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Why Students of Color Should Apply for a Fulbright

“Without education, there is no hope for our people and without hope, our future is lost.” – Charles Hamilton Houston
 
One of the greatest myths that must be shattered is that education abroad is not for students of color. Students of color sometimes assume that racism abroad is far more overwhelming than racism at home or that there is no value-added in an international experience.  There is an inclination, then,  to remain at “home” where our understanding of the political and economic climate makes us feel more comfortable and secure.  But, we must remember that definitions of “home” are transient in the first place, as our ancestry exists beyond US borders, and that, despite our own opinions, when studying abroad we are often treated as American first, and Black, Latino, Asian or Native American second.
 
Myths aside, there are many reasons why students of color should study abroad with a Fulbright Grant.  Here are a few:
 

1)     As the world becomes more and more diverse, the Fulbright experience develops one's multicultural competence and appreciation of differences and helps to inform other cultures about the diversity of our own. Living in America as a person of color breeds the responsibility to spread awareness of opportunity to other people of color--both domestic and foreign. 

2)      Developing an understanding of one’s reality should never be limited to media perceptions, but must be cultivated by first-hand experience.  A challenge and responsibility awaits for students of color who already have had the benefit and experience of higher education. 

3)      Exposure to new cultures and societies helps to develop a deeper understanding of identity, ancestry, and “home.” Of-color youth of the future need to learn from today’s students of color who have also had the opportunity to learn from other cultures and other peoples.   

4)      Many employers seek graduates who are not only intelligent, but who also have a global perspective and heartfelt understanding of the world community and, therefore,

5)      Having had a Fulbright Grant adds a competitive edge to one’s resume.
 
 
Learn more about the Fulbright grant at www.fulbrightonline.org/us and apply now.

Tips for Getting Started & Choosing a Host Country

Common Questions on Applying for Fulbright

Three Rounds of Tea to the Melody of the Imzad

The sun sets over the Sahel in a fleeting ballet of fire. From inside her tent, a Tuareg noblewoman begins chanting in a lilting voice, accompanying herself in elegant gestures on her imzad, a chordophone lute-like instrument with a single string. The older men and women sit around a campfire, quiet, listening with respect. The woman sings the ancient tale of a warrior who killed his best friend in a swordfight over the hand of a maiden. The woman’s haunting melody musically echoes the softness of the fading light entering the indigo of the night.

Later that evening, the tales and song give way to discussion and tea making. As my friend Ouma draws close to hand me a glass from the first round of tea, she whispers that the elders are discussing the rising prices of millet. An old man chews tobacco and laments over the drought and the locust attacks on his fields. The locusts devoured the few millet stalks left to use for seed when the rains come. His son Mustapha, along with the other young men of the village, will be leaving in a few days to find work and food in the cities. Before the second round of tea, the noblewoman resumes her chanting.

The softness of the chanting does not soothe my wandering thoughts. Yesterday, Ouma gave me a beautiful red and green embroidered traditional Tuareg dress that costs more money to make than her entire family’s three month salary. She explained to me, as I pleaded for her to reconsider giving me her most beautiful gown, “Alzhara, the only present worth giving is the one that causes the greatest grief to give”. I pondered this for a long time. I’m not that generous. And so, no matter how often I return to sub-Saharan Africa, I continue to be baffled as well as humbled and enlightened by its people, considered the poorest of the poor by international standards. By my standards, they are richer than King Croesus in kindness and hospitality.

I came to Niger two years ago as an intern for CARE International to conduct research on ethnic differences and their effects on health related behaviors. As a Fulbright recipient, I have been offered the opportunity to resume my research with the hope of improving health programs. I have once again been received like a princess in this harsh yet gorgeous country where one word, bako, is used to define both "guest" and "stranger." I have rediscovered a land filled with simple treasures: drinking fura prepared from millet, goat cheese, dates, and rare desert herbs by my surrogate mother, Bashi; walking friends home after afternoons spent together chatting inside my hut about religion, politics, gender issues, poverty and life (it would be rude to let them go home alone after honoring me with their visit); lingering in the streets to greet the passers-by with multiple Hausa salutations, inquiring about their health, their work, their children, their animals, and their fields; sipping three rounds of Tuareg tea under the shooting stars of the Saharan sky.

My wandering thoughts are interrupted, this time by Mustapha who has come to offer a cup from the second round of tea. I smile at him, recalling our conversation earlier this day when I expressed my sadness that he had to leave and my concern that they might not have food to eat. He had responded with such warmth and certainty, “Alzhara, as long as there is food in this country, we will not starve. As long as we have family and friends, we will have a mat on which to rest our weary heads. We may be poor because our fields did not come to harvest, but wealth here, my dear friend, is measured by solidarity and strength in family unity. Alzhara, times are difficult, but together we are strong and we will survive.” His words reminded me of an encounter I had with a young boy the other day as I walked down a street in Niamey, Niger’s capital. I was munching on a baguette, and as I went past the boy, I tore off a piece and gave it to him. He then broke the baguette apart into four pieces to share with his three friends. Mustapha was right. As long as there is food, no matter how little, it will be shared with everyone. And as long as there is love and solidarity, there will be smiles.

This is what impresses me the most with the people of Sub-Sahara Africa: their ability to be happy no matter how limited their resources are. As the Senegalese poet-president Leopold Senghor once described the African mentality: “Africans are born to the sound of music, are buried to the sound of music, and spend their lifetimes dancing.” And so, as I sit waiting for the third round of tea, listening to the noblewoman’s chants, that have now been joined by the rhythmic thumping of the tendé drum, I ponder my work here as a Fulbright Scholar. I hope that my research will help health programs be more ethnic sensitive, thereby making them more efficient. But more importantly, I hope that my time here as a Fulbright scholar will help me serve as witness to my world of the west of the beauty that emanates from the smile of a child that continues playing and singing despite his growling belly and an unforgiving sun cooking his skin. And so tomorrow, when the noblewoman’s chants have subsided, and I awake before dawn to the grunts of camels and women pounding millet, I will smile to a newfound hope that a fellow American may have his curiosity roused enough to come for himself to see, witness, and share the joys and hardships of life with a sub-Saharan African brother and sister.

Alissa Johnson in Burkina Faso, the "Land of Upright Men"

Three weeks ago, in Seattle, I sat on a senufu stool and scooped up delicious handfuls of chicken and root vegetables cooked in the bright yellow magi broth found all over West Africa. Under the watchful gaze of a dozen masks on the walls, the circle of African and ex-Fulbrighter friends appeared like a necklace of onyx and cowry shells. I had just seen Hotel Rwanda and the friend on my left told me that the first few minutes of this film hit him so hard with memories that he almost bought a one-way plane ticket. Many Westerners go to Africa and become mzungu, nasara, vahaza, for a while. But some of us never completely come back. Despite the ease and deep connection I felt to the Burkinabé, I remained a foreigner in Burkina Faso, the "Land of Upright Men." But now, in my own country I sometimes feel just as foreign and often feel less connected to the people. It is not easy to sort out how we have changed, and what exactly it is that has changed us. Two years after my return I close my eyes and try to remember what it felt like to be there.

My Fulbright research explored the relationship between film, culture, development and globalization. I was specifically interested in West African film production, and over the course of the year spent time with filmmakers and producers, journalists, organizers of the Pan African film festival FESPACO, technicians and others intimately involved in West African cinema, including award-winning filmmakers Gaston Kaboré and Idrissa Ouedraogo. I participated in the filming of Dani Kouyaté"s latest feature film, Ouaga Saga, seeing firsthand the challenges of filming in the African context. I also explored how radio and theatre are used to advocate for social, political and public health change, and how they fit into the success and sustainability of development projects. Burkina showed me the importance of media in presenting alternative visions so that people may choose their best way forward.

But when I returned to the US I found it was not film that had captured my attention and energy, but public health. Living as a member of a community that suffered from chronic malnutrition, rampant infectious diseases and early death made me acutely aware of the personal impact of global health inequalities. And it was personal, because the people affected were my friends, my family, my students, and myself. The WHO reports that a child born in Burkina Faso in 2002 had a 23% chance of dying before the age of 5. This was no longer just a dire statistic after the long night I spent talking and grieving with Antoine over the sudden deaths of two more of his young children. 270 million cases of acute malaria occur in Africa every year, but I did not understand until my petit frère Seydou lay curled in a chair on my porch, teeth chattering as his 18-year old body was racked with malarial chills and fevers. Watching the health of friends and neighbors fail, coupled with my battles with pneumonia, amoebic dysentery, and the parasites that flourish when sanitation and potable water are lacking, deeply impacted me. AIDS patients had passed through the clinics briefly when I worked for a few months in Kenya in 1999, but I didn"t know anyone with the disease. That changed when I was befriended by a Chilean nurse in Burkina who regularly invited me to the hotel she and her husband ran to have dinner with her patients living with HIV/AIDS. The stories we shared around her table, and my later visits with two Italian priests providing the only AIDS hospice care in the country, fanned the flames of a growing passion for public health that had begun with getting to know and love the people behind the statistics.

Today I work for the largest global research organization working to develop and test a safe and effective HIV vaccine. My office walls at the HIV Vaccine Trials Network hold a swath of deep blue and orange fabric from the Ouagadougou market, and two large photographs - a woman showering fat cabbages with a graceful arc of silver river water and a rapturous child watching a scene unfold in Ouaga Saga. But next to my desk I keep two more somber photographs. In one the hollow eyes of a young man dying of AIDS reach out and grab your heart, and in the other a tired but resolute old woman leans on a cane in a desolate field of drought-parched corn. Each of these images reflects a part of the beauty and misery of the African reality I knew, and the people I remember.

Aside from shaping the career I am pursuing, my Fulbright experience in Burkina whispers its influence into the decisions I make and the ways I choose to use my energy and spend my time. It condemns my complacency when I am tempted to lose myself in American consumer culture. It helped me develop a much more nuanced understanding of the complex political, economic, and public health problems facing Africa and how they affect individual lives. I met visionary people - filmmakers, health workers, students, villagers - who faced the daunting problems with courage and were committed to making changes that could bring a healthier future for all Africans. My continuing relationships with these people and their unfolding stories are the most compelling legacy of the year I spent as a Fulbrighter.