For as long as I can remember I have always been Fascinated by African history and culture. I loved to listen to African Folk tales and Folklore as a kid and I also loved learning about past African leaders. Out of all the many amazing and interesting historical African leaders I have learned about, the one that stood out to me the most was Mansa Musa the ruler of Mali during 1312 C.E . He is mostly known for his vast wealth, his famous pilgrimage to Mecca (Islams holiest city) and his contributions to his kingdom. He was a ruler that wanted to better his empire and his kingdom. During his reign he really focused on the idea of bettering the education system in his kingdom and also making islamic education more accessible. It was shocking to me that not a lot of people knew who Mansa Musa was, so I wanted to educate people about the life and legacy of Mansa Musa and his impact that lasted years after he was gone.
My main reason for making this project was because I wanted to share more about Mansa Musa’s legacy . some-people only know Mansa Musa as the richest person to ever live or for his famous pilgrimage, but not a lot of people know the other things he did for his people and his empire. Mansa Musa was a devout muslim, and he felt that education and islamic education was very important which is why he took the measures that he did and built mosques all around his kingdom so that his people would have the accessibility that they needed. The audience that I wanted to direct this piece to is. mostly young adult muslim girls and boys of African decent because I wanted to educate them more on a ruler that shaped in islamic religion in his empire/kingdom. His actions paved the way for other African countries to take initiative to also make islamic religion more accessible.
The reason why I chose this genre is that I felt as though it was the best and most fun way to get my point across to my audience because my audience are young adults they would prefer a fun way of learning new Information. Creating a poem got my point across and allowed me to give more insight on who Mansa Musa was and his impact while still able to be creative. Most young adults lose interest very quickly or don’t like to read things for a long time because they get bored. which was why I decided to not create a poem that was overly long, but rather create one that had all the information I wanted it to have while also still rhyming and engaging the audience.
At the start of my project I had originally intended on doing a tiktok or a comic on Mansa Musa. I later realized that the comic wouldn’t be such a good idea because with the amount of time that I had to complete this project and individually having to draw every image in the comic would have been very hectic and it would not have come out the way that I wanted because I would be rushing to complete it rather than focusing on the quality of the piece. I then decided to just do a Tiktok video because it is also a very good way to reach my audience since almost every teen or young adult uses tiktok. But during class I heard a student ask if we could do a poem for our project if we wanted to. Then it struck me! I realized I wanted to do a poem because it would be a great way to test my creativity as a poet and I wanted to challenge myself on how well I could make this poem rhyme but also be able to input enough information all while trying to make sure it makes sense to the audience. Starting the poem was easy it was a challenge, I had 3 different poems that I had started working on at the beginning but I was very confident in all 3 of them. so two days before the rough draft was due I started on the poem that I ended up submitting “A heart of Gold”. This poem did take me some time to complete because I wanted to make sure that I pushed myself to see just how far I can take this poem and how far I could go with making this poem have qualities of a poem like rhyming and literary elements and devices.
Now that this project is done, I think my finale unit 3 project turned out really great and exactly how I wanted it to turn out. My project definitely evolved as I went on because in the beginning I hadn’t thought of doing a poem I was thinking of doing a video instead but I then fell in love with the idea of a poem and wanted to give it a shot and see it through. what I would have done differently given all the “time, money and expertise in the world” is that I would have liked to make my poem flow better. While I did do my best to make it rhyme I feel like there were certain parts that just didnt flow together as much as I wanted it to. I am not a great poet but I do love writing poems and testing out my ability to write poems because it is a fun and also challenging way to test my ability to use literary devices, rhymes etc. what I am happiest about is actually being able to complete my poem and it having the structure that it does because there were a couple of times were I just wanted to take the easy way out and create a video instead but I decided to see this through. How I feel having done something like this as a college project is that I really loved the idea of giving students the freedom to chose a topic they are interested in, write a research paper on and also to create any project they wanted with the information they gathered from unit 2. It was a really fun way for us to test our creativity and I’m glad we were given the chance to do a project like this because I really enjoyed it.
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