Ubuntu: I am because we are

When I was teaching Geography and Humanities to Year 7 and 8 students in Egypt, I introduced my students during the first week of class to the concept of Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a term from the Nguni Bantu languages of Africa meaning humanity and it’s often used in a philosophical sense to represent our bonds as a human race and our interconnectedness with one another. If you could capture the essence of Ubuntu through a phrase in the English language, this may do it justice: I am because we are.

I am because we are. What a powerful truth! None of us can really live alone, and we rely on each other to survive, thrive, cope and grow. On our first day of class, one of the first things I told my students was that I couldn’t be a teacher without them; I actually needed them to do my job. I realized this was something they hadn’t considered or heard before, and I quickly decided that I would use this theme of interconnectedness to help me teach geography through community on all of its levels, from global to local to even our own cozy classroom. I told them about the idea of Ubuntu, how it was practiced in everyday life in sub-Saharan Africa (and actually in Egypt and around the world too), and how the likes of Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu shared Ubuntu with the rest of the world.

I decided that Ubuntu would be the theme of the term but over the next couple of weeks, it somehow was decided by the students that Ubuntu would be the nickname of our class too. I put up a large sign in our classroom declaring “I am because we are!” and we shouted out the word Ubuntu together at the end of class. We ended up sharing examples of Ubuntu each week and talked about how, for example, the people who cleaned up the streets and collected trash could be helped by not only us doing our part to keep the streets clean, but also by acknowledging them with a smile or a greeting as you walked by.

By the end of the term, we had our own class logo (with the help of the South African Ubuntu Foundation) and I had an idea that every student would make their own journals where they could write down their reflections about Ubuntu and how they saw the concept actualized through their own actions and the actions of others in the news and around them. Unfortunately we ran out of time to make our own journals in class but I had just enough small journal books (made in Thailand) that I was able to distribute for the exercise instead. I’m not sure how many of the journals are being actively used now, but my hope is that my students are still mindful of the concept of Ubuntu and continue to pass on the idea in conversation and action.

This all brings me to the present moment and to the situation we are all finding ourselves in today. For now, there isn’t a more important example of “I am because we are” than the common struggle we are facing with COVID-19. There’s little argument that this crisis has shocked us to our core and has revealed the truly interconnected nature of our world. And the physical and social distancing we now understand is so crucial to “flattening the curve” and slowing the spread of the coronavirus is a perfect example of Ubuntu. We each have a role to play in limiting the spread of the disease so that those who are more susceptible to it are not hurt or killed by our actions. We have been reminded in a very unfortunate but real way of how important it is to be a good neighbor and how much we rely on each other to make our own lives well. There’s no doubt that this is an absolutely terrifying time for humankind for many different reasons, and on so many levels, even down to the individual anxieties we have and the mental and emotional fatigue we’re feeling about the uncertainty of it all. But ultimately it’s our interconnectedness and our courage to help each other that will get us through this.

I’d like to sign off by sharing a final story about my Ubuntu class. As much as I love teaching, there are days (like with any other job) that you really question why you’re still doing it! But I could have never guessed that after all my years of teaching, one of the best gifts I ever received from my students was after one of my worst days as a teacher. On one particular afternoon in the middle of the term last year, my students were not cooperating on an exercise I had spent hours creating, and the class broke out in total pandemonium. But the real disaster happened when, for the first time in my teaching career, I completely lost my cool, slammed the door and left the class 15 minutes early. I was heaving as I ran out the school altogether, incredibly angry and hurt but equally embarrassed knowing that I should have never lost my cool like that. So the next day when I returned to class I was prepared to apologize for my behavior and also set new ground rules for the class. I took a deep breath, opened the door, and for the first (and only) time that year it was, as they say, so quiet you could hear a pin drop. I walked into the room with an unusually serious look on my face, and there, on the teacher’s desk, was a homemade card signed by the students. And the message was “We’re sorry for what we have done Mr. Brian. We are because you are.”