Host: Angelica Lindsey-Ali
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Angelica: [00:00:11] From PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm your host, Angelica Lindsey-Ali. I'm a storyteller and frequent host for The Moth's live events in Phoenix and around the country. In this hour, we'll be exploring stories about our elders.
Anyone who knows me well knows that I have been preparing to be a grandmother since I was about eight-years-old. My earliest best friend and role model was my grandma Bessie, a smiling woman from Montgomery, Alabama. I spent hours with my grandmother at her flat on the west side of Detroit, looking out the window at her weeping willow tree while she stirred something in the pot as she shared life's secrets. “Always keep a quarter in your purse in case you need to make an emergency call. Invest in a good slip and girdle. And always, always bet on the Detroit Tigers.”
To this day, you can still find me sitting with an elder, whether it's someone's great aunt at the family dinner, a stranger on a park bench or my husband's 96-year-old grandmother. I have always been attracted to the walking libraries and life lessons that exist in the minds of those who have lived long.
Our first story is told by Ishmael Beah. The civil war that tore apart Sierra Leone was long and brutal, and it had a devastating effect on the population, especially the elders. Ishmael’s award-winning book, A Long Way Gone, details how he was recruited into the army at 13 and became a boy soldier. In this story, we get to meet his extraordinary grandma. Here's Ishmael Beah.
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Ishmael: [00:01:59] At the end of the civil war, 11-year civil war in my country, Sierra Leone, everyone was looking for somebody they knew before the war, before that madness, family, friends, neighbors, somebody to be able to remind them of what their lives had been before that violent and horrific time. I was 12 years old when the war started, and my grandparents were really instrumental figures in my life, especially my grandmother.
My grandmother always did whatever she wanted. She didn't conform to anything at all. And this was very uncommon in the community that I grew up in. In fact, she was one of the only women who owned her own farm, a plot of land where she grew cassava, rice and any other crop that she wanted. I would watch her do it from scratch. I would come along, not necessarily to help, because my help was not really much. I would stand back and admire my grandmother with a machete and axe in her hand when she would literally attack a jungle and cut down humongous trees fiercely with ferocity. And then, she would come from under the bushes and she would say to me, “Now, that's how you brush. Make me proud, my grandson.”
I would look at her as she had looked at this jungle that the sun couldn't even penetrate in before, that was now flattened. She would look at it. She's sitting just to catch her breath a little bit. And of course, just by holding the machete, my hands were already blistered. I hadn't already started cutting anything, and then I would go in there to do whatever little walking I needed to do.
My grandmother also, even though she was doing this uncommon thing, she remained quite feminine. Whenever were going to the farm or to brush to do this really difficult work, she would dress elegantly. She would tie her hair. She would come out looking as if we were going to a festivity. I always look at her, thinking to me and say, where are we going? But then, we'll be going to the farm or to brush.
One afternoon, while we were brushing, some man was walking down the path and sent his greetings to us. I guess the sound of how the brushing was going, how the trees were being cut down and falling into the forest, he assumed that my grandmother or the person who was doing the brushing could only be a man. So, he sent his greeting as if he was greeting a man. My grandmother came from under the bushes, she arranged her head cloth, tied her shirt properly, put her wrapper around and looked very decent and stepped onto the path, the man froze. My grandmother walked up to him and slapped him really hard and said, [audience laughter] “Don't you have any training? Do you think all these bushes are only cut by men?”
And then, the man, after awakening from this stupor of unbelief, ran down the path looking behind my grandmother [audience laughter] was going to chase him down. My grandmother looked at me and smiled a little bit and did some of her stuff again and went under the bushes and started swinging machete and axe cutting trees again.
This was my grandmother. She had that same smile that she casted my way whenever she came to visit my older brother and I. We were living with our father after our parents had separated. And so, whenever my grandmother was coming, my father would get really nervous. He wasn't somebody who was afraid of anybody, but he would tuck in his shirt and he would pace up and down, he would sit down, he would stand up and we knew our grandmother was coming. [audience laughter] When my grandmother arrived, we took advantage of these moments to ask for things that we would not necessarily ask of our father, [audience laughter] because he would say yes in front of our grandmother.
And so, my grandmother also had left my grandfather. She was the first of three wives in a village called Bandajuma. And one morning, she decided that she was done. She just packed her stuff, took her children, including my mother, five of them, all women, and just left the town of Bandajuma to another place called Kabati, where she would be able to do her business, but also she wanted to get away from the gossip and the inquisitiveness of all the other women.
Now, traditionally, no woman was doing this. To do this required a lot of ceremony. The elders, mostly men, would agree to it. They would sit down and they would talk the woman out of it, but not my grandmother. She just left one day and said to my grandfather, “If you want to be with me, you will come to where I'm living now if you want to see me.” And this meant my grandfather would have to walk from when the sun rose in the morning to when he was in the middle of the sky to be able to do so. So, she went there and started living there. So, she would travel, she would make [unintelligible [00:06:41]. She would travel and buy fish. She would paddle her own canoe and go to villages that were miles away. Sometimes she would hire a motorboat, and she would put all this palm oil that she would bring to sell at the market.
So, every now and then while she was gone, a stranger would come and would exchange small talks with my grandfather and would say, “Well, I've seen your wife a week away from this village.” And my grandfather, he was a very nice man, soft spoken, really nice to my grandmother. But my grandmother was just a very independent natured person and very just on her own thing, she didn't care what anybody thought. And so, through this conversation, my grandfather would say to some of the people that, “She lives by her own rules and she does whatever she wants. The only thing I know is that she loves me and her family deeply, and that's enough for me.”
I remember watching my grandfather whenever my grandmother returned, he was ready and he would open up. He had this old suitcase that was old as the world. It was dark, like the color of earth. He would open it. Inside was very new. He had books and pens arranged, and he had this small perfume bottle he would take, and he would dress very nicely and he would spray it. I watch him and I look at him, and he would turn to me and say, “I have an advice for you, my grandson. A man is only as good as his ability to make his woman loved all the time. Remember that.” And I would say, “Okay.” [audience laughter]
And then, he would come back on the veranda with his cassette tape and he would press play, and he would sit and he would play [audience laughter] that music that my grandmother would love. The traditional music begin to fill the air. And my grandmother would be sitting in the yard resting, and she would look, and my grandfather's eyes would be ready to meet hers. She would look at her, and then she would get up and she would go into the room. When she returned, she was elegantly dressed. My grandfather was waiting to hold her hand. She would refuse at first, be reluctant, and then they would start dancing, and they would start dancing and I would admire them. This was one of the last memories I had of my grandmother before the war began, where we lost everybody and a lot of people died during that time.
At the beginning of the war, everybody was separated from their families. I didn't know what had happened to my brothers and my mother. Eventually, I found out that my brothers, my two brothers and my immediate family, my two brothers and my mother were killed in the war. And so, it happened to so many other people in Sierra Leone. During this war also, children were being sought after and recruited to fight as soldiers. And at that time, these children were forced to inflict violence upon their elders.
In my community, you couldn't speak back to somebody who was older than you, but the war used this as a way to terrorize the structures that had existed. So, all through this time, when I was running from the war, I kept thinking about my grandmother, whether she had survived because she was an elder.
Eventually, I was recruited to fight as one of those children that was used as a soldier to fight in this war. I came out of that war, luckily for me, alive, and I thought about my grandmother. I spent 10 years going back home to Kabati, to Sierra Leone, looking for my grandmother constantly. But each time, I would have leads, and I would follow them, and they would come to a dead end and I would lose her, I didn't know, where there was something within me always believed that my grandmother survived, that if anybody could survive, she was the one who did it because of how she was before the war.
I'd been going around back and forth every now and then. Then one day, I was back in Sierra Leone in my country, and I went to the village and someone told me that my grandmother had returned. I didn't want to believe it, because I'd done this so many times. Yet nonetheless, I began to walk back to the house that I knew my grandmother had lived. When I began to approach it, I saw somebody sitting on the verandah and I recognized from afar that this was my grandmother.
She was looking somewhere else, lost in her thoughts. And as I got closer, she raised her head and she saw me. She stood up as strong as she had been when she attacked those bushes and she began to wept. As I came closer, she shook my hand, she held me closer to her and she tried to pick me up, [audience laughter] but she couldn't do it. And so, she said to me, “What has happened to you? How come you've gotten so heavy?” [audience laughter] She looked at my height, and she looked at my face and I said, “Grandmother, it's been many years. So, I'm an adult now.”
The last time my grandmother saw me I was 12 years old. So, she was still thinking of me in that way. So, we sat down to talk, but she tried again to see if she could pick me up, [audience laughter] and she couldn't do it. So, we sat on the verandah, and we started to talk about what had happened during the war. So, I asked her, how did you survive this madness that was difficult for even a young person to survive, let's just say an older person. She looked at me and said, “First of all, I am not old. [audience laughter] And secondly, what happened was that when the war came to my village, I ran to my farm because I knew that there, I would be able to have access to food and stay there for a little bit until I decided what to do. But I knew eventually people would come to the farm looking for food, and it would be people with weapons.”
So, she left that place and began going towns and villages that she knew all these pathways, the waterways, and she would get into [unintelligible 00:11:40] weeks after weeks, she would walk and swamp. She slept standing in swamps and made her way to this island called Bunce, which is one of the places in the country that the word in rich was very difficult to get to. As she was telling me these stories, I thought to myself, I wish I'd had the strength and the wisdom to go to that place and escape all the madness that had occurred during the war. But I was a child, and I hadn't gone anywhere as my grandmother had traveled.
After she finished telling me, she asked me what my story was. And I told her that I now lived in New York City, that I had written a book about my experiences in the war because I fought in this as a child. She thought about it and she said to me, “Where is this land that you talk about in New York, and how does one get there?” I explained to her the time it would take, the place and everything. And I asked her, “Would you like to come and visit or perhaps stay with me in this land called New York City?” She thought about it for a little bit and she said, “Will there be elders that I'll be able to exchange thoughts with?” And I said, “Well, it's not the same as here. You don't see many old people wandering around just like that.”
She was quiet for a bit, and she said, “I will stay here in my beautiful village and home and you will come and see me every time I say so,” [audience laughter] she pointed her hand at me. And I said, “Yes, of course, I would do so.” I remember her face just as it was when I was a boy. It was very calm, as if she had slept for centuries. And so, we sat and talked. I stayed with my grandmother for weeks and weeks, close to a month, just exchanging things. But it was very difficult to do so, because at the end of the war, when you found somebody that was close to you and you were exchanging pleasantries with them about what life had been, sometimes you could not do it in front of your neighbors, because people who walked by seeing this, it reminded them of people they could not be able to find. So, we had to hide sometimes we would go for a walk along the path, long walks where we'll be able to laugh about things, where we'll be able to-- Perhaps I would cry. My grandmother never cried. She remained strong for me. I knew she was trying to hold it. So, we would do all of these things. And then, I left. At some point, I came back to New York.
My next-door neighbor to my grandmother had a cell phone. So, I would call my grandmother sometimes and I would speak to her. And often, she would borrow the phone and she would call me. My grandmother did not understand that I was in a different time zone, so she would call me anytime she wanted. [audience laughter] And mostly, it was around 04:00 AM in the morning. [audience laughter] She would call me and she would say to me, “Why do you sound so sleepy? It's the middle of the day,” [audience laughter] or something like that. And I would say, “Well, I was just a little tired, so I was asleep.” I didn't want to explain anything to her. [audience laughter] So, then we would talk about all sorts of things.
So, one time she called me. It was again 04:00 AM, I picked up the phone and she said, “You cannot believe what happened.” And I said, “What?” She said, “I was just minding my own business sitting on the verandah of my house, and these white people came by, and they had this book that had your picture in the back and they wanted to take a picture with me. So, I went inside and dressed very nicely and I took pictures with them. [audience laughter] And then, a few weeks later, others came and they just keep coming and I just keep taking pictures with them. [audience laughter] You must be a really, really big chief over there where they are, because these people coming and asking.” [audience laughter] And I said, “Well, I told you earlier I'd written this book.” She said, “Really? Okay, okay.”
And so, we were talking. And of course, every time I spoke to my grandmother, she would ask me the question, “Have you found yourself a good woman that you're going to make some family of yourself? Better yet, I want you to make great grandchildren, so that I can teach them everything that I've learned about life.” And I'll say to her, “Well, you know, I'm working on it.” She'll say, “Well, if you need any help, definitely I can help you.” And I said to her, “Grandmother, throughout your entire life in my childhood already taught me how to do that just based on who you are.” And so, as she said this and the phone line began to break a little bit and I lost her. The phone hang up. And so, I said to her, I whispered to myself that I will talk to you soon, grandmother. I knew it was the same thing that she was thinking. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Angelica: [00:15:50] Ishmael Beah is an award-winning author and human rights activist. The memoir he mentioned in the story about his time as a child soldier, A Long Way Gone, earned critical acclaim and has been a part of school curricula all over the world. He's also the author of two novels, Radiance of Tomorrow and Little Family.
Ishmael did finally fulfill his grandmother's wishes, and he and his wife are the parents of three children. No doubt he shares his grandmother's wisdom with them frequently. When you have a grandmother as awesome as Ishmael's, it's almost impossible not to share. With a wisdom like hers, you got to pass it down.
In a moment, kids at a Catholic school are excited to get a teacher who isn't a nun. And a woman sees something very out of place on the highway. That's when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
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Jay: [00:17:16] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX.
Angelica: [00:17:27] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Angelica Lindsey-Ali. In this hour, we're talking about being guided by the wisdom of elders.
One of My favorite elder tips is when my mentor once told me that it's totally okay to go to bed angry. She said it's amazing what a good night of sleep can fix. Or, my Auntie Elaine, a former model and pageant queen who once told me to always wear lipstick, even when taking out the trash. You never know when or where you'll meet your destiny. I guess I might as well look good when I meet my fate.
Our next story is from Rose Saia, a self-described Boston born Southie girl. She told this story at a Moth StorySLAM in Boston at the Oberon Theater, where we partner with PRX and Public Radio Station WBUR. Here's Rose.
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Rose: [00:18:21] It's the first day of school of fourth grade, and I am standing out in the playground, hot in my Catholic school uniform nervous with all the other kids, because we're waiting to find out who our nun is going to be as our teacher next year. Mother Superior comes out on the front steps in her long black habit, blows a silver whistle. We all come to attention and grade by grade we're called up to the front. A nun meets us, walked inside the school. This is really nerve wracking, because nuns were people to be feared. And at that point, I was just hoping I got one that smiled and not one that like threw erasers or hit kids with rulers.
When my grade got called up to the front, I heard a boy shout, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, she has legs.” And sure enough, standing in the front, there was not a nun, but there was a woman in a flower dress with her hair styled, and yes, stockings on. As we walked into the school, you could hear her high heels clicking on the floor. She went up to the class [unintelligible [00:19:29] chalkboard while we were sitting down to write her name in perfect palmer penmanship.
She turned around, and one of the boys actually fell off of his chair [audience laughter] and swooned and said, “Ms. Egan, I'm in love.” [audience laughter] And she turned to him and I held my breath, all the kids were holding their breaths because we thought she was going to hit him. And instead, she put a book down in front of him and said, “Well, I hope you like reading, because that's what I want you to love.”
So, Ms. Egan was really enthusiastic and loved teaching. That was clear from the very beginning. She once taught us about energy by pretending to be a windmill and she let us make papier-mâché volcanoes where baking soda lava came out. But her enthusiasm for teaching really wasn't able to break this malaise that had settled on me in fourth grade. I got to school late a lot. I would sit in the back of the class and doodle or just look out the window. I turned in quizzes, blank. Sometimes I didn't go down and eat lunch with the other kids, and I didn't go out to recess.
So, Ms. Egan took each of these challenges one at a time. She brought me up to sit in front of the room, so I couldn't drift off. She tried to encourage me. And then, she just started asking me, why was I doing these things? Why were these things happening? And I didn't answer her. And one day, I turned in a spelling chest blank. So, she told me I had to stay after school. And after school, she said to me that since I hadn't taken the test, I could grade all the other tests.
So, I waited for the answer key. And she said, “Oh, no, no, no, just grade them. You can do it.” So, I did. When I was done, she handed me a blank piece of paper and told me to write down every word from the test. And I did. She took the red marker and she marked 100 on the top. And she said, “Next time, if you take the test at your desk, I'll let you grade more papers with me.” So, I did.
I graduated from grading spelling papers to English composition. And one day she said, “You're good at this. Do you think you might want to stay after school and tutor one of the other kids?” So, I said, yes. And then, the Saint Brigid's after school tutoring club was born. It started with me with one girl by my side, and then other students with other students by their sides.
One afternoon, Ms. Egan said that we should just have some fun instead of working. So, she took out these big sheets of art paper and said, we could draw or paint whatever we liked. So, the girls started painting and drawing hills with flowers on them. And the boys started doing the same with hills with army men and tanks on them. I started coloring my paper with all different colors of crayon, and then I started covering it with black paint. Ms. Egan came up and sat down and said, “I don't understand. What is wrong here? Is this supposed to be you? Is this how you feel?” And I didn't answer her. So, she left the room, and came back in a long while with Mother Superior, and came in next to me and I think told me to stop, but I just put my arm around the painting I had.
Mother Superior blew her whistle, and so everybody stopped and folded their hands on their desk, because it was Catholic school and that's what you did. When they looked down at my painting, they saw that I had taken the blunt edge of some kitty scissors and I scratched out a rainbow, and sun and flowers. And the crayon colors came popping out of the black paint. And Ms. Egan asked me, “Where did you get the idea for this?” And I said, “Well, I love the stained glass in the church. I love the pictures of the saints and Jesus shining through the colors of the stained glass.”
When I looked at Mother Superior, she didn't look too happy with that answer. And I thought, I really thought in my nine-year-old brain, I'm in so much trouble now. I've desecrated stained glass. It's supposed to be saints in Jesus. And I've done flowers and a rainbow. Oh, my God, I am in so much trouble. I started to shake, and cry, and put my head down and my tears just fell on the paper making a river of black. And Ms. Egan picked me up, and put me in her lap and hugged me until I stopped.
When I stopped, I saw all the other kids were gone. Mother Superior was gone. She told me I could just paint the black again, and carve out the flowers and no one would ever know. She stayed late, so I could do that, and that's when I gave her all the answers that she wanted. My dad was in jail in a state far away. My mom got up early for work in the morning and came home late at night. Sometimes she left me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch, but sometimes there wasn't any bread, so I didn't go to lunch or recess on those days.
The next day when I got to school, my painting was up on the cork board next to the coat room. Ms. Egan saw me and pulled me aside to the front of the room and she turned her back, so the other kids couldn't see me. And that's when she handed me a brown paper lunch bag. And inside, there was a big red apple and a fat sandwich that she had made just for me. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Angelica: [00:25:18] That was Rose Saia. She's the executive director of a food relief agency in Boston. She's also a volunteer and has prepared over 10,000 meals for a local community supper, where her guilty pleasure is sampling donated broken cookies. She hopes every kid out there gets to have a teacher like Ms. Egan.
To see a picture of Rose around the time of her story and one of her straight A report cards from St. Brigid's school, you can visit themoth.org, where you can also pitch your own story. I believe every person has at least one good story inside of them. We want to hear yours. Pitch us a story right on our site or call 877-799-MOTH. That's 877-799-MOTH.
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Our next story is from Charlotte Mooney from our London StorySLAM. Here's Charlotte.
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Charlotte: [00:26:24] I was driving home. I'd been away from home for about a week, working in Portsmouth. It had been a really hard week, so I was desperate to get home. I had my four-year-old daughter in the back of the car and we were just rounding the final bend of the A3 about five minutes from my house. And the second we turned the corner, I knew that something was deeply wrong. It was like a giant hand had scattered the traffic in front of us. Cars were headed right and left, and all of the horns were blaring. And then, I saw that walking right down the central lane towards my car was an old man.
I was probably going at about 50 miles an hour, and I slammed my brakes on and somehow, I managed to stop when he was only about a meter from me. He didn't break stride. He kept walking straight back right up to the car until he rested his fingertips on the bonnet, and then he kept going around the side up to the driver's windows. He was small, mid-70s, and well dressed with a button-down jacket and a hat. He bent his head through the window and he said to me, “I'm so sorry, I'm just going for a walk.” And then, he took three steps back, and a car came which between me and him. My daughter was in the back wide eyed, and I tried to reach to him and call to him, but by that time, he was off. He was weaving a line up the A3 through the cars.
I drove home as quick as I could. I left my daughter with my partner and I rang the police and they said that they'd send out a car, but it'd be about 15 minutes. When I called them back 15 minutes later, they said, “Oh yeah, we couldn't find anyone matching that description. He's probably wandered off.” So, I got back in my car and I drove back up the A3 really hoping I wasn't going to find him. But almost immediately, I saw him walking down a parallel road. And by the time I had swung the car around and parked and got out, he was literally about to step his foot back onto the A3. I ran up to him and put my hand as gently as I could on his shoulder. He spun around and looked at me and said, “I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm just walking home. I'm walking home.” And I said to him, “Would you like a lift?” Fully expecting that he'd say no, but he said yes. [audience laughter]
As I walked him over to the car, I said, “Do you know your address?” And he said, “Of course. [audience laughter] It's number 4, Battersea. Is that right?” As I sat him down in my car, his legs gave way and I thought he might have walked from Battersea. I had a bottle of water in the footwell, which I gave to him, and he drank. And the only other thing I had were apples, so I said, “Would you like an apple?” And he said, “Have you got a knife to peel it?” And I said, no. [audience laughter] He didn't like to peel. He did something I've never seen anyone do before. He nibbled off every single shred of peel [audience laughter] before he took a single bite. It took him bloody ages. [audience laughter]
Meanwhile, I went and called the police. They said, “Find out his name. We'll send a car.” And I called my friend, whose mum had dementia, and she said, “Just talk to him, Charlotte. Make sure he doesn't get distressed.” So, I hunkered down on the curb next to him and introduced myself. His name was Leslie. He had three children, Poppy and two sons, but their names changed as we talked. He used to be a mechanic in Dagenham. He was a good mechanic and he had a good car, a Mercedes.
And if I asked him anything else, he'd start to get a bit twitchy and anxious like, “Why are we talking? Why aren't we going?” So, I would go back to the boot and fiddle around for a bit, and then I'd come back and we'd have the same conversation again. Poppy, Dagenham, mechanic, Mercedes. As long as I stuck to that, he didn't get distressed. He sat there, straight back, nibbling bits of apple peel and just watching the traffic pass. As far as he was concerned, I was finding the address and we were going to be leaving any minute.
Eventually, after about three hours, the police rang back. They said, “There's no one lost by that name. Take him to a local police station.” The moment I started the engine, it's like, he came to life. He was literally stroking the dashboard. He said, “This is a good car. This is a quiet car. I used to have a good car. I had a Mercedes.” And then he said, “Charlotte, when they take your car, then you're really stuck.” I didn't know it was going to happen, but I started to cry and I was trying to hide this from him. But he saw and he reached out his hand and put it on my shoulder and said, “You're very tired.”
When we got to Kingston police station, I helped him out of the car. His legs pretty much didn't work by this point. I noticed for the first time that he had odd shoes on, one suit shoe and one trainer. He tucked into me as we walked across the road as if we were old friends, he kept saying, “This is a good day. This is a fine day.” I took him into the police station, and the police officer took one look at him and she said, “Right. Cup of tea.” She took him from me and sat him in a chair. I left. And on the way out, I could still see his silhouette through the frosted glass. He was sat straight back on a plastic chair waiting. And I got to go back to my good quiet car, and I got to start the engine and I got to go home. Thank you.
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Angelica: [00:32:35] That was Charlotte Mooney. Charlotte has told stories on stages and around campfires across the UK, and is currently working on a piece about the myth, folklore and science of crows. As an update to her story, the police sent Charlotte a letter thanking her for her help. Charlotte says, she hasn't seen Leslie again, but she still keeps an eye out for him every time she drives on the A3.
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When we return, a story from the Navajo Nation about preserving ancient mother tongue in a galaxy far-far away, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
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Jay: [00:33:43] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org.
Anglica: [00:33:58] You're listening to The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Angelica Lindsey-Ali. This hour, we're talking about things passed down from our elders.
One of the things I cherish the most are my children's names. A family elder in Mali gifted my children beautiful names, Amatige, Yabara, Yakini and Abara. Their names are tiny prayers that remind me of the power of language every time I say them, which is often because four kids.
Our final story is told by Manuelito Wheeler, who was born and raised on the Navajo Nation. He's currently the Director of the Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock. Manny told his story in Arizona, where we partnered with the Mesa Art Center. Here's Manny.
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Manuelito: [00:34:53] Thank you. And [Navajo language] So, I have just introduced myself in Navajo.
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Language equals culture. So, it's the late 1990s, and my wife has gone to grad school, and she left me with our three-year-old son at the time. And so, she started school and she got an apartment in Tempe. We had a small apartment. Then I came down three, four months later.
I had a three-year-old son, and I needed a job and I'd always found myself in the museum world. So, where do I go to look for work right away? The Heard Museum. You may have heard of it. No pun intended. [audience laughter] So, I go apply for a curatorial type job there. Do great on my interview. Think I have it in the bag. Get a call, “Sorry you didn't get it.” It wasn't that cold, but you know, “Sorry I didn't get it. But you know what? The Heard's expanding and they need some help in the carpenter shop.” And I'm like, “Okay, I need a job, I'll take it.” So, I was the carpenter's assistant, and then I moved up to the exhibit installer and then I moved up to the design manager there at the Heard Museum.
So, during my time there, my wife has finished her masters and now she's onto her doctorate in English lit. All the while, she's teaching Navajo. So, she's teaching Navajo to high school students here in the Phoenix area. We would always have this discussion of how do we make our language relevant, how do we get these young people to connect to our language? This is something that's very close to both of us. It's close to me, because I'm not fluent in Navajo, and that's a secret shame that I carry with me. That's a secret shame that people of my generation, we carry with us. And it's like, there it is, something that's part of us and it's fading and we're trying to figure out how to save it.
So, we're sitting around the dinner table and we talk about, man, it would be really cool to have our own movies in the Navajo language. And so, they're like, “Yeah, yeah. that would be cool.” So, we toss some ideas around. She maybe has said like, “We should do the Steel Magnolias in Navajo.” [audience laughter] But then, I say like, “You know, think about it for a while. We should do Star Wars.” [audience laughter] Maybe you've heard of it.
The reason I thought about Star Wars and it stuck is like, it's such a timeless classic. There are themes in the movie that I really felt connected with Navajos/Native people. This idea that the universe is connected, and if we do something that affects this side of the universe, it's going to ultimately affect this side of the universe. The idea that there's good and there's bad and how we choose to use it is up to us, but it will have its consequences. So, I really felt that those ideals would really stick with Navajo people, especially our traditional elders.
So, this is a time when the Internet was brand new, and there was that thing that was like AOL and you've got mail, and computers were huge and you would clack away on them. And so, I get on the internet, I find the script to Star Wars Episode 4, for those of you that need some clarification. [audience laughter] It comes in the mail, and I look at it, and I put it on the shelf and forget about it for a few weeks. And then, I find it again, I look through it, and there's my wife. And I tell her, “You think you could do these five pages and translate them in Navajo?” And she's like, “Yeah.” And I'm thinking, I'm not going to get this back until a few days or a week or so. She comes back in about 30 minutes. It's all typed up, and she hands me the papers and I'm like, “Whoa.” That's when I had that light bulb moment of this can be done. This is real.
So, again, I research Lucasfilm, of course, and send emails. This process goes on for about 10 years of going to different parts of Lucasfilm. There's the emails, there's the 800 numbers. I'm not a pest. I'm not emailing Lucasfilm every day or anything like that. It's just like a couple times a year. And then, the position opens up at the Navajo Nation Museum to be the director. I apply, I get it, we move our family back to our beloved res.
Then the idea resurges again. I'm like, “I'm going to try this other door.” Send the email off again. And one day, the email pops up, and it's from Michael from Lucasfilm. And his email says, “We got your message, and this is something that we're interested in.” And then, of course, I call my wife first, I'm like, “Guess who I got an email from?” I was like, “Lucasfilm. They're on. They want to do this.” The stipulation though, was that we would have to fund the production, the Navajo Nation would have to fund this production.
So, I gather myself, I go up to my boss, go up to his office. He's a cool guy. I've always gotten along with him. And I tell him, “Hey, this idea about Lucasfilm, and they're interested in putting Star Wars in the Navajo language. It's going to be great and it's going to be the best thing that ever happened to the Navajo Nation.” He's just nodding his head and he's like, “That's nice, Manny.” I just felt this sinking feeling, like he doesn't get it. He doesn't see the vision that I have.
And so, he's like, “Well, put a budget together and we'll see if we can find some money for you to do this.” And of course, there are much bigger problems on the Navajo Nation. People actually live without running water and electricity there. So, my project was going to have to take a back seat for a while. But I'm not discouraged. I go to various Navajo Nation programs, and I'm like, “Great project. No, sorry.” “Great project. We should do this.” “No, sorry.” And so, this is over, I would say, six to eight months. And at that time, it's something that you feel like you have lightning in a bottle, but nobody wants to buy it.
And then, finally, I come across another person that I know. He oversees the fairs for the Navajo Nation and he's like, “I'm trying to look for something that's entertaining, something that would bring a lot of people together.” And I'm like, “I've got a project for you.” I explained my idea about putting Star Wars, dubbing it Navajo over a Star Wars movie. And he's like, “Yeah, that sounds pretty good. Let's do it.” And I'm like, “Oh.” I'm trying to be cool on the inside. He said, “I need something for the fourth of July fair.” And I'm like, “Oh, okay, yeah, I can do it.” [chuckles] And so, I rush over to my team.
My team was very small. It was a team of about 10 people. And I'm like, “Okay, we got to do this.” We had to put together a press release, and we send it to Lucasfilm for their approval. They approve it, and then it goes out to the internet, and then it takes off like wildfire. My phone starts ringing every day, at least every hour maybe. And it's the BBC, it's NPR, it's CNN, like all of these different major media outlets. They want to talk to me about how this project's getting done, why it's getting done. I couldn't believe it. And I'm like, “Oh.”
And then, I get a call from my friend who lives in Los Angeles, and he's like, “Manny, this story, Navajo Star Wars, is trending at number seven on Yahoo.” And I'm like, “Oh, cool. What does that mean?” [audience laughter] And so, he's like, “Well, let me put it this way. The Olympics are trending at number eight.” And I'm like, “Whoa.” So, that's when it hit me. We started to get rolling. The people from Burbank, they came out and gave us a tutorial on how to get things rolling. So, we auditioned for Star Wars in two days. We had over 400 people come over those two days auditioning to be a part of this. We had five translators in a room, and they translated the whole script in 36 hours and then we go into production. It was just one massive, amazing blur.
But let me put it this way. We started on April 12th, and we premiered the movie on July 3th. One of the things I'm most proud of, is it was mostly done by Navajo people. We really got together and made this happen. So, here we are. [audience applause]
Here we are. We're premiering it. And guess what? A rodeo arena. Classic Navajo style. [audience laughter] It wasn't just a rodeo arena. A rodeo had actually happened less than an hour prior to us [audience laughter] doing this premiere. So, imagine if you will, and here comes a giant semi-driving into the rodeo arena. And my people, they had built a movie screen on the side of the semi-truck. And it pulls into the middle of the rodeo arena. And people, the stands are filled. Over 2,000 people were there, and they're all waiting for this movie to start. The cast and crew is there, people from Burbank are there, people from Hollywood are there. Everybody is excited to see this. And my wife, she's sitting right next to me. And then the lights go down. People applaud, cheer, kind of. And then, it happens, that light blue font, a long time ago, in a galaxy far-far away, it appears on the screen, but it's in Navajo. And then, the crowd goes wild. They cheer. And it's almost like a frenzy.
And here comes the crawl, the crawl's in Navajo. My wife and I are sitting there, and I squeeze her hand and we're just sitting there. She's crying tears are coming down her eyes, but I'm not crying. [audience laughter] Maybe I was crying. It was a rodeo arena. [audience laughter] It was dusty and dust getting in my eyes. [audience laughter] So, then here comes the big imperial cruiser descending upon Princess Leia's ship. It goes C-3PO. C-3PO, utters the first words, and C3PO's in Navajo. And then, here comes Darth Vader and he lifts up the rebel and he's like, “Where is the princess? Where are the plans?”
Darth Vader's voice in Navajo. [audience laughter] And the crowd is going crazy. I'm there, sitting there, squeezing my wife's hand. I'm thinking of our grandmothers that have gone on to the next world. I'm thinking of our grandfathers that have gone on to the next world, our uncles that have gone on to the next world, our aunts that have gone on to the next world, that I wish they were here to see this. This is our culture. It's living on. This is our culture, and now there was a new hope.
[cheers and applause]
Angelica: [00:47:43] That was Manuelito Wheeler. To see pictures of Navajo voice actors in the studio dubbing the film, visit themoth.org, where you can also download the story. Star Wars dubbed in Navajo is now available to stream on Disney Plus. Here's a bit of the dialogue in the Navajo language.
[Star Wars dialogue in Navajo Language]
Since Star Wars, the Navajo Nation Museum has gone on to dub two other classic films in Navajo, Finding Nemo and the Fistful of Dollars.
[whimsical music]
At the start of this hour, I said that I've always wanted to be a grandmother. Well, I'm still not there. I consider myself more of a young elder. But at 46, that time is approaching soon. In the meanwhile, I like to consider myself a grandma in training. I go by the name Village Auntie, and I share advice I've gleaned from elders with women around the world. I hope you've gotten a bit of useful advice from our storytellers.
That's it for this episode of The Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time. And that's the story from The Moth.
[overture music]
Jay: [00:49:40] This episode of The Moth Radio Hour was produced me, Jay Allison and Catherine Burns, Jenifer Hixson and Angelica Lindsey-Ali, who also hosted the show. Coproducer Viki Merrick. Associate producer, Emily Couch. The stories were directed by Jenifer Hixson.
The rest of The Moth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Jenness, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Klutse, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Inga Glodowski, Sarah Jane Johnson and Aldi Kaza. Moth stories are true as remembered and affirmed by the Storytellers.
Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from Vulfpeck, Okaidja Afroso, Steve Fawcett, Dustin O'Halloran and BenDan Productions. We received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.