For the next three weeks, I will be posting from Africa. I was fortunate enough to be included on a trip organized by Sylvain Boko, of Wake Forest University, and Craig Brookins, of North Carolina State University. The theme is post-conflict reconstruction, and we will be visiting Uganda, Rwanda and South Africa.
The trip is funded by the Atlantic Coast Conference – and yes, for the sports fans among you, that means the league that represents the twelve east coast universities that compete in organized sports. About five years ago, the university presidents decided to dedicate some of the monies earned through sports to academic inquiry, specifically trips that would contribute to the intellectual life and offerings on campus. Last year, a delegation went to Asia to examine the theme of water.
Interestingly, the money for this trip was drawn from football profits. So the pig skin is behind this particular journey, to look at how countries remake (or make) themselves after political violence or war.
We have a geographer, a woman’s studies scholar, a criminologist, an international relation specialist, several scholars of Africans in the Americas, an economist and an architect, among others. We have a 24-hour flight ahead of us. By Monday night, we will be in Uganda – wish us luck!