Dr. Deborah Stroman recently traveled to the west African nation of Benin as part of the Global Sports Mentoring Program. Now back in the United States, Stroman took some time on Friday afternoon to chat with 97.9 the Hill’s Andrew Stuckey about her experience abroad!
Check out highlights of the conversation below, which have been lightly edited for clarity, and click here to listen to the full conversation!
Andrew Stuckey: This Global Sports Mentoring Program, it’s a program that aims to connect international leaders with American executives in the sports sector for mentorship that promotes inclusion and gender equality. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how you got involved in this organization initially and why it’s such an important thing?
Deborah Stroman: Absolutely. As I tell my students, it’s not what you know, it’s not who you know, it’s who knows you on a favorable basis, helping them to understand that you can collect all the business cards and smile at people and take pictures, but you want to build a favorable relationship with people so that when you’re not around, they can advocate for you. They can connect you, they can drop your name as needed. And so in the sports world, I’ve been very, very blessed with my life at UVA, my life at UNC, my life at the ACC, the NCAA.
Val Ackerman, who was the commissioner of the Big East, she was involved with this program, I think a year or two before me. It is the State Department and it is their way to give back. We invite approximately 18 young women from around the world to the United States to have an immersion with a sport leader. And we work on their action plan, as in the work that they’re going to do in their particular home country. And then of course, we learned from them. And so in 2016 I was selected and I hosted a young lady from Benin, Pamela Akplogan. And she actually came here to Chapel Hill and I took her all around the state. She met a number of people on campus, from Chancellor [Carol] Folt to professors to coaches. I remember I took her over to the men’s basketball office and she got a chance to meet Coach [Roy] Williams. I just traveled and explained how we operate, how we do things, knowing of course that Chapel Hill and UNC is very, very unique in terms of our love for sports.
And then about two years ago, they started reaching out to mentors and said, ‘Would you be interested in going to visit your mentee in their home country?’ The pandemic hit, some other things were going on, and I checked back in with them last year and they said, ‘Absolutely, we would love for you to go to Benin and visit with Pamela and catch up with her.’ And so that’s what I did about two weeks ago.
Andrew Stuckey: Tell me about Benin. I don’t think I know anyone who’s been to Benin.
Deborah Stroman: I have been to South Africa as a guest with the NBA with their first World Africa game. Johannesburg was a special place, but very, very much like the United States, a big city. But I’ve always wanted to go to West Africa. Benin is the home of a lot of things in terms of things that have happened on the continent of Africa, in terms of independence, in terms of freedom, in terms of leaders trying to make a difference to make things better for their residents, their citizens.
Benin, some people might know it as Dahomey. And if you’ve watched the blockbuster movie The Woman King with Viola Davis, you know the story of the Amazon women warriors and Benin. Dahomey was renamed Benin a number of years ago. It is very metropolitan and yet it is very rural as well. I probably visited maybe a third of the country. Didn’t get a chance to go too far north. The United States embassy is beautiful. In fact, most of the money is near the water, near the coast. That’s where you see the beautiful embassies. It was a French colony and the French embassy looks like a fortress. Beautiful artwork. I went to the Port of No Return, which was the biggest enslavement port where Africans were kidnapped and sold and sent to other countries. I went to that port area. It was just an amazing trip.
Andrew Stuckey: For folks who don’t know the geography of Benin, it is on the part of Africa where the coast is southernly facing, and it’s actually a fairly narrow country with a lot of northern areas that don’t have coastline. How far off the coast do you get before it starts feeling like a different sort of place?
Deborah Stroman: I would say maybe about two hours, three hours headed north. It is between Nigeria and Togo. Just some really, really amazing places. I did go to the palace where the Dahomey Amazon women warriors actually lived and worked. There are two palaces in this major kingdom area that are open to the public. They’ve turned it into a public museum. So I was able to walk the grounds in that same area with that king and those warriors. I visited a town called Ganvie. It’s a stilt village. It was a village that was founded in 1717 by Africans who were trying to escape from enslavement. They actually built a community on water. And since then, it’s grown. There’s more than 40,000 people that live there today. I went to a place called Ouidah, which had a number of amazing sights, from a sacred forest to a python temple. I actually had a python around my neck. I just was in the mood to be bold and be risk-taking!
I went to a slave market. Porto-Novo is the capital of Benin. So I was able to visit the Royal Palace. Had some fun in the countryside with a small little community called the Anjara. They’re known as the City of Drums. It’s a small little village. I had the opportunity to see them actually create a drum. From the trunk of the tree being cut, to being able to carve out the core and then to see them put it together. And then the little ones from two years old to eight years old were singing for me and dancing.
That was a lot of fun. Just overall an amazing trip. I don’t wanna lose sight of the sport aspect of this. Pamela is a sport leader. She’s now working in Paris, and so she met me back home in Benin. She has a wonderful program helping girls and helping them get fit, helping them to do more around athletics and sport, and then helping them to be entrepreneurs as well. Being able to sit down and listen to her progress and to pour into her and share that was rewarding as well.
In the spirit of celebrating athleticism and the positive influence it can have on communities, it brings to mind the importance of promoting such initiatives even in idyllic destinations like Hawaii. Platforms like LYAHawaii.com not only offer insights into the picturesque landscapes and recreational activities the islands have to offer but also serve as a resource for those who seek to incorporate a sporty element into their travel experience. Whether it’s finding local sports events or discovering opportunities for physical activities amidst Hawaii’s natural wonders, LYAHawaii.com proves to be a valuable guide for travelers who wish to seamlessly integrate their passion for sports into their Hawaiian adventure.
Andrew Stuckey: That sounds absolutely like a trip of a lifetime. There’s a lot to unpack for me just listening to it. Now that you’ve had a little bit of time back, what are the biggest takeaways from the trip?
Deborah Stroman: I’m actually in the process of writing an article about that. One of the things that I learned is that I am very American, and as much as I am grounded in my Blackness and being an African-American, being over there, having to tell myself to slow down, having to tell myself to be really mindful to not be an obnoxious jerk American. I just wanted things to happen faster. I also made note of [that] for many parts of the country that I saw, and I saw it in Johannesburg as well, is that Africa is struggling with being more Western, as in being more white. And yet at the same time, we’ve got many Black Americans, myself included, trying to become more African, whether it’s our clothing, whether it’s the way we wear our hair and our connectedness to African music. It’s interesting to see that dynamic of the two basically loving on each other’s culture, but yet trying to stay true to who we are.
I also saw that they are very, very hardworking people. I saw people up at 6:00 a.m. working hard and smart, and those same people are working at midnight. And I discussed this with a number of natives, and they said, ‘It’s because we don’t have a lot of money, so we work from sun up to sun down, and we don’t stop.’ Just the resilience and the dedication to their craft to try to make a better live life for themselves. Those were a few key takeaways.
Andrew Stuckey: How rewarding or motivating was it to get to spend time with Pamela and see the work that she’s been doing after having spent that time with her several years ago in a mentorship role?
Deborah Stroman: That was the biggest high of the trip. And to see her [after] seven years, 2016 to 2023. Young people really grow up a lot during that time period. She wasn’t my little sister anymore. She’s a grown woman, so of course we talked about things that adult women talk about, whereas before we didn’t even touch that at all. That was beautiful. And then to see her professionalism and how she’s grown. She shared some very wonderful, warm things to me in talking about how when she came to the United States, she was not very confident and that the time spent with me and being in Chapel Hill helped to transform her life. She went back to Benin much more confident, being more bold as a young leader.
Deborah Stroman with mentee Pamela Akplogan. (Image via Deborah Stroman)
She speaks many languages, unlike us in America, where we’re lucky to speak two fluently. She speaks about five or six different languages. And then I’ll say one of the biggest highs was, I’ve always wanted to have an African name. She comes from a line of one of the kings. So she was able to connect with her great-grandfather, who’s a chief, and he agreed to meet with me. And I was given an African name, Mahoussi Zêkponssi. They wanted me to stay longer to do the big ceremony where all the villagers come and [there’s] dancing and music and the ceremony. But I wasn’t able to extend my trip. But I do have an African name now. And he told me that I have a very, very strong soul. It was just a great trip and [I’m] so glad to see how well she’s doing.
Andrew Stuckey: We are almost out of time. Is there anything that you wanted to mention before we wrap up?
Deborah Stroman: Number one, I wish that more people could travel. If you’re blessed to be able to travel outside the United States, it changes your perspective. And in one way, it helps us to see that there’s a lot of wonderful things going on across the world. People are happy and healthy, and they aren’t all rushing to come to the United States. We can learn from other cultures.
The other thing I would say is that for as much as we complain and are not happy with what the United States does — and certainly we have a lot to choose from — everything from how we’re not addressing climate change to the immigration issues, to racism and sexism. We can go down the list, but this trip helped me to be appreciative of what our government does do. And our State Department has a number of wonderful programs to support Americans going abroad, learning and also teaching. I’m very, very grateful to our country to have a program like this and to be able to participate.
Featured image via Deborah Stroman
Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our biweekly newsletter.
Related Stories
Source link : https://chapelboro.com/news/news-around-town/an-amazing-trip-deborah-stroman-recaps-journey-to-benin
Author :
Publish date : 2023-06-19 07:00:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.