Frederic Will
Professor, Deep Springs College
Deep Springs, California
Field: American Literature
Host: University of Cocody, Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire
Grant Dates: May 1, 2005 - June 11, 2005

From May 1, 2005 to June 11, 2005 I worked as a Fulbright Specialist with the Department of English at the University of Cocody in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. My assignment was to take part in specialized academic programs and conferences, and to present lectures at the graduate and undergraduate levels. It was a splendid experience.

I had taught as a Fulbright Professor in Côte d’Ivoire from 2000-2002. After returning to Iowa I had been shocked to read of the spiral of political turbulence that befell Côte d’Ivoire, and I had tried to keep in touch with my friends there. I was unprepared, though, for the difference I found in my Ivorian students, when I returned. I saw this difference in class. We found ourselves discussing poems—by Stephen Crane, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman—which dealt with war from many points of view; with cynicism, with compassion, with fear. My students showed great maturity and intelligence in discussing these texts. They had learned the hard way what war and its fallout are about, and they grasped all the innuendos of these wonderful American texts. What I gathered in many conversations, outside class, confirmed my sense that the young generation of Ivorians has learned from history, and deeply hopes not to reproduce all the familiar African political dilemmas.

The environing world in which these students were forming their positions, seemed to me both robust and fragile. The streets were full of life, consumer culture was active in ‘petit Paris.’ Good black humor jokes were rife. The ladies topped with pyramids of mangos were as lovely to look at as their wares to eat. Robust, yes. But conversations soon revealed how badly pocketbooks had been emptied by two years of civil war. The level of crime, of which I personally saw none, was rising on all sides. A professor of philosophy reports on being carjacked; a professor of literature on having his car stolen. The police are cowed or venial. Fragile, yes. A fragile society in many ways, and one looking with both hope and anxiety to upcoming national elections. It was little wonder that my students were politically savvy, usefully cynical, and yet do-or-die hopeful for the new world they plan to create.

The highest academic drama of my stay occurred on May 28. In my capacity as dissertation director I served as jury member for a doctorate level thesis defense. It was a first for me, at this Gallic/Latinate rite. Dressed in a heavy academic gown, I joined my fellow jury members on a raised theater, from which we looked down like judges on the candidate’s sweating and intelligent face, and on the sea of well-wishers and relatives in the amphitheater behind him. The solemnity of the occasion gave way, at the successful close, to hip hip hoorays and champagne. Perspiring like hippos we unrobed and went out into the tropical campus, thinking that the tiny flame of culture is precious. Where mankind in conflict is unleashed there are no guarantees. One holds to what has been good in the past, making it the measure of a better future.

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