Globe-Trotting Romantic Shares Heart Of Africa

Tina Friedman still feels the African dust in her nose and the Tonga smile in her heart. She and her daughter, Emily, returned from Africa to their home north of Sandpoint nearly two years ago.

They’d traveled for eight months, fought malaria, deflected a marriage proposal from a Zimbabwean chief, befriended a village and fell in love with the continent as distant to them physically as culturally.

“I miss the black culture,” Tina says, her eyes settling on an ebony carving of a Tonga woman on her windowsill. “It’s so beautiful, rich. We’re lacking when we’re not exposed to it.”

That is why Tina, 50, will open a free African cultural center in Sandpoint’s Bonner Mall this spring.

The center will feature her black-and-white and color photographs of Africa, and an exhibit of the region’s history, artifacts, crafts, art and musical instruments.

Her exhibit will run for a month. On Fridays, she’ll offer entertainment by black performers and on Sundays she’ll host speakers.

“It’s very important for Sandpoint,” she says. “Sandpoint needs this and is ready for it. It’s time we start looking beyond ourselves.”

Sandpoint Mayor David Sawyer said he doesn’t believe his town is culturally deprived, but he’s eager to benefit from Tina’s exhibit.

“Every rural community has a broader future when it has broader exposure to the world, its cultures, values, history,” he says. “Her knowledge and direct experience in Africa is an asset. I’m not going to Africa, but I can go to her center - and so can Sandpoint’s 6,000 students.”

A local astrologer convinced Tina she has the qualities, talent and support to share a culture this year.

“He said, ‘What you do will make a major impact on the planet,”’ she says.

Tina had envisioned such a project while she recuperated from malaria on a Malawian island two years ago.

She and Emily began to share their trip soon after they returned home. Emily, 12, wrote a story for “Skipping Stones,” a multicultural children’s magazine. It was published in the winter 1996 issue with Tina’s photos.

Photographer’s Market 1998 published Tina’s photo of a female Tongan elder. A photo essay of her trip will come out in “The World and I” magazine this spring.

Tina waited to put together the exhibit because she had no money. But she’d figured out how she and Emily could travel to Africa on next to nothing, so she knew money for an exhibit would appear when the time was right.

Last November, the Idaho Commission on the Arts gave Tina $1,000 for her African exhibit. The exhibit is important because Sandpoint has picked up a reputation as a racist community, she wrote in her application.

“I felt this would give Sandpoint some positive exposure,” she says.

The money was enough to get Tina started, but not enough to cover the expenses of a monthlong exhibit. Still, she proceeded with confidence that more contributions would come.

Realizing that a photo and artifact exhibit might not attract as many visitors as she’d like, Tina looked for crowd-pleasers.

She asked Sandpoint guitarist Leon Atkinson and the gospel choir from Spokane’s Bethel AME Church to perform. She also booked an African drumming group from Spokane and an African-Cuban percussionist.

She’s still working on scheduling speakers for her Sunday shows.

Tina’s 65 striking photographs of the Tongas of northwestern Zimbabwe will serve as the exhibit’s foundation. Half of the photos are in black and white - no color to detract from weather-worn skin or gnarled toes poking through shoes.

To bring the exhibit closer to home, Tina invited the Spokane Northwest Black Pioneers to contribute some photos and literature on black history in the region.

“To change how people feel, you need to deal with black people in this country,” Pioneers’ historian Jerrelene Williamson says. “That’s where the problem lies.”

The Pioneers’ photos capture 20th century African-American life, primarily in the Spokane area.

Tina doesn’t fear white supremacist interference in her exhibit.

“If it does draw trouble, it’ll be an opportunity for me to learn to face a fearful situation in a peaceful way,” she says. “If I react from a loving center, the hostile energy will dissipate.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo