The bullets whizzed overhead in a small African neighborhood in Mozambique. Associate History Professor Jeanne Marie Penvenne looked at her two young children and said, "Well, if it gets worse, we'll hit the dust."
Glancing down to see two inches of dust on the kitchen floor, they all burst out laughing and hid until the gunfire receded. This was not the first time Penvenne had confronted danger, and it would not be the last.
Penvenne, who currently teaches the history course "Angola and Mozambique," has spent years traveling back and forth to Africa, putting herself in the line of fire to study the culture and history of Mozambique. Her research won her a number of prestigious awards, including the U.S. Speaker and Specialist Award for Mozambique/Angola in 1998 and the Fulbright award for Mozambique for 2004-2005. She has also received several teaching awards for distinguished teaching and advising.
Sitting quietly at her desk in East Hall, the small-framed professor appears confident yet deferential. African objects crowd her office, including a Zulu longbow and spear, which she picks up and shows off with obvious pleasure. A large black and white sticker on her dark tailored suit proudly declares, "This is what a feminist looks like."
A scholar of Eastern and Southern African studies and comparative women's history, Penvenne first traveled to Mozambique in 1977 after being awarded three grants, including a Fulbright dissertation scholarship. Her journey was far from easy.
Penvenne encountered some of her first roadblocks even before she got on the plane.
"When I walked into the Fulbright office after my clearance had gone through," Penvenne said, "the woman there ran her finger across her neck as if to slice it open and said, 'You won't last a week. They'll kill you.'"
Penvenne was not discouraged. A former Peace Corps veteran, she had plenty of experience abroad. She had spent time in both Brazil and Portugal, and was fluent in both French and Portuguese.
She decided to take her chances and traveled to Mozambique, embarking on a year-and-a-half-long research study that was largely focused on urbanization and labor migration.
"I had so many questions that the Portuguese government never would have allowed me to ask before Mozambique's independence in 1975," she said. "I wanted to know why workers went to the capital city. Why they migrated to South Africa. What they did there and why they came back."
The answers came in a way she never expected. While interviewing the men at a South African mine labor recruitment center in the capital of Mozambique, the crowd suddenly brought forth a man named Fabian.
"Everyone gathered around, and Fabian began to speak and sing at the same time," Penvenne said. "While chanting, he recited his interpretation of Mozambican history all the way from conquest to modern day politics."
This mix of singing and speaking is what is known as a "praise poem," something Penvenne holds in very high regard.
"Fabian is a historian," she said, "and his poem a piece of history. Each year I begin my classes with Fabian and his story."
Upon returning to Mozambique in 1992 with her husband and two children, Penvenne and her family found themselves in the midst of a raging civil war.
"The beaches were mined, people were being kidnapped," she said.
Penvenne, who was determined to continue her research, laid down a strict set of rules to help her family stay safe.
"Everyone was in the house by nightfall," she said. "And we did our best to live exactly like our neighbors did. I told them, 'If your neighbors are frightened, you should be too.'"
Penvenne said she marveled at how warm, helpful and generous the ordinary Mozambicans were in her small community. Of course, there was the occasional bad apple.
"I was almost robbed one day," Penvenne said. "A man came straight up to me and cut through a bag attached to my hip with a knife." Penvenne immediately grabbed the man's arm, stared him in the eye and watched him walk away, empty-handed.
Each time she lived in Mozambique, Penvenne volunteered to teach English at a local university. Regardless of political, social and economic upheaval, the professor still felt comfortable in the environment there.
"I remember walking home after class every night in pitch dark down Avenue de Carl Marx," Penvenne said. "But no one ever bothered me." Her efforts were rewarded, as many of the students she taught in 1977 and 1993 have gone on to become senior administrators and associate professors in Mozambique.
But Penvenne still laments how universal stereotypes often prevent students and teachers in the West from understanding the complexities of the Mozambican culture.
"In our society, indigenous knowledge just isn't up there with the same prestige as 'scholarly expertise,'" she said. "When I mention the word sorcery, for example, many have preconceived notions about what that might mean. But in Mozambique, sorcery is a power discourse between men and women. Women who say they are possessed by spirits enter a protected, sacred space. Here they may communicate their own history to the community without fear of retribution."
After years of teaching, Penvenne finds the typical Tufts student more prepared than other university students to go outside the box and challenge these stereotypes.
"I taught at Harvard for a while, but Harvard students just aren't adventurous enough for me," Penvenne said. "The Tufts students are the ones willing to go the extra mile."
So what's on the horizon for this daring professor? Penvenne will be taking a yearlong sabbatical to finish her next book on urbanization and labor migration to South Africa.
"I told my husband, 'I don't care if we have to pick and sell apples, I'm writing this book,'" she said. "It's been calling to me for a while now. I'm just going to write and keep on writing."
