Just a reminder.

Joe


African Storyteller Braima Moiwai  - UW Brittingham Scholar September 2001

Braima Moiwai, a renowned artist, musician, teacher and storyteller from
Sierra Leone, West Africa, now based in Durham N.C., comes to the
University of Wisconsin-Madison as Brittingham Scholar to teach a workshop
on “Storytelling and Oral Traditions.” He will give a public lecture on
“Storytelling and Oral Traditions” on Thursday, September 13, 2001 (Memorial
Union, for location please check TITU-Today In The Union). The lecture is
organized by the German Department and co-sponsored by the African Languages
and Literatures Department, the African Studies Program and the African
Association of Madison.

Braima Moiwai will speak about the importance of storytelling and oral
tradition for the handing down of traditional knowledge and history in
non-literate societies, giving examples from his own childhood in rural
Sierra Leone, West Africa. He grew up as the seventh of nine children in a
farming family, the only one to receive a formal education outside of the
traditional practices. He attended college at the University of Sierra
Leone, studying history, but was equally influenced from an early age by his
mother, a traditional healer and community leader of the Mende tribe of
Sierra Leone, West Africa.

He just returned from a trip to his native Sierra Leone, and will give an
assessment of how the long civil war in his country has severely disrupted
the traditional ways of life.
It interrupted the transmission of knowledge and values from the elder to
the younger generation, since many older members of the communities could
not escape the rebels and were among the first victims of their brutal
raids. In the shelters of the refugee camps, the daily struggle for survival
leaves no room for the traditional education and initiation of the children.

Braima Moiwai has developed educational programs for schools, libraries,
civic groups, museums and historic sites, exploring the influence of
African languages, customs and traditions on American culture. His main
interest is in the historical, cultural and linguistic connections between
the Gullah people of the South Carolina and Georgia Sea Islands and their
West African origins. He recently served as an expert on African oral
traditions, languages and music that survived among the slaves of the
American southeast for the civil war movie “The Patriot” with Mel Gibson,
and has played a Gullah musician in the film.


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