His stories, songs teach West African culture

DURHAM -- Braima Moiwai teaches a class at Lakeview Elementary School in Durham, using West African drums to teach conflict resolution to students who have a history of chronic misbehavior or who have been suspended from their regular school.

When the rhythms Moiwai plays on the djembe and djun djun drums can't hold the children's attention, he will tell them a story that begins, "My grandmama used to say. ... "

"They will immediately stop whatever they are doing," Moiwai says. "Because most of them are being raised by their grandmamas."

Moiwai, 47, has shared the stories and art of his native Sierra Leone with thousands of children in classrooms, festivals and community centers across North Carolina. He has sung "Jiggy, Jiggy Skima," a song of his childhood, told the stories of the five little birds looking for their mama and cooked the food of his native land in school and university classrooms in several states.

Moiwai (pronounced MOH- ee-WAH) is celebrating his 21st year with the Durham Arts Council's Creative Arts in the Public/Private Schools program. He is the program's longest-serving artist, says director Shana Adams.

"He's been very important to our community, our schools and beyond," Adams says. "He just fills a room with warmth by creating unity and a sense of community. He does that by sharing his experiences of growing up in Africa. He connects that with how the students are growing up here and shows them the similarities."

Moiwai's songs, dances, music and stories resonate with children as he connects his country's history with the history of slavery in the United States. He tells them of the two countries' common ancestry, which led to rice cultivation in South Carolina, and how West African culture, particularly Sierra Leone's, was preserved by the Gullah people of the Sea Islands of Georgia and South Carolina.

"He's just fabulous with any age group, but he really captured the college-age group here," says Sabine Moedersheim, a professor of German studies at the University of Wisconsin, where Moiwai travels each fall for a weeklong residency with Moedersheim's freshman students.

"At first they don't want to dance or drum and listen to stories, because they think it's for kindergartners," Moedersheim says. "But after two minutes, they are just enthralled with what he's doing. It has a radical aspect, but he serves it all up with a big smile, and they just fall in love with him."

Sea Islands tour guide

In 1990, Moiwai took 40 Hillside High School students on a tour of the Sea Islands. The youngsters visited a rice plantation, a former slave auction market in Charleston and a shed where sick, enslaved Africans were quarantined during illness. The students saw women weaving sweetgrass baskets and listened to Gullah talk.

Moiwai still hears from former students who tell him the experience made a lasting impression. It connected them to their roots and their African heritage.

"I told them, 'This is the closest you can get to Africa,' " he says. "This thing changed their lives."

Moiwai's work as a cultural artist began in 1987. He was working in the produce section at the Wellspring market in Durham and struck up a conversation with Catherine Hemingway, a teacher at Durham's East End Elementary School. Hemingway, impressed by Moiwai's story of his homeland, asked him to talk with her third- and fourth- grade students.

The next day he took photos and a slide projector to the school. He showed the children pictures of his friends and family back home and of the lion-shaped mountains that rise out of the Atlantic Ocean. He repeated the stories his mother and grandmother told the children in his village. He described the snakes in the rain forest where he grew up. He taught the children games.