And It Came to Pass…

 8 min read.

(image of courtesy of Freepik)

June rolls around with little promise of sunnier climes. Still, I have reason for (nervous) excitement. At the start of the month, I begin my latest comeback to higher education. Days before I’m due to start, the administrative gremlins run amok within The University’s system. My supervisor, Birgitta, sends me a slightly panicked email that there’s an error with the start date of my contract. It’s been postponed by two weeks. Both Birgitta and I are keen that I begin ASAP. Apparently, one too many favours has been asked of the HR officer in charge of my file and she’s no longer inclined to oblige. Somehow, Birgitta manages to convince her otherwise.

I go on campus a day earlier than my agreed start date to sort out some more admin; collecting my staff badge and access gadgets. It’s a clever move, eliminating a needless layer of stress for my first official day. En route to the security lodge, I stumble across the student-led Palestine Solidarity encampments. Like many academic institutions across the Western world, students are embarking on a long occupation to convince The University to cut academic and commercial ties with Israel until it ends its policies of slaughter and oppression.

I make a mental note to pass by the encampment at a later stage for further enquiries. I don’t want to tarry in becoming active. At the same time, I’m circumspect as a new member of staff (PhD Fellows occupy a netherworld between student and personnel). I'm wary of discretion on account of my newness becoming an excuse for cowardice. Nonetheless, it’s important to understand the lay of the land first. Over the next few days, I note Palestine solidarity graffiti all over campus; scrawled on walls and across the tables in the large canteen, or large memorial murals visible from the main road. The University appears to be taking quite a relaxed attitude to the students exercising their freedom of expression. This is a stark contrast to the brute force unleashed by Belgian police during another peaceful, student-led protest in central Brussels earlier that month.

After collecting my staff badge and other essentials, I pass by Birgitta’s office to say a quick hello. We already have a more formal one-to-one arranged for the end of the week. I hear my name called. It’s one of my new colleagues, Geraldine. She has her own rendez-vous with Birgitta that afternoon. It’s the first time we’re meeting offline. Originally from Ghana, she’s relocated to Belgium after doing some further studies in Singapore. I ask how the flat hunting is coming along. Geraldine – or G, as she’s already affectionately known by the team – has joined forces with Elif, another member of our cohort, to look for somewhere to live in or close to Brussels. I’ve given them the best advice I can, which they receive with appreciation. In the end, for the sake of expediency, they settle for somewhere in Flanders; a bit of a commute from Brussels.

Birgitta finds us chatting away and gives us a brief tour of the Literature and Linguistics department  which we’re joining. Based on the sixth floor, our open plan office and kitchen spaces boast lovely views of The University’s verdant grounds.

Later that week, all four of our team of PhD fellows – Geraldine, Elif, myself and Janneke – originally from the Netherlands – will meet IRL for the first time at a department conference that Friday. The other three have already forged a good rapport. For various reasons, I initially feel a bit of an outsider; not least because of the unorthodox path that led to my acceptance on the programme. I’m pretty sure I’m also the oldest of the bunch. Nevertheless, everyone in the team is open and cordial. Over the course of the coming weeks, there will be various opportunities to share more about our diverse backgrounds. Elif, for example, already has familial connections to Belgium. Her mother, of Cypriot and Bulgarian heritage, is a Liegeoise born-and-bred. Geraldine is from the same part of Ghana as my maternal grandfather.

I meet colleagues from the wider department on an ad hoc basis. Things are already winding down ahead of summer, even if PhD fellows don’t strictly follow the usual academic year cycle.

Colleagues are kindly and ready to help, as I become accustomed to new ways of working and various other particularities. Whilst most of us are studying in English, Dutch is the administrative language of the institution. I have neither the time nor inclination to take Dutch lessons. What I cannot translate with Deep L, I ask my Flemish colleagues. I’m especially reliant on the help of the department’s (unofficial) Comms liaison, Karolijn. One of my roles as project coordinator is to help make our team’s research projects more visible online. We're part of - although still somewhat independent from - the wider research group, LILAC (Liminality in Literature Academic Centre). Karolijn patiently shows me the ropes during our shared office days. I try as much to be self-sufficient but am prudent enough to ask questions – of her, Birgitta or anybody else – if in doubt or fully at sea. 

 The month is busy with activities; interventions by world-renowned scholars, seminars, the first of many thoroughly stimulating book club-style theory and methodology workshops and an extravagant University-wide barbeque. There are also more spontaneous occasions to fraternise, like a lively discussion about contemporary Black women writers over lunch with Karolijn and others.

By the grace of God, I’m off to an upbeat start. If there is one thing that nags at me is the lack of diversity in the department. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, even in a context when so many are specialising in studies related to the African continent and its diaspora. Still, it’s one thing to grasp a fact only intellectually and another to be confronted by it. The department is 90% Caucasian, with a significant minority of Chinese students. Simply by recruiting Geraldine and me, Birgitta has pretty much doubled the presence of black fellows in the department.

Brussels is supposedly the second most multicultural city in the world (although I'd contend its cosmopolitanism seems more shallow than somewhere like London). Whilst this might be better represented in other parts of The University, it's not the case on our floor.  It only takes a cursory glance at the members’ section of the LILAC website to gauge that. The few times I cross paths in the corridor with other black women, it’s all I can do not pounce on them with gratitude. Thankfully, the response has been warm.

Palestine Solidarity encampments

I’m trying to be careful that my curiosity over other colleagues’ motivations for studying iterations of Black literature doesn’t turn into scepticism, if not cynicism. It's one thing if most of the fellows grew up in multicultural contexts, regularly exposed to literature from across the world. Instead, many have come from monocultural villages or small towns in Flanders or the Netherlands.

I don’t want to assume bad faith. It's possible that most take a genuine interest in these themes. Why shouldn’t indigenous Europeans care about cultures beyond their own? It's not just for Afrodescendants to study subjects related to our cultures. Neither should we be limited to that. And yet, academia is still a highly elite and colonial space that reflects – if not reinforces – many of the existing inequalities outside of its walls. How much is this literary fetishism, if not (unconscious) orientalism, I wonder? How much is it a case of some more affluent non-European students wanting to study in the West and exactly what they study is of less important?

I’m left questioning the general commitment to solidarity with the historically marginalised all the more following a discussion with another colleague, Trudi. She spots the Palestine badge on my raincoat and asks if I’m interested in joining the activities of staff sympathetic to the cause. I respond with enthusiasm. Trudi explains how staff hold their own weekly assemblies - in addition to the nightly ones organised by students. Trudi also disabuses me of any notion that The University is especially supportive of the cause. Rumour has it that they're engaging in a tactic of exhaustion, ignoring the students until they wear themselves out.

I also meet Benedict; an associate professor of Anthropology, who is public about his support for the encampments (he also happens to co-organise LILAC events with Birgitta). I am informed by both Trudi and Benedict that an open letter has been circulated just before my arrival. It was signed by hundreds of staff, including PhD fellows. However, to my disappointment -one that I readily share with Trudi - it is signed by very few within our faculty. I’m heartened to see Karolijn’s name amongst them, as well as that of Vision (originally from Zimbabwe, she’s one of the few black faces I’ve come across so far).

Outside of work, I share my reservations with loved ones. My friend Sylvia both challenges some of my assumptions and concurs with my questioning of motives. We can't rule out career advancement, she ventures. It’s possible some subjects are perceived as ‘sexy’ and du jour, especially post-2020 BLM uprisings.

Diversifying the department is not your particular fight, Sylvia admonishes, You have other avenues of activism. 

Give it time, she reassures, you have four years to see how the faculty evolves.

Towards the end of the month, I also have the opportunity to converse with one of the visiting professors; a respected UK-based academic of Afro-Caribbean heritage. Without me having to probe, she's candid about how isolating it can be as a black female academic working in Literary Studies. More often than not, she's the only brown face in the room. Whilst this in itself isn't reassuring, it's a great comfort to be able to speak to her candidly. Neither is she despondent. Notwithstanding structural barriers, she gently urges me to use my position in future to encourage young black students to consider a career in Literature. A commissioning of sorts.

Soundtrack: Happy by Yinkah, Matthew 4:19 by Lynn Nsongo, Surrender the Day by Jimetta Rose & the Voices of Creation, Tawk Tamahawk, Choose Your Weapon and Mood Valiant by Hiatus Kaiyote.

Wind of Change Part II

6 min. read

(Part 1)

Easily the most time and energy consuming pursuit of late has been an application to do a PhD programme at one of Belgium’s leading universities. I receive notification of three funded literary studies fellowships related to the African diaspora, via a cross-cultural mailing list I'm on. The notification comes courtesy of the supervising professor, Dr Birgitta Puller. She’s recently relocated to Belgium from Germany to take up tenure at The University. Our paths have briefly crossed before in certain academic and related spaces; tenuous enough for us to have only hazy recollection of each other. Fate brings us together again.

The PhD themes are intriguing, the fringe benefits are great and thanks to a heavy tax reduction for students, the salary seems decent by Brussels’ standards.

Two of the fellowships are of particular interest but I end up applying for all three, to better my odds. I’m eventually asked to interview for two. Ironically, the first for which I receive a response is the one in which I’m least invested.

Each interview requires a five-minute Powerpoint presentation on a given theme, the slides for which need to be forwarded two days ahead of the interview. A clerical hick-up means the instructions for one of the interviews arrive with over a week’s delay, a day before a planned trip to the UK.

The interviews take place within a week of each other. I feel I can’t start preparing the second until I’ve finished the first. I plunge myself into research and interview prep. There’s an added pressure given that, as usual, I keep knowledge of the interview to myself. Whilst my family are aware I’ve applied for the PhD, they don’t know when I progress to the next stage. I only inform my life coach Pieter, during our monthly meet-up, when we both happen to be in London, a few days before my first interview. I also inform my friend, Oxford professor Danny Dorling. His support and input is invaluable throughout the process. He and my former MA supervisor, write glowing recommendations to accompany my application. Danny’s reference is so effusive, I tell him no mere mortal could be as good as he makes me out to be. In any case, I credit these great references for me eventually being shortlisted.

Both Pieter and Danny are chuffed for me. The weeks leading up to and during the interviews are somewhat frenetic. I’m constantly exhausted. Whilst initially disappointed that I’m not interviewed for the third fellowship, I start to see it as a blessing in disguise. It would have been too overwhelming. Both interviews go fairly well. The mistakes made in the first allow me to give a slicker performance for the second.

VUB University campus, Brussels

The morning after interview number two, I receive an email from Dr Puller. The message is affirming but does not bring the good news I hoped. She takes it upon herself to notify me before the official rejection email comes through. She commends my efforts and what a positive impression I made. I have a sinking deja-vu feeling reading the ‘..you came so close' subtext.

There is nonetheless initial cause for cautious optimism. Dr Puller proposes we get back in touch soon. She adds that we should continue on a first name basis (Birgitta - hard ‘G’).  Yet, as I slowly share the news with family, select friends and acquaintances (very few of whom knew about the application in the first place), I lose some of that optimism. It’s not the first time that a prospective employer sets up a meeting, implies there could be future collaboration and then it comes to nothing. I don’t want to be misled again.

That weekend I’ve planned a number of socials which I’m tempted to cancel. Politeness prevents me. That same afternoon, I honour a long-planned appointment with my friend Sylvia. I recount everything from scratch. The tears flow freely and often that day. Sylvia leaves space for that, in a sympathetic but tough love manner. (It's an odd day in general. I run into other acquaintances at this inopportune time.)

The application could only have gone one of two ways. It shouldn’t have been a surprise. A month or so before being called for interview, I have a vivid dream about a less-than-positive outcome. I once heard a pastor say some things are either God or the devil. It could also have been my nervous subconscious speaking. In any case, it helped prepare my mind if the results weren’t favourable. But still. I’m winded by the news. I feel especially bad reflecting on Danny's zeal; how he went over and beyond with his help and guidance. In some ways, I feel worse for him than myself. Danny continues to be supportive and is in no way recriminatory. He’s far more hopeful of what might come out of any future discussions with Birgitta than I am.

True to her word, Dr Puller promptly offers to meet offline before she leaves for her Easter holidays.

Good old German efficiency. There’s no time like the present. I'm eager for targeted feedback about my application. I'm not anticipating much else. I don’t doubt Birgitta’s sincerity. Nevertheless, if she’s a new member of staff, I reason that there’s only so much she’ll be able to do for me. I prepare myself for a commiserative meeting.

Birgitta does offer solace. She explains exactly how fierce the competition was and that I made it to a shortlist of five, twice. I also came pretty close with the third application, she adds. She proceeds to lay out a few options. Before I have time to process her words, she's offering me a project coordination role with the opportunity to study for a PhD over the next four years. I duly accept, trying to maintain my composure whilst inside, I’m on the verge of an out-of-body experience. Have I just heard correctly?

In case I have any doubts, Birgitta wastes no time in setting the wheels in motion before she leaves for her holidays. The fellowship begins in June. The following weeks and months are replete with a mountain of admin and numerous email exchanges. With the exception of mum, Pieter and Danny, family and friends are kept out of the loop until most of the formalities are out of the way. Not even my therapist knew. I am immensely moved by the joyful reactions from various quarters.

I am relieved, excited, nervous, curious…and a little stressed by all the admin. My life should at least feel easier but I’m not (yet) as carefree as I thought - hoped - I’d be. As Sylvia remarks when I share the good news (minus the expletive), it's been a relentless few years. Or several. I'm still in recovery. There is no silver bullet or short-cut when it comes to the inner healing process.

Still, it's undeniable that my life is about to change significantly and for upbeat reasons. All the nudges from loved ones to consider seriously a career in academia are being vindicated. Since doing my masters, I’ve been more open to the idea of a PhD. At the same time, paradoxically, I’d never thought of myself as a 'natural' academic. I'm intellectually inquisitive, sure but it's not necessarily the same thing. And yet here I am.

A German professor who moves to Belgium almost two years after I left TTUO is the vehicle of change in my life. Two plus years of soul-searching and turbulence. An unexpected blessing in a roundabout way. It happened when it happened. Not a minute sooner and not a minute too late.

If God indeed has a sense of humour, it’s a dry one. At least in my case.