In Touch: Ubuntu Learning Lab
By Betty Miller Buttram
FWIS Contributing Writer
Ubuntu is an ancient African word meaning “Humanity to Others…I Am Because We Are.” It literally means that a person is a person through other people.
Historic Turner Chapel A.M.E. Church has developed lessons connected to the word “Ubuntu. It is in the Ubuntu Learning Lab located within the Richard Allen Culture Center at the church where teachers and students meet twice a month on a Thursday from 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm for this unity of Who We Are because of our African heritage. The lessons taught address African History and Culture, the African American Experience, and African Diaspora; other lessons include Arts/Crafts/Dance/Drum; Reading/Writing/Literature and Science/Mathematics.
The students are generational. They are the Baby Boomers (the Elders), Generation X, Y and Z, all there to learn about our African origin and our African American experience. The lessons are focused on the elementary and middle school students, who are our future. The Elders are there because of the wisdom that they have learned from past cultural experiences in their lives. The students listen and learn from these conversations. The teachers are Anita Dortch and Malik and Michelle Stevenson. On Thursday, September 22nd, I attended a planned lesson in the Ubuntu Learning Lab.
The participants were lead in prayer and in the blessing of the food by the three Stevenson children. There was thirty minutes of fellowship time when the young participants, adults and the teachers chatted with each other over the meal served and learned something about each other that they did not know. After the meal was finished in the Nutrition Center, all proceeded to the Richard Allen Cultural Center for the planned lesson.
The lesson began with the pouring of the Libation which is giving honor and praise to the ancestors by pouring water into a plant while calling out the name of an ancestor. The students had reviewed a video of the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama in September 1963, and paid homage to the four young girls who lost their lives: Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, and Carol Patterson.
The Scripture was taken from Acts 4:32-35: “All the believers were of one heart and mind, and no one felt that what he owned was his own; everyone was sharing. And the apostles preached powerful sermons about the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and there was warm fellowship among all believers, and no poverty, for all who owned land or houses sold them and brought the money to the apostles to give to others in need.” This reading of this scripture was in keeping with the meaning of Ubuntu.
Next came the recitation by all participants of The Cultural Affirmation, I CAN, written by Mari Evans:
I CAN be anything
I CAN do anything
I CAN think anything
Big or Tall
High or Low
Wide or Narrow
Fast or Slow
Because I CAN and I WANT To!
The lesson for the evening was about Ancient Egypt and the history of its (a) architectural buildings and monuments (the Pyramids);(b) the Pharaohs who were the rulers; (c) military leadership; (d) mathematics innovation (the calendar); (e)heliographs (styles of writing); (f) paper made from the papyrus plant that is found around the Nile River; (g) metric for time—24 hours in a day; and (h) the development of cities and states.
There was also a discussion about the Sphinx--pharaoh’s head on a lion’s body. The lion was a symbol of power and kingship in Egypt. With a lion’s body and a human head, it represented a form of power and incarnation of royal power and protection.
After the lesson was concluded, the students were assigned to arts, crafts, writing and Sunday School activities.