The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Michigan in Color
8 — Wednesday, April 6, 2022
As a Christian, my favorite verse in
the Bible is Mark 9:24. “Immediately the
father of the child cried out and said, ‘I
believe; help my unbelief!’”
This is my unbelief:
My
name
is
Sarah
Olumayowa
Olamide Oguntomilade. I come from a
Christian, Nigerian family where names
are very important. It is believed that
when you call someone’s name, you are
declaring or prophesying something
about them, because the words we say
have power. Because of this, my parents
gave me the biblical name of Sarah:, a
woman whose womb was blessed by God,
a name that means princess. I believe
that my love for children and my desire
to be a children’s educator was derived
from this name, while my parents argue
that my love for the finer things in life
was brought about by them naming me
princess. My two middle names are
in Yoruba, the language spoken in my
home and amongst millions of people in
Nigeria and other parts of West Africa.
Olumayowa and Olamide. Olumayowa
meaning “God Brings Joy” and Olamide
meaning “My Wealth Has Arrived.” You
see, these aren’t just names found in a
BuzzFeed article or in a book of a hun-
dred cute names for girls. My parents
truly believed that by naming me this,
they were telling God the desires of their
hearts. Every time they call my name,
it’s a prayer. A prayer for joy and wealth
to enter their household. I wonder how
good God’s Yoruba is?.
My last name comes from a bit of a dif-
ferent place. It was not one chosen but
rather given, a name that has conquered
the test of time. You see, before the mis-
sionaries arrived at Cape of Good Hope,
before the Portuguese arrived in West-
ern Africa, before Great Britain drew the
lines of Nigeria at the Berlin conference,
the Yoruba people believed in a series
of gods. The god of war, Ogun, is one of
them, hence my last name: Oguntomi-
lade. A last name that has almost been
changed a good number of times because
“we no longer subscribe to those beliefs”
and “we don’t want people to think we
are violent people who enjoy war or
revenge.”
Nonetheless, my name is Sarah Olu-
mayowa Olamide Oguntomilade.
The first prayer that I learned was a
classic. “Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.” My little pre-
school mind struggled to understand
how I had a father in heaven when my
dad was the one to drop me off at Sunday
school that day. Regardless, every day
after that, one could hear me pray, “Our
Father who art in heaven, hallowed be
thy name.”
In 2015, I moved to the beautiful city
of Maputo, Mozambique. Now on the
southern shore of Africa, a former Portu-
guese colony, I marveled at the number
of women I met while working with the
United States Agency for International
Development, who mainly spoke their
native tongue of Xangana. Yet what they
could say in Portuguese was the Lord’s
Prayer. Pai Nosso que estais no céu, San-
I wondered
how good God’s Xangana was?.
Two years ago, my mom sent me
an article via WhatsApp (the home of
facts true and untrue) titled “Yoruba is
now an official language in Brazil and
can be taught in schools!.” The article
described how there are enough descen-
dants of West African slaves in Brazil
who retained their maternal tongue of
Yoruba that it can now be considered
one of their official languages. “How
cool is that?” my mother says. While I
understood her amusement towards the
idea that she could communicate with
a significant number of people in Bra-
zil in her mother tongue, I struggled to
find the “coolness” in this fact. I began
to wonder what it sounded like when my
people were on the ships on their way to
Brazil and Southern America. Did they
sing:
Aribiti
Arabata
Oluwa
(God you are the most high. God you
are the most high. You see near and far,
God you are the most high.)
I wonder if God heard their cry. I won-
der if God would have understood it bet-
ter in Portuguese. As I wondered, I began
to wander in my studies and I found
myself in a class last semester entitled
“History of the Spanish and Portuguese
Speaking World.” I began to contemplate
how good God’s Nahuatl, Quechua or
Taino was. I began to contemplate how
good God’s Yoruba, Twi, Igbo or Creole
was. Perhaps the god of war would’ve
been more beneficial to them. Perhaps
the god of war would’ve avenged them.
Perhaps the god of war would’ve under-
stood their cries.
My
name
is
Sarah
Olumayowa
Olamide Oguntomilade.
I rejoiced on the evening of Friday,
Feb. 26 — I could finally escape the
clutches of my unfinished assignments
and email drafts by basking in the light
of 11 glorious letters: Spring Break.
After
struggling
through
two
months with a “just get through this
week” mindset, I was more than ready
to kick back and relax for a week. Dur-
ing break, I woke up at noon, answered
some texts and then went back to sleep
for a few more hours. After finally get-
ting out of bed, I would eat a late lunch
before watching some Netflix or aim-
lessly going through the same three
apps on my phone. I saw a few friends
who were still in town, but I spent the
majority of the week staring at a small,
glowing screen while hugging my old
Hello Kitty plushie in bed.
I had made plans for this highly
anticipated week: I was supposed to
dust off my cello and give Dvoák’s
Cello Concerto in B Minor a quick
whirl, open the piano at home and
practice some Jay Chou and dig around
my closet for some acrylic paints to
mess around with. But the first day of
break was for de-stressing, and so was
the second, the third . . . until break
had melted away like the snow.
I wish I could say the week did me a
lot of good and that it was nice to rest
so much, but the reality was that for an
entire week, what I had intended to be
a well-spent vacation had turned into
an extended depressive episode. The
worst part was that after prolonged
fatigue from months of work, not
only was I unable to truly relax, but I
allowed myself to dismiss the ways my
depression had wreaked havoc, instead
opting for avoidant efforts of “taking a
break” under the guise of “practicing
self-care.”
I had given myself a week to fix
my problems — to “solve” my mental
health issues, restoring it to a condi-
tion just good enough to last me the
rest of the term. I had somehow duped
myself into believing that a week would
be enough to placate my depression
for the remaining month and a half
of school, despite the fact that it had
plagued me for a decade. At the end of
spring break, when I was supposed to
check Gmail and Canvas in order to
make my transition to the latter half
of the term easier, I instead did what
I had done for the other eight days of
spring break — absolutely nothing.
As a result, the first Monday back
from break was agonizing. I skipped
my classes, unable to find the energy
to get out of bed, and forced myself to
nap and try to forget about the assign-
ments I still hadn’t completed — or
even started — yet. When I couldn’t
fall back asleep, I laid in bed and
mourned the time I had dedicated to
rest and recovery, which had instead
been wasted.
But it’s alright, I would think. I can
chug through this term. I did it every
other term, so why not this one too,
right?
The rest of my first week back from
break consisted of me hardly eating
a meal a day, continuing to skip most
of my classes and randomly bailing on
plans with friends in order to stay in
my room for the rest of the week. As
the days went by, my self-destructive
habits made me realize how burnt out
and depressed I was — how the “rest”
that I had taken over the previous week
had not been true rest or self-care.
By never prioritizing self-care and
always putting every other responsi-
bility first, I had never gotten around
to taking care of myself. As I had put
aside this ‘task’ of self-care further
and further until spring break, it was
only until after the break ended that I
realized self-care can’t and shouldn’t
be an isolated event. Rather, it must be
something that I constantly integrate
into my life every day.
When I had skipped enough classes,
I decided to start with reaching out to
professors after checking the printed
syllabi in my folders. It was like an
apology tour, except my set list con-
sisted of songs like, “I Apologize for
My Recent Absences,” “Would It Be
All Right to Receive an Extension” and
of course, the number-one hit single
“Thank You So Much for Your Under-
standing.” Writing the emails took
time, too — it wasn’t that writing them
was difficult, but that I had to first set
aside the feeling that I was no longer
a good student and that my professors
were disappointed in me.
I won’t lie: a few of them were. Read-
ing their responses and immediately
picking up on their disappointed tones
made me feel like my heart was getting
steamrolled, but at the same time, I
knew it meant that I had at least made
small progress. On the other hand,
when professors expressed empathy
and extended kindness to me, I felt
almost empowered to return to class.
Knowing that they were at least aware
(or at best, understanding and com-
passionate) of why I had been a com-
pletely different student than I was
at the beginning of the term made the
prospect of going to class easier — I felt
like I no longer had to hide. Despite
spring break having ended several
days before, after emailing my profes-
sors and then going to class, the burn-
ing feeling of shame from missing class
had eased up a bit. Simply being in the
classroom helped me feel more like a
student than I had in weeks, and going
back to class started to help me with
the other parts of my life as I started
to get back into a routine.
Now, at the end of March, I am still
catching up on assignments. I am still
finding the need to go back to play my
professors a few of my old hit songs,
and there are still days where I am
unable to get out of bed. On these
days, I think of my stomach growling
over spring break because I couldn’t
find the energy to grab a bite to eat,
or the agony of having to send my pro-
fessors another slew of emails about
my mental health while determining
where the line between honesty and
trauma dumping is. While stewing in
my agony, I hug my faded Hello Kitty
plushie, let my steamrolled heart ache
a bit and swallow back the nausea I had
felt from the shame of walking into a
classroom I hadn’t seen in a month.
Now though, while I process the
nausea, I roll around in bed and let
myself answer a few texts before forc-
ing myself to at least sit at my desk. I
sit there, staring vacantly at the wall
for a good 10 seconds before slowly
opening my laptop. I open Gmail and
log into Canvas before starting to
write a to-do list. Even if I only fin-
ish one assignment or even if all I do
is sort through my emails, I know it is
better than staring listlessly in bed for
hours. Sitting at my desk is enough of
an accomplishment for me, and even
though getting out of bed doesn’t mean
my GPA will go up, it means that I have
at least taken one more step in actually
taking care of myself.
My name is
Self-sabotage over spring break
What Trotter means to us
SARAH OGUNTOMILADE
YUNSEO CHO
Special thanks to Karla Bell, Suba (His-
The William Trotter Multicultur-
al Center recently celebrated its 50th
anniversary in February and with each
passing milestone, there comes an even
greater need to preserve the history and
purpose of this building so we do not lose
sight of the communities Trotter is sup-
posed to serve. To learn more about Trot-
ter’s history and its significance to Black
students at the University of Michigan,
I had the opportunity to sit down with
Business senior Karla Bell, who serves as
the Suba (Historian) on the Black Student
Union 2021-2022 Executive Board.
Trotter was originally called Trotter
House and was colloquially known as the
“Black House” amongst Black students.
Directly resulting from the actions of
the first (of three) Black Action Move-
ments, Trotter House was built in 1971 as
a Black Student Cultural Center to meet
the needs of Black students on campus.
When talking about the early beginnings
of Trotter, Bell said, “Black students real-
ly only had Trotter, and it was neither in
a safe location on campus nor well fund-
ed. Trotter was funded and built at the
hands of student labor.”
Trotter House was the host building
for events for Black students, but they
had to risk their safety to be able to use
the space. Bell said, “At the time, Black
people on campus were susceptible to
violence and danger because (Trotter
House) was off-campus in a poorly lit
area. Yet still, they risked their wellbe-
ing to be there.” In 1972, the original
Trotter House burned down in a kitchen
fire so the University bought a build-
ing on Washtenaw Avenue to house the
student center. By 1981, Trotter House
would expand its scope to become a mul-
ticultural student center. As the Trotter
House expanded to include program-
ming for students of all racial minorities
on campus, Black Student Union execu-
tive board members tried to appeal for
increased funding from the University to
expand their efforts in promoting equity
on campus.
In 2013, undergraduate and graduate
students began “A New Trotter Initia-
tive,” a plan to have a new multicultural
center be built at the center of campus.
After three years of advocating to the
University of Michigan administration
for a new building, a $10 million bud-
get was finally approved in 2016 for the
building of The William Trotter Multi-
cultural Center. By 2019, Trotter had offi-
cially found a new home on South State
Street and was open for student use.
Currently, less than 4% of the U-M
undergraduate population is Black, mak-
ing it easy to feel like an outsider in most
spaces on campus. Because of this, Trot-
ter is an essential space for Black stu-
dents. It exists as our place to congregate;
it’s one of the only buildings on campus
that feels as though it belongs to Black
students — a home base of sorts where we
can build fellowship, work together and
exist in the comfort of our own communi-
ty. This is why Trotter is frequently used
by organizations like BSU and HEADS
(Here Earning A Destiny through Hon-
esty, Eagerness, And Determination of
Self) to hold their meetings. Students of
Color, and specifically Black students,
commonly frequent the multicultural
center, which speaks to its necessity in
the community.
For me personally, I find myself in
Trotter after a day of classes more often
than not. I always know I’ll run into at
least a few of my friends every time I step
into the building. Between homework
assignments, I’ll usually take a break
from my work to make conversation with
them and joke around. If I’m not doing
homework or hanging out with friends,
then usually I’m somehow finding my
way into the activities that might be
going on in Trotter that day, like a game
night or a cultural event. There is such an
intrinsic sense of community in Trotter,
which makes it unlike any other building
on campus.
“If you’re coming into Trotter, learn
the history of the space and respect the
effort that it took to have this,” Bell said.
“(Black) students lost their scholarships
for this and faced consequences to have
Trotter as a space.” Everyone who comes
into Trotter, whether it be for personal
use or for an organization, should be
mindful that such a space came direct-
ly from Black activism. There is a rich
history behind how Trotter has trans-
formed into the multicultural center that
we know it as today and this history is
intertwined with the Black Action Move-
ments.
I’m grateful to the Black students who
fought to have a building like Trotter on
campus and as we use the space to build
fellowship amongst underrepresented
groups on campus, it’s imperative that
we continue to pass down the history as
well.
UDOKA NWANSI
Courtesy of Sarah Oguntomilade
Design by Abby Schreck
Design by Udoka Nwansi, Installation by Kayla Tate and Chris Flonoury
— to
health issues,
tthe rest of the