Grandma Magic Podcast Episode 19, Diane Scaletta and Phyllis Webster: Grandmother Advocacy in Action
Diane Scaletta and Phyllis Webster are two coordinators of the Grandmothers Advocacy Network (GRAN), a Canadian institution that emerged from the Grandmothers to Grandmothers Campaign driven by the Stephen Lewis Foundation. In this episode, we learn how these two grandmother change-makers honed their adventurous spirits and a deep sense of equality and justice through experiences living abroad. Moreover, Diane and Phyllis convey how achieving their vision of a world where the human rights of older women, children, youth, and gender-diverse persons are recognized and protected, benefits from balancing equal measures of patience and tenacity, and the many other skills and talents of a grandmother super-team.
To learn more about the Grandmother Advocacy Network, visit their website at https://grandmothersadvocacy.org/
TRANSCRIPT
Lynsey Farrell (Host): Welcome to Grandma Magic, a podcast from the Grandmother Collective. We are a non-profit organization that supports and advocates for a world where a grandmother’s power is seen, cultivated, and activated for positive change. The Grandma Magic podcast is an opportunity to learn more about the unique positions that grandmothers, aunties, and other older women around the world can play in advancing positive social development by talking to and learning from grandmother changemakers.
We hope this series inspires you, brings you joy, and helps you recognize the enduring magic and wisdom that comes from Grandmothers Everywhere. My name is Lynsey Farrell and I’m your host. Today we’re joined by Diane Scaletta and Phyllis Webster of the Grandmothers Advocacy Network (GRAN), a remarkable Canadian institution that emerged from the Grandmothers Movement.
This organization is dedicated to raising awareness and advocating for change in the Canadian government and businesses that affect life for billions in the Global South. Diane and Phyllis bring unique perspectives shaped by their adventurous spirits and a deep sense of equality and justice honed through their experiences living abroad.
I’m excited to spend some time talking about GRAN with them and to explore how their personal journeys have led them to dedicate their later years to this vital cause.
Welcome, ladies.
Diane Scaletta: Thank you.
Phyllis Webster: Thank you for having us.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): Thanks for being here. So one of the questions that I’m asking all of my guests this season because we care so much or believe so strongly that older women and grandmothers hold our culture and, are sure to pass down the important values and traditions. We’ve been asking what are some of the rituals or traditions that you find important to share with the next generation.
Diane Scaletta: Well in our family food is the almighty; we’re very much about food. So I’m half French Canadian — my father’s French Canadian, my mother was Belgian, and my husband is Sicilian. So it’s all about all of the foods from those areas. Christmas Eve, we always have Tourtière. That’s been our tradition that my parents passed on. Then, we do Christmas baking and we used to do that with my daughter, my mother, and me.
Now we do the baking with myself, my daughter, and my granddaughter. And lots of times when grandchildren are here, my husband will be making some kind of Sicilian dish. And we always, always celebrate birthdays and any other excuse to get together. And those of us who are still practicing Catholics, we’ll always go to Christmas Eve Mass, and Easter Vigil, and celebrations like that.
So that’s basically what it is. Try to keep the family together.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): What was that? What did you call it? Tar…
Diane Scaletta: Tourtière. Tourtière is a meat pie that is a French Canadian tradition from way, way back. It used to have deer meat and stuff like that in it, but we make it with beef and pork.
And I’ve been using Mom’s recipe all along.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): We have some of my recipes from my great grandmother, that I still use. So yes, food has an enduring ability to make us feel grounded. and we hear that a lot. Okay. So, I’d love to understand more about your backgrounds and what is the journey to here? How did you become advocates at the Grandmothers Advocacy Network?
Phyllis Webster: I’ll begin with that, Lynsey. I started off having 2 pen pals in Nigeria and Ghana when I was in grade 4 and somehow or another, that meant that I just had to go to Africa at some point, I went through high school, joined the United Nations club, did several, big things: helped make a flag by sewing on all those leaves for the United Nations flag, which was raised with a ceremony in my little village of Vernon, British Columbia.
And then I had the absolute joy of choosing an African course at University and that settled it. I had to go to Africa and because I already knew that Nelson Mandela was on Robben Island or on his way to Robben Island, I particularly needed to bond with him. So when I did get there, I would stand on the shore of Green Point looking out towards the island, which you can see on a clear day, and talk to him in my head and tell him that I would like him to stay strong so that he could, come back and do what all the wonderful things that he did later on.
So in the end, I came back and did a whole bunch of other things. As a high school student, I wanted to be, by the way, the Secretary General of the United Nations and bring world peace to the world. Instead, I turned out to be an English teacher, which is also a way of bringing world peace, absolutely, especially through poetry.
So I left part of my heart in Africa, and that has led me towards Grandmother’s Advocacy Network, where we very much advocate for women and children and everyone in sub-Saharan Africa.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): So wait Phyllis before we move on to Diane, you did visit South Africa?
Phyllis Webster: Yes, I spent my first year of teaching in Cape Town in 1965- 66 at the height of Apartheid. And it was an amazing year. You know how hard you have to work here during your first year of any career. So I had to work so hard, but it was also a huge cultural shock and change from my own country.
I had been taught to love and respect everybody, every color, ethnic background, religious faith, et cetera. And of course, there I was in the middle of Apartheid where there was so much discrimination and because I was white and blonde, I was much cosseted and much looked after, but it was very hard on my emotional state. I lost 15 pounds because I was so upset, not a good weight loss program, I can assure you. Anyway, I had agreed to move on to Australia to see the young man who’d asked me to marry him. And I did, and we’re still married so it was it was a good decision and an interesting part of my life.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): But very profound I’m sure you know I’ve spent quite a lot of time on the continent and my first four months they shifted my entire trajectory so I can definitely feel what that must’ve been like in 1965. What about you, Diane?
Diane Scaletta: Well, first of all, I wanted to escape small town southern Manitoba, I know that Phyllis was seeking adventure, too. And, I heard about CUSO, which is very much like the Peace Corps. I trained as a lab technologist, and I had just graduated, so I had no experience. But, I signed and they accepted me.
I was supposed to go to Nigeria, and then the Biafran War came along, so we couldn’t go there. A hundred of us had to go to Ghana very quickly. I ended up working as a laboratory technologist for a mission hospital upcountry in Ghana. I worked for a little while in the city, but later on my real job was at this mission hospital.
And it changed my life forever. Absolutely changed my life forever. And what, Phyllis said, that Africa never leaves your heart, and you do leave a bit of it there. That’s for sure true, and I actually met my husband there who was a fellow volunteer. He was stationed very far from where I was, but eventually when we came back to Winnipeg we got together.
So there’s a little Ghanaian saying that I think is really something Phyllis and I can identify with. “When you are sitting in your own house, you don’t learn anything. You must get out of your house to learn.” And that’s what we did. We left our house and went to learn somewhere else.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): Beautiful.
Phyllis Webster: Yes. as you’ve already said.
Diane Scaletta: Oh, yes. The only hard part is when you come back home and nobody cares at all where you’ve been and what you’ve done. Had you gone to Paris, they might be interested in what you purchased, or the Louvre or something, but if you go to Africa, they just think you’re weird.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): And they throw every stereotype that you could think of at you. And, I lived there for quite a long time and I would come home back and forth and it got to the point where I just didn’t even talk about it anymore.
Diane Scaletta: That’s what happens.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): But it didn’t leave you and now you found yourselves in a position to really advocate and that’s beautiful. Okay, you both went obviously into service and volunteerism and change-making really, at young ages and I wonder if you can identify what made you leave these places that you came from to know that you should be making a change beyond adventure?
Diane Scaletta: When I was in training to become a medical laboratory technologist I saw a video about the Good Ship Hope. It was an American ship that would go to different countries and do fantastic surgeries. And I thought I would love to do that. But of course, it was only for very experienced people, and you had to be American. There was no way I could be in the Good Ship Hope.
So that sparked it. I don’t know, I just found my life kind of small.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): But why did you think that it was you?
Diane Scaletta: I don’t know.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): Had you done something at a young age where you had made a change?
Diane Scaletta: Well, I did have the childhood challenges of having polio. And at one point I was completely paralyzed. I learned to walk again. I’m very stubborn and I’m a type A person. So that helped me to decide that I could go and also, I have to say, my father had served in World War II, and he really supported me.
My mother was kind of heartbroken, and she would have probably tried to change my mind, but my father was all about no, no, no. She needs to go. So, having that support as well was really good. For my husband, he had to hide the fact that he had signed up with CUSO from his family until two weeks before he left, and then he just said, I’m going.
He was an adult, but he just knew it was going to be problematic. So, different things for different people. And, I’m really surprised with Phyllis, because I had quite a few pokes to make it happen for me. But she just was turned to this idea somehow, it seems.
Phyllis Webster: Well, I described the business about the anthropology course and the letters, et cetera. And my first year of university began with two weeks in the infirmary at the University of British Columbia, because I had pneumonia, for heaven’s sake. And, my mother came down from Vernon.
She was a grade three teacher. She came down from Vernon and registered me, went to all my classes, came back, made me learn my university number, and went over my notes, et cetera. And I can remember sitting there and hearing on the radio that Dag Hammarskjöld, the Secretary General of the United Nations had been killed in what I’m sure later was established as an organized plane accident.
Dag Hammarskjöld had been my hero for a number of years as a teenager. So I think that was really one of the changing moments of my life when I felt I really had to do something to honor that kind of sacrifice. And then, of course, learning more and more about Nelson Mandela later on in my university career, and knowing what people had had to go through in South Africa, or were going through, I just felt that I needed to go and see if there was anything I could do.
I could only teach white children, by the way, I got there. However, I did teach on the Cape Flats as a volunteer with a group of coloured students who were some of the nicest young people I’ve ever had the pleasure to teach and the most enthusiastic and the most willing to work hard. So I was able to do that and then I spent the next many years longing to go back to Africa and finally I got back in 2000 after my black friends were able to vote.
And I taught in two schools in the Eastern Cape, near Grahamstown, now called Makana. So, that was the moment when I really knew I had to do something beyond being an English teacher in Canada.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): Diane, what was the timeframe for when you were in Ghana?
Diane Scaletta: Oh, 1967 to 69.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): So you guys were both in this like mid-60s, late 60s. I mean, the context of that is that there was a groundswell of activism and you were reacting to something that many young people at that time were reacting to.
Diane Scaletta: You know, there were the flower children as they were called. Lots of protests, lots of protests against unfairness, and people having to go to fight in Vietnam. Some of the Peace Corps volunteers I met had volunteered to be in the Peace Corps so as not to go to Vietnam. So it was a time, I think in the world, or at least in North America, where you were thinking a little bit more about change, and how could we change this.
So not that I was involved in those protests and marches, but as we grew in the grandmother’s group, we met people who did protest then. So our protests were a little bit different than what some people did, you could say.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): [00:14:00] Right. it’s interesting, and the change-making, you know, if I’m really thinking about change-making, we’re all going to have different personalities. I personally probably wouldn’t have been, also on the front lines, like fighting in that sort of activist way.
But, you use the tools you had, your own resources and I think that has translated now, to this later activism. And I don’t know if you see this too, that activism of the sixties and seventies is in parallel now to what we’re seeing in grandmother activism.
Diane Scaletta: Absolutely.
Phyllis Webster: Yes, and we have a grandmother in our GRAN group who was actually arrested at Fairy Creek for standing up for the First Nations group that was fighting to save old-growth forests and, she was taken in a paddywagon elsewhere, and read the Riot Act and had to promise that she wouldn’t do it again.
But I have several friends who have been arrested; one had to stay in her apartment for two weeks without leaving except to go downstairs to get the mail, in case they phoned to find out what she was doing. Because she sat in the middle of a road in a lawn chair protesting. And I’ve always admired people who can do that because literally that can change your life too.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): Yeah.
Phyllis Webster: Being arrested.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): There are lots of ways to push and stretch and grow and you both took a journey towards that, even if you weren’t getting arrested in the middle of the road.
So let’s tell people about what GRAN stands for. What does this action look like today?
Diane Scaletta: GRAN is a non-partisan network of volunteers all across Canada. So we advocate at the local, national, and international levels. We lobby to influence national and global policymakers. We work a lot with partners. So we work with partners like Seed Change, Canadian Food Grains Bank, the UN, Cooperation Canada, ONE, Results, and many others. Our vision is a world where the human rights of older women, children, youth, and gender-diverse persons are recognized and protected. That’s it. So that they can achieve their full potential. So it can feel a bit scattered, but it is organized. Because we are organizers. So Phyllis will talk about the breakdown.
Phyllis Webster: Well, we have a number of organizational tactics and one of them is we have working groups. One of the ones that I’m most active in is the Education-working group. Diane and I both belong to the mining-justice group. We’re very concerned about mining companies that are registered here in Canada, doing terrible environmental things, and human rights abuses around the world. We have a Health group, Violence Against Women and Climate Justice. So we have many irons in the fire. And we have moved into a different working project. Having all of us working together on one campaign was helpful. It started with the Okavango campaign, working to tell the world about Recon Africa, a Canadian-registered mining company working in Namibia. ReCon is determined to find a huge amount of gas and oil and has found nothing in the last four years. They are doing everything that they can to destroy the livelihoods of the San people and are about to, and will, if they’re allowed to continue, damage the water table, which flows into the river. The Okavango Delta is a United Nations Heritage site and one of the most beautiful and biologically-diverse places in the world. We’ve had an Access to Medicines group that, worked for a long time along with our partners to increase the amount of money
being given to a United Nations campaign, to help with malaria, TB, and HIV AIDS. We managed to get a good deal of what’s called Official Development Assistance, or ODA, contributed to that.
And right now, we’re working very hard on a Right-to-Food campaign, where we have lobbied the government and they’ve just brought in a new budget. In last year’s budget, we lost 15% of our Official Development Assistance and this year they increased it by 5%. So we have 350M more to work on overseas aid, which is making us feel happy, but we would have been happier if it had been more, of course. We also have webinars, and we’ve written a whole series of what we call Small Sips, little information sessions about all kinds of things around food. One of them is education and food health. We visit our MPs and talk to them about the importance of the budget being used for Official Development Assistance.
We’ve written lots of letters, we go to the media, and, sometimes we win and sometimes we don’t, but this time we’re feeling a little more jolly about it because we have had some of that money back
Slowly, slowly, slowly. It’s not like raising funds to support a project where you have instant gratification. We have to remind ourselves that as Diane says, it’s like the dripping of the faucet, The water will collect after a while.
There will be change.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): what are some of the most surprising things that you’ve discovered in this work?
Diane Scaletta: For me, I was very nervous about going to see my member of parliament. That seems like a huge thing, and it seems almost like I shouldn’t be bothering him, he’s busy, and so on. And, that for me has been a rewarding experience.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): You’re being very Canadian from what I understand.
Diane Scaletta: Well, he acted very Canadian, because he was so welcoming and gracious, and, oh, thank you for coming, and yes, I want you to come, and Phyllis has experienced the same thing with her Member of parliament. So for me, that was a big surprise because I expected more roadblocks, and not as much attention given to my visit. I had half an hour to 45 minutes dedicated to me and what I wanted to talk about. So that’s pretty amazing. Of course, he belongs to the NDP, the same as Phyllis’s MP. They’ll never be in power I don’t think, but they have largely influenced our government because our government is a minority government and they rely on the NDP.
So they do have influence. And the more people that speak up and he’s presented a petition for us and things like that.
Phyllis Webster: That’s not so surprising to me, but then I get hugs both from my lovely Laurel Collins, who’s my Member of Parliament and from her assistant, who’s about seven feet tall. But I think one of the things that I’ve become increasingly aware of is how very slowly governments work and there are so many levels that you go from here to there, to next where, and, I’m finding that extremely annoying, but recognizing that’s how things work.
And I’m on a campaign right now to find out how we can get through to ministers a little more effectively. I write lots and lots of letters and I get lots and lots of, what I call blah, blah, blah letters back, and I’m trying to find a way to get to the minister without getting the blah, blah letters and get somebody to answer the questions that we are are legitimately asking.
I think another surprise is I think that people are surprised that Grandmothers can be so bold as to go out and work on all of this so I get lots of accolades for being an activist and, I’ve been an activist all my life, but, I’m now 80 years old and I’m getting lots of, good vibrations from people who are, pleased that we’re doing this.
Diane Scaletta: Yes, I could also say that, I just recently went to a CUSO (Canadian University Service Overseas) gathering. And the new CEO, well he’s not that new, he’s been there for a little while, but the CEO of CUSO knew all about GRAN, which surprises me. Because why would he know? But he used to work with Cooperation Canada. And so it turns out that a lot of these groups across Canada, these NGOs and so on, really have a lot of respect for GRAN, which is wonderful.
And the other thing is, Phyllis met with Minister Hussein, who is the International Development Minister in our government, and that was wonderful, wasn’t it? I had COVID, so I couldn’t go. and he is doing a lot of good. And now, refresh my mind, is he from Somalia?
Phyllis Webster: Yes, he’s from Somalia himself. So I didn’t need to tell him about what was necessary for Africa to feed children and their mothers and their whole community. So, we are given opportunities every once in a while to meet the ministers and we work very hard. I’m not going to say ambushing them, but if a member of parliament has a barbecue in the summer, for instance, we attend hoping to have a few minutes with the MP.
Okay. the grandmothers will go on mass and, and talk to the ministers or the Members of Parliament. So we’re trying to keep our issues in their minds. My only sorrow for us is that, on the island here, we have Greens or NDP representatives. We have no Liberals. So we don’t actually have somebody to complain to about what’s happening in the actual government.
We can only work through our MPs and ask them to send letters and to speak to the ministers and that kind of thing. But, it’s been a lovely learning curve and I enjoy it.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): But presumably you have a network across Canada, so others are agitating at the government, on your behalf or as part of you.
Phyllis Webster: I don’t think they often have the same warm response that we do, but
Lynsey Farrell (Host): Mm hmm.
Diane Scaletta: Well, if you’re in a Conservative riding, you won’t even get to see the MP likely, and if you do, it’s just a horrible experience. And if you have a Liberal member who’s involved in the government, they often don’t have time. They’re really literally too busy. We used to have a team called the Hill Team and they made a lot of connections, not necessarily only with the MPs, but with people that worked closely with the MPs.
And that was great. And, we don’t have a Hill Team anymore because. We’re suffering because of our age, you know: we’re losing members and people have to drop off because of partners who are sick or whatever or they’re sick.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): Life gets a life. Longevity.
Phyllis Webster: Absolutely. Yes. So, of course, like many, many groups, we’re looking for younger members. So, if anybody wants to join us, who’s listening to this podcast, please just go to grandmothersadvocacy.org and we will be happy to welcome you into this wonderful group of women who care about the world.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): So why grandmothers? I mean, you both sort of indicated that there is something about being bold and that it engenders a better reception perhaps with some people to be, uh, kind of given more information or to be connected through grandmothers But what do you think it is from your own personal experience?
That makes it Grandmother’s special here.
Diane Scaletta: Well Phyllis and I talked about this and we think it’s because we have more free time. We’ve got the life lessons. We don’t really have to worry about losing our job because of what we’ve said or so on so we can be more available. Also, we feel like it’s kind of a responsibility to be an example to your family following you or your friend’s family or whoever.
And we really want to leave something behind. But then, even though we have many challenges, we do have respect and we bolster each other. So, Phyllis is going to talk about, in spite of the challenges, how we can go forward. And maybe younger people might give up a little bit, I’m not sure.
Phyllis Webster: I can also add to that because we don’t have to worry about jobs, we can be more open about our opinions. And because we have those life lessons, we have the language to speak about difficult things without people thinking that we’re angry because we’ve all raised children and many of us have grandchildren.
Many of us have been teachers or in public positions where we’ve had to help people through difficulties. I’m sure Diane, not everybody likes you coming towards them with a needle to take blood. So, I think we can do things, perhaps, differently because of our age.
We’re a little more patient, because we’ve had all these challenges in our lives, and are facing more. A few people have been widowed recently, which is very sad or have husbands who are ill or are ill themselves. Our expectations are that we’ll do the best we can, and that we have to accept disappointment occasionally and certainly lobbyists have to accept, disappointment and we’ve learned to do that and honestly, this group gives me hope that there is a good future for our youth, because many of the things, especially around education in Africa, really do give me hope because there are so many young people in Africa who are now getting a good education and who are now standing up and saying, we have to do this better. We have to do it the African way. We mustn’t let the old, ways of doing things destroy our future.
So that’s one of the things that is giving me courage about this work is that I’m watching the young people begin to understand that the future really does lie in their hands.
Diane Scaletta: I agree with you. I think about Veronica’s family. So we have a connection still from our time when we were in Ghana. And we actually have a project in Northeastern Ghana that friends and family have helped us support. Veronica has four daughters. Veronica was educated and of course, really cared about educating her girls.
And now one of them has two masters and works in human resources. One is a project manager for the water board. And one works in business, and the other one is a physician, and she’s just going to do her last year of residency. So, you look at what happens, right? One person is educated, and then it just moves down, and so those four girls will definitely be all about education for their children. I agree with Phyllis, you see that hope, and that’s what we have to hang on to.
Phyllis Webster: Another thing I’d like to say is that I think grandmothers can be very tenacious, and maybe it’s because we have the time. Diane said she was stubborn. Oh, yes, she is. I can tell you, but we’re all very stubborn.
You can tell we have a very good friendship.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): That’s why I wanted to interview you together because I knew that would come out. It’s interesting about Veronica and her four daughters. I come from such a long line of matriarchs on my mother’s side, especially And it started with my grandmother and her eight sisters all getting college educations. And then my grandmother having four daughters who all have college educations.
And then my mother having two daughters who both have college educations. And you’re right Diane, you can see a trickle-down effect and it’s especially important, I think, what we sort of see in the grandmother space is that there is that focus on girls in a way that, you’ve empowered one woman and then the women that come beyond.
That’s what you notice. So Veronica’s story actually translates to my own rural Nebraska lineage that I come from a different time, but really, I mean, the 1930s, I guess they were all going to college.
Phyllis Webster: That’s amazing, especially in those days when people often didn’t have enough food on the table. So that’s fantastic.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): My great-grandfather owned a pharmacy. And so there was one boy. Uncle Les, but nine girls. And so one girl would work the pharmacy while one went to school, and then that’s when we’d finish, and then they would move up. So he just, as he like used them as labor, but made sure that they got an education after. Just brilliant to know that that’s what you could do. You’re really saying all the things that we know, from the Grandmother Collective about grandmothers. And also, there is this piece that I think you’re alluding to, Phyllis, about grandmothers or older women finding and sort of really needing the community that comes out of organizing and connecting and being part of this.
That I think is like an additional piece of the uniqueness of why grandmothers are situated to make these kinds of change because of the particular ways in which we support each other as women.
Phyllis Webster: Absolutely. So, to underline that, I just want to say that the Grandmother’s Advocacy Network has been a huge source of learning for me. It’s a very bad day when I don’t learn at least one new thing, and I think I’ve learned about 10 new things every day with Grandmothers, and I’ve made lifelong friends, Diane being one of them.
And it’s just so wonderful to see how a group of women can come together with many skills and many talents, and we help each other use those well to make a difference in the world.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): Yeah. What do the typical members look like? I mean, we have, the two of you who’ve made sort of social services or, social work, your focus.
Diane Scaletta: We have somebody who was an ambassador in Tanzania. She’s quite a force. And then we have quite a few who have been bureaucrats in our government. And so they’re so good at writing documents that the rest of us are kind of like, ooh, I don’t think I can do that. But they’re amazing because they know how to phrase things. They know the ins and outs.
Phyllis Webster: We have nurses, we have, many, many teachers, people who have been in business a long while and I think probably we range in age from about 65 to 91. And we have local groups all across Canada, as well as the national group. And one of the exciting things about this Right-to-Food campaign that I didn’t tell you about is that a lot of the local groups started food events in their own communities; one that I love is in Brighton, where a lot of people have gardens. And so apparently every two or three days, they take extra food from their gardens and put it on a table and people who need the food will come and get it. And apparently it always goes, all the food goes and the people who are raising it feel good that they’re not wasting any food.
Because apparently about 30 percent of the world’s food is wasted, on a yearly basis. And they’re getting around that. Another group in Winnipeg has helped at a food bank, but also started a little library so that people could have oral books and that kind of thing.
So there’s all kinds of things that are happening that are just so wonderful and so creative and so helpful.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): It’s like the result of learning about the thing gave even more of a push to do this the small little things that really can ripple out and make a big impact.
Diane Scaletta: I think you start to notice more. So while you’re talking about it and you might be talking about countries where they’re really poor and they don’t have enough food, it makes you look at your own situation because there are small steps that we talked about and also reflected on other issues at home and so on. But it starts to make you think, well, if the poverty is not just over there, it’s over here too.
And so I guess the difficulty is sometimes we feel quite pulled in a lot of different directions. And we only have so much energy. But it’s all good. Opens up your view of what’s going on.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): Yes, it seems the three of us have this experience of having lived on the continent and it totally had a reflection back on what I thought I knew about the place that I came from. I came back with different glasses than I had had before.
Phyllis Webster: I have to tell you, Lynsey, that I took my husband for our 50th wedding anniversary back to South Africa, and we visited all my former friends. And one of the things that happened while I was there, of course, was that white people had their beaches, black Africans had their beaches, Coloured Africans had their beaches, Asians, et cetera.
And we were in Port Elizabeth and we looked down on this gorgeous beach from a little walkway, and there were grandmothers and young people and babies and every color in the rainbow, as Bishop Tutu used to say.
And I looked down on it and I said, “Isn’t that remarkable? Look at that, the Rainbow of Nations on that beach.” And Barrie just looked at me and he said, “Well that just looks normal to me.” And I thought, oh yes, of course, it’s normal. But that’s not what my normal was when I was in Cape Town. No black African person would ever have stepped onto the beach where I was. II once got on the wrong train quite deliberately because the train that was parallel to mine going out to Simon’s Town had black African workers who were going out there and they were singing and it was so much more interesting than the boring white train I was on.
So I hopped off mine and got onto theirs and the singing stopped. And everybody turned and looked at me and I thought, no, I think I’d better get off this train. I don’t belong. I destroyed their singing. I felt so awful, but fancy having to feel that way. And I think Barrie really understood at that moment.
Of course, that’s normal. And that’s what should happen and has happened in South Africa, but it wasn’t like that in 1965.
Diane Scaletta: So I had a similar experience, but not quite as, dramatic. But every time I went to the post office, there’d be a line-up. No, no Oburoni ( white person), could be at the back of the line. And they all pushed me forward. No matter, I would say, no, no, no, that’s okay, I will just wait. No Oburoni, No Oburuni.
And over to the front of the line. And they just had this, and they still do, have this incredible kind of respect and awe. So when we are in northern Ghana, where about 140, 000 people live in the area. There are lots of farms and little villages. And, we went to a rally, and we wanted to see what was going on.
It was a political rally, and it was interesting. The next day on the street, people would stop us and say, I saw you! Because we were the only two white people still, at this time. It’s not changed in a way. But the other thing that really made me look at life differently is I don’t know about all African people, but the Ghanaian people are full of joy and in fact, on TV they had a program “Searching for Bliss” (about the Ghanaian way of always being hopeful.).
I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but the guy from The Office (an American TV program) went to Ghana and it was about how it’s very hard but they always have this idea that it will get better. They have the biggest smiles on their faces and they appreciate every small thing that they might have in their lives and they always have hope for the future. I just thought if you could take that and I don’t know, clone it into something in North America. That would make everything so much better.
Phyllis Webster: My experience of Africa also.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): Mine too. About a week ago, I went to a Parent summit here in Philadelphia. And we’re about 49 percent Black in the city of Philadelphia.
In the school district, the kids are about 49 percent Black. Well, the head of the social studies department, who heads the curriculum for social studies, gave a lecture on why he believes African studies can save the world.
And he did this whole thing about Eurocentric knowledge and African-centric knowledge and how Eurocentric-knowledge is individualist and about stuff. And about owning things and about competition and all this other stuff. And that the Africana studies is about inclusion and everyone belonging and everyone is connected.
At one point he say, I don’t know how I’m getting away with this. He’s doing this for the school district of Philadelphia, but it’s so incredibly important that the kids are getting that grounding. It not only roots them, but he kept saying, he said, having African knowledge and an African worldview as the center liberates everyone.
He just said it liberates everybody. Everybody is included versus what we have currently.
Phyllis Webster: That’s called Ubuntu in South Africa. I am because you are. There’s always that inclusion and I’m finding that as I learn more and more about the First Nations worldview here in Canada, the same thing. They don’t say I, me, my. They say we, my community are, our community, et cetera.
And I wish the rest of us could say, yes, my community, we work together as a team to make our community better.
Diane Scaletta: Another thing is that we cannot ever learn to shut off our colonial thoughts and the way that we react. We don’t even see it. We’ll say something and it is so colonial if you stop and think. I don’t think we even want to go there. But we should. My father’s family came to Canada with Jean Cabot, or around the same time, not necessarily with him.
So they were in Eastern Canada for centuries, and I’m positive, they were just grabbing land everywhere. So, it’s not that you have to carry this weight on your shoulders, but I think you have a responsibility to recognize it and try your best to do something differently.
My husband, as a Sicilian, coming to Canada, experienced a lot of racism. He’s a little bit dark-skinned. He could be Middle Eastern. It doesn’t matter, but to have racism, and I was really surprised that that happened, but I’m not surprised at that anymore now that I’ve learned more about it because I went to an all-white school.
There was nobody who would experience racism because there was nobody different. It’s the only reason. I’m sure we could have had plenty of it if we’d had somebody else being in the classroom.
Lynsey Farrell (Host): Yeah, It’s so interesting. so if people are interested in learning more, they can go to your website. https://grandmothersadvocacy.org/
Phyllis Webster: Grandmothers Advocacy network, will get you to our website.
