I was having a conversation with Heather and she mentioned that my messages have become negative. She was confused because she was under the impression that I was having a “good” time in Ghana and that my experiences so far have been positive, yet my blogs sound negative and a bit harsh. I could feel myself becoming defensive, wanting to deny any bad sentiment and reassure her that I am having a great time and that I am incredibly content and thankful for my experiences. I held back the urge and thought about what she was brought up. It’s true actually, the last few things that I have written have been critical and they have described confrontational situations. I think that in a way my thoughts may be perceived as cynical, but I’m not that cynical is the write word to use. I’ve been in this country for over four months now and I’ve traveled across the majority of the landscape. I’ve eaten dinner at expensive international restaurants in the heart of Accra and I’ve slept in bare and basic guesthouses in the most rural areas of the north. I’ve chatted with young children, university students, businessmen, and old-timers about Ghana about America and all other sorts of things. I’ve done my best to accept everything that Ghana has to offer and I’ve attempted to do so with out reservations, with an open mind and an open heart. As the freshness wears off and the excitement of being in a new place subsides reality tends to sink in a bit more heavily. When I started to have a handle on my life here and slip into a routine; to know what I liked and disliked, my messages became a bit more critical…possibly. I’m not convinced that critical has to have a negative connotation attached to it necessarily. What it comes down to is the fact that I have some kind of responsibility for portraying Ghana and my time here in a fair and balanced manner. Of course I am not writing a travel guide or a published article, but the people reading my accounts are probably forming some of their own opinions about Ghana based heavily on what I have been saying. If I raved endlessly about how great the country is and how wonderful the food and the culture are then no doubt I those of you reading would form positive opinions about Ghana. If I complained about how hard life is and how easy it is to get sick and how impossible it is to ever fit in then I would most likely be guiding opinions in a different direction. That is the irony of being in a place like Ghana. Ghana is everything at once. The people are strong and beautiful; the country reveres foreigners and prides itself on unbelievable hospitality. The culture is rich and old yet it is dying quickly. The streets are crowded and filthy trash overflows from open sewers and the sky is thick with pollution and smoke from burning heaps of rubbish. The diet is simple and the culture restrains people from trying new things. The dominant religion is Christianity roped on the back of colonialism and packaged in authority and control. Many beaches second as public lavatories and petty crime and theft are rampant. Corruption seems to rot through every layer of society from the top of government to the bottom of the streets. As a student and a traveler I have more freedom I this country than I have ever felt before. If I want to travel I just go because I’m sure that if I get lost there will be someone to help me find my way. Random people are genuinely interested in who I am and where I come from. Friends invite me to their home and into their places of worship. All of these things are happening right now, its impossible to experience all of the good without the bad. For those of you who desire order in your lives, who need everything separated and organized into its proper place Ghana is not the place for you. I don’t think that I have become cynical at all. If anything I have become realistic and I have been honest. I am biased that’s a given. My experience is unique the way that I see the world is not independent from the way that I have been raised within it. In my own defense, although I’m not sure who is judging me maybe I am judging myself, I am not bitter and I am not cruel. I most definitely recognize problems and I always look for solutions, but even that has changed.
I received a newspaper clipping from home about UC Berkeley and its recently created institute for development studies. The article focused mainly on how the institute proved somehow that my generation, the Millenials or Generation ‘Me’, as we are popularly referred to are not completed self absorbed, narcissistic, spoiled drones. In fact we care about starving children and poverty and the AID’s and we want to study these things and we want to solve these problems. Generation ‘me’ wants to help and therefore we can be selfless individuals and global citizens who want to change the world. The article was very positive and uplifting, it gave off the sense that as the world seems to be spiraling out of control there are some people who are working hard to do the right thing. I should have felt better, I should have been proud…I mean UC Berkeley is practically in my backyard at home and here I am in Ghana, a developing country, so I should understand and appreciate what the institute for development is trying to do. Strangely, that’s not how I felt. Call disillusionment or cynicism or whatever you want, but the truth is the idea of rich white people sitting in fancy conference rooms and lecture halls arguing over theories and academics does not stir up those grand feelings of altruism that they should. It reminds me of Anne Rein’s novel The Fountainhead. Without getting into too much detail I’ll just say that she has a crazy social philosophy in which the altruists are the bloodsuckers and the selfish are the champions. On the face of it that sounds ridiculous, but Rein is quite convincing. The problem as I see it is that the Berkeley institute is still operating within the same system as all of the development theories and schemes have before. It is still people and ideas from the outside being forced in. If you send someone to clean up my house, yet I don’t see the point in keeping it clean how long do you think it will stay spotless? I say lets stop telling people how to live especially when we have no idea why they are doing what it is they do in the first place. We try to implement plans without even understanding the motivations behind the people we are ‘trying’ to help. Is it really selfless because I see ambition and desire and maybe a need to justify how we live at home as motivation for the whole ordeal? Now look what’s happened I’ve gotten so far off track. I started all of this with the intention of explaining that in fact I am a happy person and a positive person and all I’ve done is raise more criticisms. Well, I’m everything all at once then…I can smile and tell you what I see wrong and there is nothing false in my expression.
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