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Ikah-meyi
Women's power!
The news of the elevation to full Professor was communicated yesterday to Bridget Teboh. What a way to start the summer! I am particularly happy about it. When we first met years ago, I was impressed by her rare gift of the deep knowledge of several West African languages, including Moghamo, Metta, Mungaka, West African Pidgin English, French, and German, all of which, I think, generated her rich sensibilities to oral and archival histories. She effortlessly switches from English to French, but it is when she speaks in pidgin, a variant different from my Lagos one, that I always urge her not to stop talking—it can be fast, as the words pour out as if a heavy rain is about to dump on you with lightening. Add a little bit of stress and anger to the subject, the pidgin communicates fury! This pidgin should become a continental language. Walahi!
I am not sure I can fully track her history, but the bits I know is that she earned an M.A. in African Area Studies and a Ph.D. in African History from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). She received a B.A. (Hons.) from the University of Cameroon, Yaounde, a DUEF (Diplome d'Université d'Etudes Francais) from Université Jean-Moulin, Lyon III, France. She specializes in African History, African-American Women's History, Women's and Gender studies, African Diaspora and oral history. She teaches courses in these fields as well as World History courses. She has been to Austin too many times where she developed a network of friends that now involve her going to Nigeria. We were all together in Ondo, Nigeria, last July. The ongoing crisis in Cameroon aborted her trip to Nigeria last January but she is travelling back there this summer.
As I follow her writings, her research interests include colonialism, post-coloniality, and the understanding of women's history in West/Central Africa, Cameroon, and the Moghamo people of the Bamenda Grassfields. She has given me the draft of the biography on her mother. Yes, she wrote on her mother. We should encourage many of these biographies as they move us outside of the colonial archives.
I recently read her essay, "I Am What I Eat and Wear When It Matters: Identity Politics in the African Diaspora," which links scholarship with identity politics. I look forward to her two forthcoming books, whose drafts I have read: Herstory: The Life and Times of "Madame Maternity," (which is about her mother); and Unruly Mothers, Combative Wives: Rituals, Women and Change in the Cameroon Grassfields c. 1889-1960, an engaging study on women's radicalism in the colonial era.
This is not the time to retell Bridget's journey and multiple contributions to scholarship, but to rejoice with her.
Bridget, you are very great!
I know you go to Church every Sunday, the praying type. I don't tamper with people's faith. Thus, let me pray for you.
Very soon, very, very soon, and I say very very soon, God is going to do a miracle and lift you up for good. Amen
The grace for completion will come on you. Amen
You shall be blessed till the blessed call you blessed. Amen
You shall be too relevant to be ignored. Amen
You will encounter God and will never remain the same again. Amen
From today on, you shall find favor with someone you don't expect. Including Trump! Amen.
Congratulations!
TF
Toyin Falola
Department of History
The University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX 78712-0220
USA
512 475 7224
512 475 7222 (fax)
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Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
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