Wisdom from walls

Elizabeth Dyer spent a good part of her summer staring at the walls.

The walls Dyer (Anthropology, History ’07) was staring at were a world away, in Senegal, where she spent six weeks as a recipient of a prestigious
Harrison grant.

She took the first steps of this journey during her first year at U.Va. “I was very lucky. I took this African history course with Joseph Miller, and I took Anthropology 101 with Richard Handler. I’ve had other amazing teachers, but those classes just really struck a chord with me. First semester, freshman
year — it was incredible. It was luck.”

Dyer is in the distinguished majors program in history and has tirelessly pursued the educational opportunities that have come to her at the University.

Though a seasoned traveler, Dyer found herself quickly overwhelmed by her new surroundings in Senegal. “It is the closest I have ever come to culture shock,” she says. “I didn’t know how to start, what little piece to pick from this incredible mesh of new material that didn’t look like it made any sense to me. It looked like abstract art that I didn’t get.”

Dyer was struck by the fact that she saw walls everywhere she turned. “The answer to the question I wanted to find was why in a society that has traditionally been as collective as Senegalese society … why are walls so important?” To begin to get her answer Dyer went right to the source. She took her first steps toward deconstructing the topic by heading out to the streets to talk to villagers. Then she literally deconstructed it with a sledge hammer after spending an afternoon learning about walls from a construction crew.

There were walls that shielded homes from the streets, and there were internal walls that provided another layer of insulation. These internal walls were particularly important, she says, with a name translating in the Senegalese language to mean “to hide shame.” Sometimes this might be the shame of economic hardship, or of an ailing family member, or it might be the shame of prosperity in a culture that is all about sharing resources.

It was inside the walls of her adopted home that she learned some of her greatest lessons. “They really were my family,” she says. They gave her shelter, they gave her kindness, and they gave her a name. “I would tell people my family name and they would say, ‘Oh, you are my sister. We are in the same family!’ It was entirely different than saying ‘I’m Elizabeth Dyer.’ They would have no way to code for that.”

While her village was affluent by Senegalese standards, Dyer bathed from a bucket for six weeks and slept only four hours a night, waking often to pour water over herself to ward off the heat. But you will hear no complaints from her, only gratitude and a very strong sense of responsibility to tell her story well. “I want to be worthy of the experiences I’ve had, and I want to do something that re-expresses them in ways that are heard by people who are going to listen.”