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On Friday, June 22, 2007, Joseph Akawu Ushie, who teaches in the Department of English at the University of Uyo in Nigeria, sent the following email to each of the faculty members and graduate students who had earned a travel scholarship to "The bloody Writing is for ever torn": Domestic and International Consequences of the First Governmental Efforts to Abolish the Atlantic Slave Trade. Mr. Ushie kindly gave us permission to include his letter in this issue of Uncommon Sense. We are pleased to report that the travel scholarship recipients did meet at Elmina to explore ways of expanding the exchanges and building on the momentum generated by the conference. Anyone who wishes to join in these discussions is invited to do so through the African Scholars Forum, edited by Professor Armstrong Matiu Adejo of Benue State University, at africanscholars@gmail.com or via the conference discussion board on the Omohundro Institute's Web site at http://oieahc.wm.edu/conferences/ghana/sessions.html.

Dear Colleagues,

Congratulations on your winning the Travel Scholarship to this very important conference.

I believe I would be speaking the minds of all of us when I thank the women and men behind the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture for organizing this historically significant conference, and for successfully braving the uphill task of raising the funds to finance these scholarships. I also thank all the donors for their enthusiastic and meaningful response to the Institute's appeal for donations. We are also very grateful to those Ghanaian educators and officials, who first interacted with the Omohundro Institute's directorate, for their selflessness, foresight and thoughtfulness in presenting to the Omohundro team so realistically the current realities facing the scholar in sub-Saharan Africa, and suggesting this kind of support.

This mail is prompted essentially by the need for us, the sub-Saharan African scholar-beneficiaries, to translate this opportunity into a lasting legacy in the journey of our beleaguered continent towards catching up with other lands and races in meaningful, people-oriented development. Interestingly, aspects of such a vision do already echo in the Omohundro Institute's own introductory paragraphs to the window, "Travel Scholarship Initiative," as we find in such phrases and clauses as "developing pan-African and broader global contacts," "providing faculty and graduate students from African universities with their first opportunity in many years to meet their colleagues and counterparts from Africa and from other continents." Perhaps more striking is this positive challenge: "We hope that their participation in this conference will contribute to the revitalization of an interactive community of humanities scholars in sub-Saharan African institutions of higher learning and that connections made at this meeting will help facilitate new links and strengthen those that already exist between African academics and their counterparts in other parts of the world."

The above moving phrases, clauses, and statements are as worthy of commendation as the gesture of providing us with the scholarships itself. However, contrary to the conference theme's opening statement, "The bloody Writing is for ever torn," many of us do know that this "writing" is, in reality, yet to be truly "torn" for most of us in sub-Saharan Africa. Indeed, in its new colors, the writing is still as bloody, even as there are no physical movements in inhuman conditions, of Africans as cartels across the Atlantic today. The presentness of this bloody writing partly explains why it has to take the initiative of people and institutions outside the sub-Saharan Africa to remind us (who were the direct victims) of the "ending" of this bloody writing some 200 years ago. And this is also why it has to take their initiative for us to be enabled to attend this very important event in spite of the rich material resources that abound in most parts of our continent. But we can also make this conference the beginning of the journey towards an effective and true ending of the "bloody writing" even here in sub-Saharan Africa, such that in time our governments and institutions will see the need and be able to organize such conferences as this, and invite the rest of the world to the event. This is when we will concur that the "bloody Writing is [indeed] forever torn" even here in Africa as it has been elsewhere in the world.

The point, then, is that scholars and researchers in sub-Saharan Africa have to exceed the normal demands on them as intellectuals in order to lift their sleeping continent back on its feet. They have to join in evolving ways and means of resuscitating our decaying continent, even as the political leadership of the continent is, sadly, a mere reincarnation of the African middlemen of the dark days of slavery. One humble beginning, I believe, is for us to translate our forthcoming meeting in Ghana into a nucleus of a pan-African intellectual forum. Certainly, nothing rewards more than the physical meeting and interaction among colleagues, but in our situation such meetings may not be feasible in a long while after Ghana 2007. But, blessedly, we can rely on the Internet as an effective ersatz venue for sharing views, research experiences, publications and publishing avenues, ideas, and general information about one another's culture or country in such a way as to work towards the ending even here, some day, of the "bloody Writing."

I have had to send this in advance of our meeting in Ghana because, given the usual briskly activities of such conferences, we might not have the time to get together and properly piece these suggestions into some meaningful whole. I do hope, therefore, that these rough sketches of thoughts should engender robust contributions from all of us so we can collectively refine the inputs into some coherent vision for our continent and even the larger world community.

I suggest that anyone among us, who is more literate about the Internet than some of us are, create a kind of listserv to which we all may subscribe for this purpose of establishing and sustaining interaction among us on a long-lasting basis. Subsequently, we can keep expanding its membership to bring in other willing colleagues from our various countries, from other African countries not represented at the Ghana conference, from the Diasporan Africans, and even from non-Africans who are genuinely interested in the urgent task of rescuing our dear continent from the mouth of its waiting grave, and replacing its present feet of clay with wings of the eagle.

Once again, I thank the Omohundro Institute for creating this opportunity, and I congratulate you all on making this list of the travel scholarship awardees.

Thank you for your time in reading this mail, and see you all in Ghana in August.

Joseph A. Ushie
University of Uyo, Nigeria