West Africa

One of the first questions that crossed my mind when I first heard about the Three Rivers Jenbe Ensemble was what exactly comprises West Africa. I thought that since I didn’t have any other research/information to share right now, I would try to give a brief answer to that question. So, to find that information I went to the not-so-scholarly-but-always-good-for-a-quick-answer Wikipedia. This is what I found:

West Africa is comprised of the westernmost lobe of Africa and (according to the U.N.) includes some 5 million square kilometers. It includes the countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’lvoire, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo. The region defined by the U.N. also includes the island of Saint Helena which is a British territory. All of these except Mauritania and Saint Helena are part of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). It is approximately one fifth of the African continent. While all of the states of West Africa have been independent since the year 1974, the region has a long history of European control/colonization. From about the beginning of the twentieth century until after World War II the region was controlled by the French and the British. While this undoubtedly left a mark on the region, it also has its own distinctive culture and traditions. This is some of what I would like to research and will come back to in later postings. For now, here is a map showing the region of West Africa.

Proposal

OK, since as I said before, the purpose of this blog is mostly to journal the progress of my (hopefully) integrated projects for both my Research Methods (RM) and Creativity and Community (C&C) classes, I thought I would go ahead and draw up a rough proposal explaining what I would like to do. As those of you in C&C know, we have the option of doing a service learning project in which we can spend time with the Three Rivers Jenbe Ensemble group who perform traditional West African music and dance. (For those of you in RM the group is made up of students from 7 to 17. Take a look for more information.) I would like to take this service learning option and participate in and work with Dr. Cain in the creative writing class she teaches to the kids in the group. For my research project for RM I was thinking of researching traditional West African literature/storytelling and possibly going as far as to compile some kind of collection of these types of works. I thought it would then be fun to share what I find with the kids in the group and possibly lead them in creating their own stories in West African tradition. As C&C requires that our project be somehow made part of a public forum, I thought I could possible create some kind of web page with the information I find and also the stories I and/or the students write and then link it to the Ensemble’s web site. I know that this proposal is far from detailed or complete, but it is at least the start of an idea. It of course will require the approval of both Dr. Cain and Dr. Amidon, and will change and grow based on their suggestions/ideas. Also, as I said before, I will do my very best to make this blog interesting and informative to both classes. I know that many of the blogs for C&C (as there are no guidelines beyond a minimum number of words posted per week)may be on topics more interesting than my research, I hope that the experiences I have with the ensemble and my findings about West African stories will be enough to keep everyone at least somewhat interested! If anyone in either class has any questions or comments to make I would be glad to hear them. That’s all for now.

Malissa

My first blog

OK, so this is my first ever blog and really my first experience with blogging. (The only other blog I've ever even visited is that of a friend of mine who has some really great stories she's written posted on it. Maybe I can get her to let me create a link to it.) Anyway, I'm creating this blog as a response to assignments from two different writing classes, one creative one professional. I hope to integrate the projects for these two classes and so have decided to create one blog rather than two. The real challenge here will be to try and keep things interesting and relevant to both classes so that none of you who visit (or those who might happen to stumble upon this blog) will be either confused or bored out of your minds (Note: I said try. I make no promises). Anyway, more about that later. For now I guess I'll stick to talking about me (sorry, It's all I have at the moment). I'll start with the basics. I'm Malissa and I'm a 25 year old student. I will be graduating in May with my bachelors in literature and minors in both creative writing and professional writing. Then (if my sanity holds out) I plan to move to Indianapolis and get my masters in library science. Yes, that's a real degree, yes you need a masters degree to be a librarian, and yes I really do want to be a librarian. Weird, I know, but what can I say. If there are two things that I really love they are books and pets (dogs are my absolute favorite). I've had many people tell me that I should be a vet, but if I ever had to take another chemistry class (after just the one in high school) I would hurt myself or someone else. That's just the truth of it. I currently have one and a half dogs (I count my boyfriend's [FYI: his name is Ryan, he goes to Ball State and we have been dating for 2 years] dog as half mine), two cats who are both siting on my desk as I try to type(the crazy calico is supposed to belong to my sister, but she abandoned it), two rats, and a aquarium full of fish and frogs. Hopefully my appartment complex never finds out that we have three times the number of pets allowed! I actually named this blog after my 10 month old West Highland White Terrier (his name is Booker if you hadn't figured it out). It was the best I could come up with on short notice. My boyfriend's dog is a German Shepherd / Rottweiler mix and her name is Babe. I'll try to post pictures of them if I can figure out how. Otherwise if you can find me on facebook, they each have their own "dogbook" pages. Yes, I'm one of those people who make web pages for their dogs, and I'm tempted to create a MySpace page just so they can have pages there that I can link to this blog. My cats' names are Gabby (the calico) and Lindsey (grey tiger). I currently live with my youngest sister who also goes to IPFW (and also has a dog named Vee). I have three other siblings, another sister who goes to Ball state, a brother who goes to IPFW and another brother who is just finishing high school. I'm the oldest of the bunch. As far as the books go I like a little of everything. Lately I've been catching up on classics I never had to read in high school ( you've got to love the public education system) like Animal Farm and The Time Machine. Before that it was "Native American" lit (I took a class in it last semester). Maybe next it will be fantasy or some Pulitzer winners. Who knows.) I really want to read Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; I've heard it's really good.) My other interest at the moment is playing my new Nintendo Wii that Ryan gave me for Christmas. It's a ton of fun, I don't know how I ever really lived without it (I'm not joking about that, it's the best consul ever invented, and whoever came up with the concept saved the Nintendo corporation from death by Game Cube). Anyway, that's all the really interesting (or maybe not) things about me that I can come up with for now. TTYL and thanks for reading my blog even if you were forced by a class assignment!