Our welcome back community event was an all-ALA day called "Africa: Land of Opportunities" last week. As part of the program, I gave the following talk and wanted to include it here:
"When I moved here in October – 17 hours and $1700 dollars away from my home in Virginia Beach, Virginia, my parents insisted that I save my savings instead of coming home for such a short time for Christmas. I’d only missed one Christmas at home in my entire life. And it didn't go over well. So this year, I knew better.
I surprised them, and showed up on the doorstep dressed as Christmas Tree McKee. It would have been so much better to the tune of Dean Bradford’s Ice Ice Baby, but it was a successful surprise nonetheless.
The problem with surprise Christmas visits, though, is that you don’t get any presents. Because not even Santa knows you’re coming. On Christmas morning, my three younger siblings sat in piles of wrapping paper while I sipped my third cup of coffee more focused on overcoming my jetlag than my little brother’s inability to find any tags that said “ALLI” under the tree. It was my turn to be surprised though, when my mother handed me a small package wrapped in ribbon. “The lady in the store said this would be good if I had a bohemian daughter,” she said. “Normally, I’d give this to your sister, but given the way you’ve been acting lately with this whole “Africa phase” I knew it would be perfect for you.” So here it is guys, this is what my mother thinks of when she thinks Africa. This is what I come from.
And I’m telling you because it’s an important part of the story behind Canvas, the global art exchange I started with a classmate from grad school in 2010. Fresh off a StartingBloc Fellowship, I was eager to save the world with one of these things I’d just learned about called a “social enterprise.” We got our inspiration when my cofounder, Adam, had traveled to Nicaragua on an Alternative Spring Break trip that year and had returned with a suitcase full of souvenirs from machetes that I don’t know how he got through customs, to paintings on rolled canvas.
Being the art lover, I was eager as he unrolled it in all of its glory and told me the story of how he’d found this little lady at some market who had begged him to take it for anything because she hadn’t sold anything in weeks. So he paid her the equivalent of seven US dollars. I was in shock. I’d somehow just sold one of my own paintings the other week for two thousand dollars and frankly, I didn’t even think it was that good, especially compared to this! We’d found an opportunity. What if we could get on this social enterprise train and help these poor artists sell their works at fair prices and turn a profit?
But searching time was tight with our full time consulting jobs starting soon. Poor artists in developing countries don’t exactly pop to the top of Google searches, so we had to gamble, and Africa felt like a good bet. One of my best friends from college, Sydney, had just returned from Tanzania. “Syd, were there, you know, poor artists?” I remember asking her. “Tons,” she replied enthusiastically. So we booked our tickets.
Days of searching in Dar knowing no more Swahili than “Mambo! Poaah!” it wasn’t a surprise that Adam and I hadn’t come across many leads. But our perseverance paid off when our took took driver Mr. Thomas dropped us at an alleyway lined with paintings leading to a big warehouse. Tinga Tinga Arts Cooperative.
We walk in the door, and wow. We’d found it. I’m crying, Adam’s crying, and these artists are looking up over brushes dipped in bicycle enamel shaking their heads, Mzungus, but we were too far under the spell of the paintings to notice. Floor to ceiling, it burst with color. It was spectacular.
We fumbled through Swahil-ish with the sales woman and found ourselves in the middle of negotiations with the cooperative’s board in their “boardroom” aka “back room.” With some gestures and grunts and stick figure drawings with dollar signs on scrap paper, we had made a deal. Canvas was going to bring Tinga Tinga to America, and lift these poor painters from poverty while doing it. The chairman Abdullah anointed Adam “Kaka Tinga Tinga” and me, “Mama Tinga Tinga.” We were part of the family.
When Adam and I returned to America, we started setting up a website. The key was to tell the stories of the creators behind these canvases. Because that was what was going to sell the paintings. The artists would earn some shillings to feed their families and the collectors would leave with brighter walls and warmer hearts. Win win.
So to tell the stories on a budget, we sent these disposable cameras with prompts on the back across the world. Exposure 27. This is a picture of me. Exposure 9. This is something I need. Exposure 2. This is something I want to make better in my life. And so on. Weeks, months later the battered box returned, full of these self-told stories.
But when I started sifting through prints and looking – really looking – at the photos, I realized that we hadn’t known these people at all. For “Mama Tinga Tinga” I was doing a pretty bad job at knowing my own kids. I didn’t know that Mrope had an infant. Or that Emilius had a zebra print sofa and a pretty big TV in his kitchen. I looked back at the picture of us with the artists framed on my desk in San Francisco and laughed at myself.
It looked more like a really easy game of “Where’s Waldo” than a family portrait. I’d spent all of this time in Africa and yet I’d fallen for the trap myself, and hadn’t really looked beyond the surface.
If I am honest, Canvas was founded on my own oversimplified perspective of Africa- on my own stereotypes. But I can see now, the more I learn living here, that there is real opportunity with Canvas. The real opportunity is its ability to burst the bubbles that we live in. Selling paintings alone is not enough to lift these creators – or Africa for that matter- from poverty. And it’s not just about that. The power of these pieces of art – of these canvases- is that they get people thinking beyond their own limited experiences. They start the conversations that can help break the very naïve misconceptions about Africa (and the world) that started this social enterprise in the first place. They can turn the idea of one African continent into a group of human beings. And that’s when change happens.
But searching time was tight with our full time consulting jobs starting soon. Poor artists in developing countries don’t exactly pop to the top of Google searches, so we had to gamble, and Africa felt like a good bet. One of my best friends from college, Sydney, had just returned from Tanzania. “Syd, were there, you know, poor artists?” I remember asking her. “Tons,” she replied enthusiastically. So we booked our tickets.
We walk in the door, and wow. We’d found it. I’m crying, Adam’s crying, and these artists are looking up over brushes dipped in bicycle enamel shaking their heads, Mzungus, but we were too far under the spell of the paintings to notice. Floor to ceiling, it burst with color. It was spectacular.
We fumbled through Swahil-ish with the sales woman and found ourselves in the middle of negotiations with the cooperative’s board in their “boardroom” aka “back room.” With some gestures and grunts and stick figure drawings with dollar signs on scrap paper, we had made a deal. Canvas was going to bring Tinga Tinga to America, and lift these poor painters from poverty while doing it. The chairman Abdullah anointed Adam “Kaka Tinga Tinga” and me, “Mama Tinga Tinga.” We were part of the family.
When Adam and I returned to America, we started setting up a website. The key was to tell the stories of the creators behind these canvases. Because that was what was going to sell the paintings. The artists would earn some shillings to feed their families and the collectors would leave with brighter walls and warmer hearts. Win win.
So to tell the stories on a budget, we sent these disposable cameras with prompts on the back across the world. Exposure 27. This is a picture of me. Exposure 9. This is something I need. Exposure 2. This is something I want to make better in my life. And so on. Weeks, months later the battered box returned, full of these self-told stories.
But when I started sifting through prints and looking – really looking – at the photos, I realized that we hadn’t known these people at all. For “Mama Tinga Tinga” I was doing a pretty bad job at knowing my own kids. I didn’t know that Mrope had an infant. Or that Emilius had a zebra print sofa and a pretty big TV in his kitchen. I looked back at the picture of us with the artists framed on my desk in San Francisco and laughed at myself.
It looked more like a really easy game of “Where’s Waldo” than a family portrait. I’d spent all of this time in Africa and yet I’d fallen for the trap myself, and hadn’t really looked beyond the surface.
If I am honest, Canvas was founded on my own oversimplified perspective of Africa- on my own stereotypes. But I can see now, the more I learn living here, that there is real opportunity with Canvas. The real opportunity is its ability to burst the bubbles that we live in. Selling paintings alone is not enough to lift these creators – or Africa for that matter- from poverty. And it’s not just about that. The power of these pieces of art – of these canvases- is that they get people thinking beyond their own limited experiences. They start the conversations that can help break the very naïve misconceptions about Africa (and the world) that started this social enterprise in the first place. They can turn the idea of one African continent into a group of human beings. And that’s when change happens.
After my mother gave me my “Africa phase” present, I pulled a big tube out from under the tree and handed it to her. I watched as her face lit up when she unrolled a bright orange and yellow print that I’d brought back from Durban.
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