Honoring the Unflinchingly Positive Chérif Keïta, the Mande World's Extraordinary Ambassador

Abstract

Honoring the Unflinchingly Positive Chérif Keïta, the Mande World's Extraordinary Ambassador1 William G. Moseley (bio) KEYWORDS Griot, Mali, Mande studies, mogoya, South Africa MOTS-CLÉS Griot, Mali, études mandé, mogoya, Afrique du Sud I am grateful for this important opportunity to reflect on the career and contributions of Chérif Keïta, whom I think of as a teacher, mentor, friend, connector, and consummate storyteller. A caveat to my comments is that I never had a formal classroom experience with Chérif. What I am part of is a surprisingly large Carleton College mafia that found its way to Mali (and neighboring West African countries) and had connections with Chérif before, during, and/or after their stays there. In this essay, I reflect on how I came to know Chérif and how he has been influential at different points in my life journey. I was a student at Carleton College, where I was a history major, from 1983 to 1987. Fellow essayist Joseph Hellweg was there at the same time, and while we knew a lot of the same people, we scarcely ever crossed paths. I also took French classes to fulfill the college's language requirement (but not with Chérif, sadly). Truth be told, I was not a very good French student. What saved me was studying abroad in France, specifically in Pau in the southwestern part of France (a program that Chérif would later direct). I learned three important things about myself while in Pau. First, I figured out that I really enjoyed learning languages in context (which was a huge shift for someone [End Page 193] who struggled learning French in the classroom). Second, I started to become interested in Africa during this time, because I lived with a French host family that had connections to Morocco. Third, it was eye opening for me to live outside of the United States and to see the world from a different geographic perspective. This stoked an almost insatiable desire to leave the U.S. again. I returned to Carleton to take some African history courses, most notably with David Owusu-Ansah (now at James Madison University), who was visiting faculty and taught courses on Islam and West Africa. Chérif would arrive on the Carleton College campus in the fall of 1985, during my junior year. We would not cross paths that year, because I was no longer taking courses in the French department. In fact, I would not meet him until the spring of my senior year (the spring of 1987) after I had been accepted into the Peace Corps in Mali. I knew a bit about Mali from David Owusu-Ansah, for example about the eleventh-through sixteeth-century history of the Mali, Ghana, and Songhay Empires, but I knew almost nothing about Mali in the contemporary period. My friends told me about this new French Professor from Mali named Chérif Keïta, indicating that I had to meet him. I was good friends with another Carleton student, Doug TenEyck, who had also been accepted into the Peace Corps in Mali. We both arranged to meet with Chérif. I was the student manager of the French house my senior year which, for those of you who know Carleton, was in Watson House next to the Watson dorm. I distinctly remember sitting on the front steps of the Watson house porch on a relatively warm spring day chatting with Chérif, who had generously agreed to come over and talk with us. While being aware of Mali's storied history, the little I knew about 1980s contemporary Mali was not very positive. My impression was that this was a drought-stricken land wrestling with extreme poverty and hunger. In fact, in the wake of the mid 1980s drought, National Geographic magazine would come out with a cover story that year entitled "Africa's Sahel: The Stricken Land" (Ellis 1987). Meeting Chérif for the first time was like meeting a force of nature. He was so engaged, energetic, and positive. He also immediately began to complicate my narrative about contemporary Mali. Yes, the Sahelian drought was real...