Montana was my first trip out of the Dayton, so it made me a little nervous. Everybody kept telling me it’s so different from Dayton and yet nobody told me what to expect. I therefore assumed I was going into a cowboy zone. I arrived in Missoula safe and sound to a different environment but not a cowboy zone as I had anticipated, that was disappointing.

Missoula has large tracks of land, sparsely populated, but with a warm feeling. Right from the airport I felt welcomed to the town. Some folks I flew with were curious as to what business I had in Missoula. I guess they don’t receive many African visitors; one woman guessed right when she said I must be visiting the university of Montana, because it’s the only thing in the town, which attracts many foreign visitors. Well, she was right. I was there at the invitation of Denise Dowling, a broadcast journalism professor, who with her students are producing and hosting the “Footbridge Forum” on KBGA 89.9, a campus based FM station. The took the opportunity to see other media houses in Montana - the KPAX TV Station, the student-run radio station KBGA, and KUFM the public broadcaster.

I visited Washington DC on a Washington Link Experience Program as part of the Kettering Foundation’s International Civic Society Fellowship Program and with my colleagues Jolanta Mindewicz from Poland and Ekaterina Lukyanova from Russia. I was taken in by the city, it was nothing like I expected. It has many historical sites to visit and is a true nerve centre of America’s democracy. Washington DC has many streets and sidewalks, a luxury I don’t have in Dayton. I could therefore burn calories walking around sight seeing.

I visited the Capitol building, where both the senate and congress sits. I was amazed at the easy at we secure passes to the Congress and the Senate. Our tour guide, Mary P de Butts was able to secure the passes for us from the office of the speaker of the House of Representatives, Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

My trip to Rapid City South Dakota on March 30/31 was an eye opener for me. I had read about Native Americans in several novels but have never engaged them in conversation before. The closest I have come to meeting one has been my friend Ruth Yellow Hawk who is related to the Lakota’s. I was therefore excited about sitting in meeting with Lakota youth and elders.

The youth met a day earlier to reflect and respond to radio documentaries featuring Lakota elders. It was my first experience with the Talking Stone. The talking stone is Participants sat in a circle and the stone was passed from one person to the other, when the stone go to you, you were encouraged to speak to the issue at hand.