Faculty Exchange Ewu Professor Plans To Use What She Learned On Her Trip To Africa In Her Teachings

When Eastern Washington University professor Kathleen Huttenmaier got off the plane in Africa, she was told not to give anything to the beggars.

She didn’t listen.

Huttenmaier gave what she could to the needy she saw everywhere in the streets and sitting on the steps of opulent churches beneath signs that read “No Beggars.”

“It’s kind of hard to decide which people you give to and which people you don’t,” Huttenmaier said. “But I figured if their bones were sticking out, that was a pretty good indication that they were undernourished.”

Huttenmaier, a women’s history and contemporary American history professor, recently returned to Spokane from Cape Coast University in Ghana, Africa, where she was teaching graduate level classes on gender issues. The trip was paid for by a U.S. Aid grant, which has funded a faculty exchange program the past five years at EWU.

During her seven-week stay at a university-owned bungalow on the Cape Coast campus, she also worked with two women at the Center for Development Studies. Huttenmaier concentrated on gender development and helped find ways women in Ghana can improve their business ventures.

What surprised her was the disparity between some of the country’s churches and the parishioners they serve. Although Huttenmaier said 95 percent of the churches in Africa are poor, some are housed in fancy buildings but ignore the poor on their doorsteps.

“In the larger cities you did see these half-million dollar structures,” she said. “I guess the problem I had as I was looking at these rather elaborate structures, is what do you do with all the people who need to be fed? It just blew my mind.”

Begging is virtually a way of life for some people, she said, a way to get basic necessities.

“People beg constantly for anything and everything.”

But according to Huttenmaier, the problem in Africa isn’t a lack of food, but the price of it.

“Food was rather expensive given the low income that most people have,” she explained. “It’s a Third World country, so most of the inhabitants, in fact, were very poor.”

Africa is a country with a very small, if non-existent, middle class. People are either poor or rich, Huttenmaier said. For some, working in government civil service and administrative positions is a way to afford nice cars and comfortable living.

“The difference between the haves and the have-nots was really stark.”

Many women in Africa own their own businesses, whether it is drying fish, a major staple of the African diet, or selling their wares on the street.

“The selling on the streets, at least the majority of it, is in fact done by women,” said Huttenmaier. “You don’t go to the grocery store, you go to the street. You buy almost everything on the street.”

Other popular business ventures include selling palm wine, palm oil, and wood. In Africa, life depends on wood because electricity hasn’t made it to every street corner in the country. Huttenmaier said she spoke to the owner of a fish processing plant who uses 100 large trees or more during the peak of the fishing season in August and September.

However, the area’s dependency on wood means trouble for the future, she said.

The large trees that Ghana is known for are disappearing. The trees, which thrive in the lush equatorial climate, are comparable to the giant redwoods in the U.S., said Huttenmaier.

She was told the trees will be gone within 50 years.

Despite the often dire straits of African people, optimism is also a way of life, largely due to a strong religious faith.

“Here they are in the midst of this poverty and they have religious slogans everywhere,” she said. “Their optimism, even within their poverty, was to be greatly admired.”

Huttenmaier remembers one incident in particular, involving a man selling firewood in a rural village.

“He was standing by the side of the road, and instead of asking for money, which a lot of people tend to do, he smiled and he said ‘Welcome to Ghana, bruni,’ which means white people. I thought that was such a nice gesture on his part.”

The people attend worship services that last nearly four hours, said Huttenmaier, who attended four different churches during her stay. It is not uncommon for preachers to talk for more than an hour, then parishioners get their turn.

“They just sing and sing” Huttenmaier said. “They get up and give testimonies about things in their lives, about how God has blessed them, and about how God has saved them from certain peril … however they think that God has touched their lives.

“Church for them is part of their culture,” explained Huttenmaier. “When they go they really go to worship the Lord, the whole environment is one of joy. Actually, the time passes faster than one would think.”

Huttenmaier said she plans to incorporate what she learned during her trip into the classes she teaches at Eastern. She plans to add a large section about Third World women in her History of European Women class.