Fulbright Recipient
Edwin Curmie Price

Adjunct Professor, Political Science RT 1744 (216) 687-4541 curmie62@aol.com Zambia, 2005-06

FULBRIGHT: My Africa

As a Fulbright Lecturer, I went to Zambia intending to conduct research on traditional religious structures and motifs that inform contemporary Zambian social and political life and institutional development. Once there, I was lead to explore such topics as freedom, cultural diversity, ethnic identity and the meaning of intimacy—all in a feature film I wrote entitled "Not A Problem." As a companion piece to the screenplay, I also wrote a poetry collection entitled A Country of the Mind: Poems from Zambia, published by the University of Zambia Press .

Zambia and other places I visited in Sub-Saharan Africa excited my ambition and increased in me an awareness of the possibilities of democracy as well as of the necessity of progressive economic systems and egalitarian institutional development in reducing poverty. Although much of my Africa suffers from poverty, disease and underdevelopment, I experienced a sense of optimism in the people, many of whom still look to the United States as a beacon of freedom and as a good example—this, despite the recent bad times in our own political life: we continue to maintain their goodwill: they want our democracy to succeed for us as well as for their own sake.

I came to believe, therefore, that my Africa will not only survive but that it will also endure.

Contact George Burke: g.burke@csuohio.edu