African Pavilion: Bringing the African identity to Auroville

A new team – Axum, Elene, and Malcolm – has recently stepped forward to manage the African Pavilion, one of the more prominent pavilions in Auroville’s International Zone, due both to its high-visibility location next to the Visitors’ Centre and its regular cultural events. The renewal of the team came in the wake of a turbulent period during which the previous African Pavilion team became unable to cope with the number of visitors and guests staying at the newly made guesthouse and campground. Auroville Today spoke with two members of the new core team about their vision for the future.  

Elene was born in Ethiopia and first came to Auroville in 2003. Her uncle Tekeste was instrumental in establishing the AVI network on the African continent and the African Pavilion in the International Zone. Since the allotment of the land for the Pavilion in 2006, she would come for forest clean-up events on the African Pavilion site and helped with cooking dinners for African students from the surrounding colleges, as well as African Pavilion fundraising events. Malcolm is from America but began working with the African Pavilion when they were looking for a web developer in the winter of 2017. Though initially it was just one of many jobs he had in Auroville, he was drawn to the African Pavilion, and by 2018 both Malcolm and Elene were regularly engaged in Pavilion work. 

How do you see the mission of the African Pavilion?

Elene: I think it changes and evolves with time. At the start, it was just about having a few Africans around who were in Auroville. And by Africans, I mean anyone with origins in Africa.  Today, I see the focus being on understanding what the soul of Africa is and being a centre of research. It is only now that I have started reading more about Africa, because if I am to project this to the outside, I first must have it somewhere inside me: it’s an exploration of myself but also the continent. In regard to the Pavilion, the aim is not to have a final product, but to allow people to come and see it as it grows. 

Malcolm: There is the material aspect of this complex of buildings that has been envisioned for the African Pavilion since 2006. And even before, there was talk that Africa House was going to be a hub for Africa-related activities, personalities, artefacts, studies, etc. All this gives us a very clear direction to walk towards. But it seems more and more that the mission is to experience the different flavours of our culture and the one unifying string that connects us all. I don’t know of many places where Africans can assemble and work for something larger than themselves. It’s the purity of the message “There should be a place on earth…” where we as Africans can be who we are and build a dream together that benefits the entire world.

How is this important to the larger Auroville?

Malcolm: The Mother said that Auroville must be in India because “India is the representation of all human difficulties on earth”. I feel similarly about Africa.  I feel like the core of human unity starts with Africa. It’s the most diverse mix of cultures, so if we can do it, everyone can do it. 

Elene: In Africa, often the conflicts are happening between very similar tribes. It’s a reflection of what is happening inside us. One needs to unify one’s different personalities, with the biggest victory that one can have being the mastery of all the personas we have inside. The unification of Africa is also symbolic of the unification of one’s inner world. 

Working towards a strong African Pavilion brings together large groups of people around one idea. For instance, Malcolm and I are very different, but there is something that connects us, a Venn Diagram of stuff that we share. I wish I could find a term that denotes this feeling that could replace “African”, because it is not just bound to the continent of Africa. It is essentially everyone who truly feels connected to this place of origin. People from this continent have travelled everywhere. And what is the purpose of grouping ourselves together? It’s because if we come together around common material that we all share and other groups come together around theirs, then the two big chunks can merge, as opposed to every little country trying to find common ground with each other. If we see ourselves belonging to one big circle, then it’s easier to move towards the next level of unification.

What is the African Pavilion doing to progress?

Elene: We are fundraising towards Africa House, which is part of the master plan that was made in 2006 by an Ethiopian architect named Brook Teklehaimanot.  Tekeste had organised a competition with various universities in Africa. They were given the site area and information about Auroville and asked to design an “Africa House” that would capture the essence of Auroville, as well as the mixture of African architecture. Brook won and he came here with his designs, which were accepted by L’Avenir, the town development council. That was a few years ago, and so now we are trying to update it with Brook’s gained experience and the present context of Auroville. 

We are a bit limited in what we can do right now with the present structures. Developing Africa House is important because, for instance, we just had a photo exhibition and we had to do it at Bharat Nivas because we didn’t have the facilities here, which defeats the purpose of bringing people to the pavilion. But the structures are coming as well as the people. 

Malcolm: The African Pavilion has been doing cultural events since before there was even land. A cultural centre approach has been used to connect to the general expectation of what a pavilion is with tangible cultural identifiers like dance, food, and music. Our online media presence has expanded too. What we would like is to have more consistent events to constantly keep this flavour in the air, not just with the weekly drumming session; to have this energy and sound so as to attract the kind of people that we want to attract. It’s a public space, so people can come in all the time. 

To develop our space, we have revived the vegetable garden with a variety of flora which can serve our kitchen needs and are collaborating with foresters in Auroville to learn how to diversify and curate our forest. There is constant work to clear the land and secure it with natural and wire fences, funded by the weekly drum sessions. We provide guest accommodation at Habari Guesthouse, which was built on the African Pavilion site in 2019, and strive to make our guests’ stay enjoyable.

Part of our project is to remain connected to “our” land, but not just in a work way. When we go home, we miss this place. Being at the Pavilion and feeling the energy of the place, doing creative things together or relaxing together, we are experiencing human unity. And, hopefully, this is training us. In the same way that in Auroville the 3,000 now are training towards a final population of 50,000, so we are training towards whatever number we are pursuing for the African Pavilion. I set the goal at 100. 

How many people are involved in the African Pavilion now? 

Elene: Three in the core team. But seven or eight in the outer circle. 

Malcolm: It’s like a Rubik’s cube, trying to get people to help with something, finding where they can be productive.

Elene: But we need people who are drawn to this project, who are either African in origin or who resonate with this culture, because if we do it without the people, it’s just going to become a museum. And making another museum is the last thing we want. So we want to do an internship programme. We have a dormitory that is currently being used as a guesthouse, but later we would like to start having students who can stay here and experience Auroville, because another mission of the African Pavilion is to be a bridge between Auroville and Africa. We want to marry the philosophy of Auroville with the traditions of Africa, especially around human unity. We want to do an exchange programme and we want to arrange travels. A lot of people are interested in going back to explore Africa, ourselves included. We have to get updated; we have to remain connected to the values of the continent. 

And we also want to bring personalities here: artists, writers, etc. so that we can have more cultural events on Africa-related themes. Because we are just three people in the core team, and this is a continent of 54 countries. We need people. So many of the things we want to do are just about bringing people in. 

How many African nationalities are represented in Auroville, either as Aurovilians or connected in other ways with the community?  

Elene: In terms of Aurovilians, I think there are close to 20 Africans: South Africans, Ethiopians, Rwandans, Algerians, and an Egyptian. 

Malcolm: And then one of our volunteers from Sudan is applying to be a Newcomer. It would be interesting to see how many Africans apply and just don’t make it. 

Elene: It is so hard to get Africans to come here. Many of those who have started coming to African Pavilion still do not know what Auroville really is, so we are trying to help them understand, step by step.  And if they become Aurovilian, they will probably be the first of their nationality to join. 

Malcolm: The Entry Service’s goal when someone joins Auroville is for them to integrate. So the things that don’t fit within the undefinable box of what it is to be Aurovilian tend to get chopped off. I think the cultural shift, for example, from France to Auroville is far less drastic than the shift from some of the other cultures on the planet to Auroville. My vision, therefore,  is to give more of a subtle feeling of Africa to Auroville, so that when someone comes from Africa, they are not so shocked because they can find something here that feels a little bit like home. 

Elene: Some of the misunderstandings that happen at the beginning of the Newcomer period are from a lack of understanding of other cultures. For instance, there are cultures where discussion of money is a taboo, so if the first thing the Entry Service asks a potential Newcomer is about money, it’s not going to go well. 

Tell me more about how you engage with the African student body in India.

Elene: For many years, African students have been coming to India: they see it as a privileged education. Some African students from Pondicherry University or the surrounding schools meet up regularly and are drawn to Auroville because they have friends here. Currently these African student social groups just hang out, but there is potential for them to be more beneficial and the African Pavilion would like to help in this. We would like the African Pavilion to offer them a social structure like that back in their home countries.

Malcolm: We have an idea to do a programme for Africans in India similar to that of Swadharma, Auroville’s five-week experiential learning programme for young people between the ages of 18 and 30. The range of things that African students come to study in India is immense and the talent is incredible. I believe that it is our mission to create a haven for Africans in India to empower themselves.