Like the odd tug-of-war I witnessed at work within one American girl. When not placing orphans and juvenile delinquents in decent Christian homes or helping to mend broken homes and marriages, she was refurbishing old folk airs for records, and smoking marijuana.
‘Haven’t they got you on that yet at Princeton?’ she tossed her head out of the fumes mushrooming about her, when I declined her loving offer of a drag.
7
Wandering Scholars
African students had just suffered their brush-up in Sofia, and in the United States of America daily newspapers and magazines, from Time and the New York Herald Tribune, two of America’s most rabid watchdogs, to the sedate and so-called liberal New York Times and Post, were all having a field day of it. The Communists are sure now having their comeuppance, they shrilled in one chorus of I-told-you-so and self-congratulation, and wasn’t it great that Africans themselves, long deceived and believing in the miracle of the new Red Saviour, should have kicked these wide chinks in the iron and bamboo walls of communism? Out of there, now pouring for all to see, were the ugly rank smoke clouds from the vast cauldron that is Communist-run countries! By far the most flavoursome and well-served-up of all the news stories was that by the newsmagazine Newsweek.
In a way, all this hysteria, typical of America, was a wonderful break, as the Press had all plunged after President Kennedy into the stewing pot of Cuba, and after six whole months of shouting curses and flailing arms, had none of them shown any stomach or grace for an honourable pull-out. Except that on my calling at the State Department early in May I was offered, as must have been several foreign communicants all over the US at that time, the Newsweek stuff as the new communion bread and wine.
‘Oh, you read that report, did you?’ The diplomat who received me described a fresh circle on the blotting paper in his front.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Wasn’t that pretty accurate and comprehensive of them?’ he drew another between his asking and my answer.
‘Yes, if you are talking of the dating habits among the several foreign students studying here, and of the long distances they do to come to rich Uncle Sam’s.’
‘Well, wasn’t it dating behind those Sofia riots?’ the diplomat looked up at me, his pen held up on the incomplete arc of an oncoming circle.
‘A real shame, that,’ I conceded, shifting in my seat. ‘And we have them here in surplus!’
‘Poor fellows, now they have to find themselves fresh places.’
‘I thought the US had her ample arms open to receive the prodigals and rejected?’
‘Yes, that’s true.’ He brought yet another circle to happy fruition. ‘As a government however there is a limit to what we can do openly. But private voluntary organizations and individual citizens and colleges acting in their own behalf and of their own free will are rising to this new challenge. Now, that’s the great thing about our system: everybody acts as a completely free agent.’
I laughed out openly and rudely before he had finished.
‘Now, you may not think it’s so, but that’s what we Americans believe.’ The quiet diplomat, who had now dropped his pen on a blotter full of well-rounded circles, refused to be ruffled by me. It had been an open and frank discussion, not just as the jargon goes, and now I shoved back my chair and rose to go, which brought the diplomat up to his feet. He was tall and broad from feet to shoulders as every American male should be, so that his shadow easily fell over me as he leaned over his desk. We reached across it to each other and shook hands. ‘Look in on us any time you are in Washington DC,’ he smiled warmly.
‘Yes, I sure will,’ I returned his firm grip. ‘Especially if a cop clobbers me on the head.’
It was true what the man had said of private voluntary bodies and individual citizens taking up all on their own their country’s constant, self-inflicted conflict with others of the world. Of course in these days of the Cold War, it is difficult to tell where cold calculating Greek gifts begin with the American people and when warm, altruistic Christian charity is at work with them. But that theirs is a faith well tried in action it would be a sin to deny. Even at Princeton so lily pure and preserved for the privileged, there exists now strong and positive evidence of America’s dedication to the cause of helping the poor and oppressed of the world. Indeed the new pied beauty of the place resulting from the authentic appearance of black faces from the Congo, Nyasa and Nigeria has won for it a fresh virtue worthy to be sung. And much of the credit here as on other fronts and fields must go to such private associations of free citizens and good Samaritans like the American African Institute which incidentally and much to the surprise of many an educated American publishes a whole magazine on Africa every month.
Over the last three years, in a super drive to improve the supply of well-trained indigenous man-power for the independent states freely sprouting all over the dark African continent, the Institute has launched in close co-operation with the US Government at home and with participating governments abroad a crash programme to place in American colleges and universities African boys and girls of promise. As the slogan goes, never has so much been done by so few for so many and in so short a time. In Nigeria alone, for example, the Institute now air-lifts on the average every year a hundred or so students straight into dormitories and classes in the US. Without doubt, this is a bold and most worthy venture, and for the young starry-eyed Nigerians, the occasion, as Lagos newspaper men have liked reporting it since the doyen days of Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, is like Jason setting forth once again in his relentless quest for the golden fleece.
The pity, however, is that these young men and women the Institute carries off every year to the States are some of the brightest products the few secondary grammer schools or senior high schools in the new countries of Africa have to offer the still fewer and newer home universities and colleges. Already, among African universities the cry is hoarse for a steady source of suitable student material that will keep them in constant supply. The situation therefore seems to be one of a lame dog being further crippled by the kind-hearted passer-by who wants to help him over the stile. The University of Ibadan, for example, has suffered this kind of awkward, unintentioned mauling at the hands of the American African Institute. My cousin at Princeton, for one, after a brilliant performance at his higher school certificate examination, had an open position at Ibadan to train as a medical doctor, the very kind of qualified men needed most in his Delta part of Nigeria. But what happened when it came to making the final choice? As a matter of fact, it seemed then there was not one to make. So overpowering and all-pervading was the siren call of America, that the young man, like several others who began the programme that year, fell for the offer, and so off he was swept to Princeton, the name of which he did not even know of at that time. Now he has taken a degree in chemistry, or is it biology? True, his is only a single case, but very likely representative of that first year, and indeed those following since. Who will ever know the true extent of such misdirections, the wandering astray, and the complete loss in the woods therefrom?
The danger and waste become greater still when guides and benefactors, as apparently these do-good American citizens and associations are, show little awareness of the problems involved, and worse still, refuse to admit their existence when they are pointed out to their all-seeing, radar, and X-ray eyes. And that they are most painstaking and conscientious over the welfare of each girl and boy they take across the seas to the States it would be churlish to deny for one moment. Wards each have a foster home and godparents. One boy I met made much of the fact that his white foster-mother kisses him every time he goes home to his adopted Another spoke of the care and effort his always took to arrange dates for him. One snag though, he admitted, and all of us there laughed long and loud, is that she would not have them a mixed affair! And there was the boy who said that the very thought of sitting through church services and retreats on Sundays spoiled for him the fun of going home to his otherwise very loving foster-family. These are all real problems, those of young people, and in a far-away place. That they are so well taken care of must in a large measure be the work and motherly solicitude of the American upper-middle class housewife, a common force on all such committees.
Other problems however, perhaps less personal, remain Unattended or simply ignored. Take that of post-graduate studies, which is the dream of the American student. It not only puts him in a class but he also needs his second degree or doctorate to expect a place on the faculty in most universities or even in corporations or the civil service outside. Because the various authorities and grant donors fully own up to their responsibilities of making money, men and equipment available for the task of staffing industry and society with higher cadres of personnel, the average intelligent American youth can expect to go beyond his bachelor’s degree as a matter of course.
Apparently, however, it is not so with the African student sponsored by educational organizations like the American African Institute. ‘What do you want to do graduate work for?’ they frown at applicants for extension of grants. ‘Africa needs first degree men, not scholars!’ As likely as not, the idea of hurrying home African graduates carries a lot of sense, since the poor old folks at home require instant basic services. But Africa also requires now the secondary ones. With careful planning and acceleration where the potential exists, it should be possible to combine both needs with profit for all. It seems therefore criminal negligence to deny students with aptitude, and call off their one opportunity to develop themselves fully first before going out to develop others. Further partly due to superior attitudes taken over by Africans from their imperial masters and partly in real recognition of the fact, the first American college degree in Africa is regarded even now with great suspicion. And in this probably unequal discrimination no distinction is made as between Harvard and Howard.
Indeed, Americans themselves subscribe and contribute to this. I once had an American graduate student in an English class repeat to me, almost apologetically, that he came down from Haverford in the State of Pennsylvania, and not Harvard! The special anxiety of African students in America must therefore be placed in proper perspective to be appreciated, None wants to return home with just the first diploma, and indeed they would be refused responsible appointments by their own governments today, as did the British colonial governments many years ago when they snubbed scholars like Dr Azikiwe and his American-educated contemporaries. This imperial relic has dug its roots so deep among public service boards in Nigeria, the story goes that even a young graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was passed over for a job since no expert there could place his qualifications!
But distinctions there certainly are, and these have to be insisted upon all the time, if the gates are not going to be sluiced and soiled water let through in a rush to flood everybody out. The programme for the mass placement of African students in colleges in the United States of America seems at the moment to be courting just this disaster. Those floating it, with all the good intentions in the world, are today increasing its area of participation. Consequently, the programme now flows over from the Ivy League colleges which began it to all sorts of colleges all across the United States. The idea of course is to increase output in the quickest possible time. In the drive towards quantity however the tendency towards a lowering in quality and standards cannot be regarded as a mere bugaboo. Not that anybody is saying the new expanding network of colleges to which students are now being drafted all lack proper accreditation. It is just that, as in the animal farm, some members prove more equal than others, and when all must eventually return to render equal service where distinction and discrimination are rife, it is only fair that right from the start opportunities are not made free to the exclusive advantage of one sector.
At this point, one may venture to question the courses of study many of these students find themselves pursuing. For instance, it can be safely asked what a Nigerian goes all the way to America to learn of the arts that he cannot readily do at a university back home. If he is a history man, and very possibly taking classes in the witch-hunt sessions of Boston during Colonial days, of what value and practical use can this be to him and his society? The acquiring of knowledge and a complete kit quick to reach for purposes of comparison and critical application is an essential aim of every true scholar, but of what relevance and use is the plucking of such lush leaves outside when the yam underground in the concession at home is there still to uproot? Without being parochial and short-sighted, one can at least try starting the practice of charity at home!
As with the arts so to some extent with the sciences. Here the real snag is not so much that a good physics laboratory in Lagos should satisfy the same basic teaching needs and conditions that obtain in New York and Moscow, as the more awkward, if less obtrusive one of students picking upskills and tricks for which there appears no immediate audience and provision at home. I knew of a young Nigerian engineer who went from Ohio to pursue a further course in plastics at Princeton. Naturally, he required some extra funds to realize this end. So he went straight to the Nigerian ambassador in Washington, who was gracious and kind enough to arrange for him an audience with the Premier of his region who happened then to be around in the US on one of those begging bouts officiously called economic missions abroad. ‘What do you want that for anyway?’ the Premier scolded him. ‘Yes, what is this you say you want an extension of scholarship for? Young man, there is no industry like that at home, and if I may let you into a secret nobody is planning one!’ The follow-up of this cordial meeting was an urgent trans-Atlantic summons a few days afterwards, ordering the young engineer to return home by the next plane.
But by far the most absurd of all the educational schemes for Africa now emanating from America and elsewhere appears to be that with which President Kennedy himself and his clan have direct and personal interests and connection. I do not mean the official Peace Corps programme which for all the selfish indirect gains the US Government expects to reap out of it at the expense of the Soviet Union, and which for all the callowness, bad-equipment and escapist tendencies of a good number of its draftees and volunteers, has proved itself an original, unique enterprise now crying to be applied to blighted sectors of the home front itself. The absurd schemes I have here in mind are those which, conceived in the mistaken notion of beginning at the grass-roots level, aim at attracting to America boys and girls still very much in their early formative years. In this misguided belief, wealthy American families, like that of the Kennedy clan, working in so-called partnership with African politicians, like Tom Mboya, ready to do anything for the education of their people, have actually in the last few years air-lifted hundreds of mere children from Kenya to attend high schools in the United States. Starting right from scratch, it is expected that these kids will pass through the special preparatory schools that are concomitant with the exclusive system into which they have been thrown like flies on to a spider’s web, and go on from there to even more selective colleges fed from these schools. For each child, this may take anything from ten to fifteen years of grooming so that by the time he is passed out fit to return home to serve his people he has become a better Yankee than a Kikuyu.
Instead of spending so much money and time on breeding a rank plant of alienation and waste, would it not pay more dividends to all if the public-spirited promoters behind these ventures provided part or whole of the money and men to open and staff new schools and colleges right in those countries needing development of their abundant raw material? The operation would certainly cost less in terms of effort and funds, and far from ill-preparing a select group for service, it should reach a greater number of the people and a much wider area of the country in which they live and die.
Incidentally, this is an approach that can well be adopted for the direct college projects both at the undergraduate and research levels. Five universities serving Nigeria’s 40 million people is not exactly excellent service. But when there appears lacking an adequate under-carriage of secondary schools to support that structure, and when this actually yields less than two thousand school leavers every year capable, as they say, of benefiting from a university education, then there is every cause to worry over the lure to the United States and to Europe of some of the best brains Nigeria has to offer her already starving universities.
Now to those who know all this there is a terrible irony. For only a few years ago, before the University of Ibadan was founded, everybody, bright and dull, once the funds and drive were there, went overseas to seek the Golden Fleece. But as soon as Ibadan got under way, it became evident that she was attracting to herself a growing majority of the best material available from the schools. Indeed, but for a few affluent ones, and some others who as a result of bad co-ordination and poor policy on the part of government still won bursaries to go abroad, Ibadan in a matter of a few years had come to absorb almost all of the best, so that there grew the rather cruel joke that those who still went abroad for courses available at home were rejects of Ibadan! But to return to our bright ones abroad now, I saw a fair sprinkling of these boys and girls at Princeton, Harvard, Barnard and Cornell. Now that the initial gloss has worn off, the general opinion among them was, ‘wouldn’t it have been wonderful to go to Ibadan and then perhaps come over here for research work!’ Boarding and tuition fees between these top US universities range in the 3,000 to 5,000 dollar bracket a year for a single student. This will more than take care of the entire course for the undergraduate at Ibadan, and in fact, for another or two others at Nsukka and Zaria.
In other words, if an American benefactor of Africa, like the American African Institute or the Kennedy Family Foundation, will raise all the money they are now doing and come into understanding with the African governments who pay only the passage fares to and fro for the students, all the vast resources now being lavished on a few abroad, who are getting increasingly fed up, can be put fully to use on the fallow, fertile field itself, and to the greatest advantage of everybody seeking proper cultivation of it.
And even on the research side, the land needs a closer examination if further exploiting of it is to bear fresh fruit. At Cornell and Toronto, for example, I discovered old friends and colleagues at home, doing their second degrees in English. It seemed however that quite apart from the theoretical and technical aspect of their course, which was training them to become university teachers, a good portion of the papers they had to offer were no further advance from the period and special papers they had done already for their first degrees. ‘What have you to offer at home? You people are only beginning to write. Here we are studying American Literature,’ one protested to me vigorously.
‘To do what with?’ I insisted.
‘To teach of course. Or do you disapprove of Emerson as a transcendentalist?’
‘You mean at home in Nigeria?’
‘Tell me where else.’
‘Well, I guess the right place to teach American Literature would be in US schools.’
‘Nonsense, and you a writer! Aren’t you being parochial?’
