living on another continent, speaking many different languages, living in different countries, and following diverse cultural rituals, we see them through the lens of the profound humanity that they represent. Betty Press allows us to be more than voyeurs. She takes us behind the eyes of a Peul girl who sees her beauty reflected in a small mirror; she takes us into the mind of a Sudanese boy whose ritual face paint cannot conceal his misgivings about his initiation into manhood. Her photographs fix in our minds communities that are vibrant and complex, filled with the drama of life that will bring tragedy and misery as quickly as joy. I was immediately drawn to this book because of these striking photographs and the poetry that I found in abundance on these pages. A wise one said, Proverbs are the palm oil with which words are eaten. Proverbs, like poems, are concise, loaded with metaphors, wisdom, nuance, and the rhythms of life. In this volume language is best Foreword 3 digested with proverbs. When I read one of the proverbs in this collection: Better a piece of bread with a happy heart than wealth with grief, I recalled that my mother would often say, “Better to have a morsel of bread in peace than a banquet in confusion.” I realized that the philosophical foundations that I stand upon were delivered in these cogent bits of advice throughout my upbringing. “When it rains, it pours” was my father’s explanation for troubles that seemed to trip over each other in bringing us misfortune. On the eve of my wedding, my mother, who was demure, especially when speaking of sexual relationships, gave me this cryptic piece of advice: “Always keep something covered or you will become as a sister to him.” With each passing year, I review her words and marvel at the wisdom she packed into them, words that have served me well for more than forty years of marriage. Toi Derricotte writes in one of her poems, “poems do that sometimes—take /the craziness and salvage some/small clear part of the soul.” Proverbs have in their very nature the idea that the collective conscience of the community is weighed in every line. Perhaps that is why this book has such an attraction for me because the photographs capture time as images and the proverbs take me home to a place that nourishes the soul. Take for example the cover photograph which shows the genius of the photographer’s technique. As we survey three Senegalese women, their radiant shoulders and glinting gold jewelry that decorates their ears, our gaze is drawn to the woman with penetrating and kind eyes. The batik designs that drape their bodies and adorn their heads add a beauty that almost competes with the cherubfaced child in the background. This photograph hints at the chaos that frames these women and salvages radiance, mystery, happiness, and hope for the future in the essence of its message. In this collection, the message is significant and life-affirming: I am because we are; we are because I am. We exist in community with a multiplicity of voices, and we thrive because we share the responsibility for that community with others. When Annetta Miller heard the Kenyan proverb: Treat the earth well; it was not given to you by your parents, but was loaned to you by your children, she must have wondered about the mind who created it. In it is the wisdom of griots who have traced the lineage of their people, told the stories of their ancestors, and passed them on to their children. The power of this collection is that we are able to see the engaging images of the heirs of this wisdom and hear the voices of continuity, identity, and legacy that affirm their communal spirit. Joanne Veal Gabbin Executive Director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center Professor...