Memories of Sun Stories of Africa and America Introduction In the beginning, according to scientists who have been studying human DNA, a small, sturdy group of people walked out of Africa. From there, human beings eventually spread all over the earth. Dr. Spencer Wells, a population geneticist who has studied and conducted research at Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford Universities, says, "We are all African under the skin." This news comes as no surprise to me. Every time my jet airplane lands in Africa, I have powerful feelings of coming home. When I'm away, I hoard my memories of the intense African sun, the acacia trees, the animals, the people. Then again, I landed in East Africa for the very first time when I was only two years old. My father -- at that point a young man who had grown up on a farm in eastern Oregon -- and my mother -- then a young woman who had spent her childhood moving from one small Iowa town to another -- had decided to leave the United States to work for the Presbyterian Church in Ethiopia. For more than thirty years, members of my family would live and work in East Africa. I grew up as someone who is sometimes labeled a "third-culture kid," a person who doesn't fully belong in her parents' culture but doesn't fully belong in the culture around her, either. Third-culture kids struggle to figure out just where they do belong. Mine was the first family to be issued an Ethiopian visa after World War II. I'm sure my parents made quite a stir when they arrived, lugging three young children. (And my mom was pregnant.) I spent most of my childhood near a remote southwestern village called Maji. Before the airplane could land on the savanna, it had to buzz low to get the ostriches and zebras and antelopes out of the way. Then we climbed into a jeep and rode all day, thirty-two bumpy miles up the mountain. Maji was a magical place to grow up, but my family, a nurse, and a teacher were the only people there who spoke English and although I knew enough Amharic to play with my friends, I often found myself in the middle of conversations either in Amharic or one of the other Ethiopian languages) where I was lost. Sometimes life in Maji scared me: when my father would inoculate mules against sleeping sickness, the mules kicking and squirming, the men shouting, holding them down; or the time a friend took me on his shoulders and waded out into the middle of a funeral dance where I was surrounded by ceremonial spears shaking all around me. The year I was seven, my parents said we were going "home" to visit the United States. I thought all my feelings of being an outsider would finally go away. After we reached our New York hotel, my mom told my sisters and me, "We're going downstairs to get something to eat. Remember that we're in America now. Be sure to use your forks." A little while later, we were all perched on stools at a counter, eating. My mom glanced at her four daughters and then tried to pass a discreet order down the line. "Tell Jane she can eat her potato chips with her fingers." When the message reached me, I blared in a loud voice, "Which ARE the potato chips?" As everyone turned around to stare, my heart trumpeted the news to me that I was an outsider in the United States. Later, I spent a stiff eighth-grade year in a junior high in Pasadena, California. When I was introduced as the girl who was from Ethiopia, someone would always ask, "Did you see Tarzan?" By the time I came to the United States a third time -- for college -- I was convinced that there was no way to talk about Africa. After many years, though, I found my voice...through my writing. I've written a number of stories connected with Africa -- folktales, historical fiction, contemporary fiction, nonfiction. I also do a great deal of speaking at schools and conferences. As I talk with people, I notice that although we are all African under the skin, many in the United States still find the continent that birthed humankind, in the words of a recent news report, "distant and dangerous." This anthology of short stories offers glimpses into contemporary Africa. It also explores questions about borders: What happens in those interesting places where cultures meet? My life taught me that cultural connection is often tough and sometimes impossible. But from my family I learned that it was important to approach cultural differences with humor, curiosity, and respect, or, in the words of the poet W.H. Auden, to do your best to "love your crooked neighbor with your crooked heart." Some of the authors whose stories are in this collection live in Africa. Some live in the United States. And some are "third-culture kids" engaged in a lifelong quest to find out just where they do belong. -- Jane Kurtz Memories of Sun Stories of Africa and America . Copyright © by Jane Kurtz. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Memories of Sun: Stories of Africa and America by Jane Kurtz All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
