Conclusion on Mediums

Not only was the avatar, or perspective I chose to see my experience in, important to my project on the authenticity of experience in Ghana, but the mediums I chose to record it in.  The avatar and the medium were equally responsible for the representation I came up with.  After my experience, I think that there are certain avatars that work better with certain mediums.  If you are someone who relates to one more than another, then considering those recommended mediums could be beneficial.

First, for all students or travelers interested in going out into the field I recommend a jotting notebook and a diary.  A jotting notebook because our memories are just too fragile, and you can lose important information as well as a viable medium, and a diary because there will always be something you want to express that isn't field note appropriate.  

Ava- The Romantic Anthropologist- This avatar was the student avatar.  Having an academic approach with course contracts, books, etc for this experience was great for me, but I realize that might not be for everyone.  I felt like I got more out of it having had that mindset.  To me, it did not feel forced, and it helped me stay positive when dealing with culture shock and some of the other things that come with integrating into a new community.  If you are someone who relates to her, I found that typed field notes were better than handwritten field notes.  I had a lot more notes when I was using a computer. 

Books and Goodreads.com

And I thought I was done.  HA!

Okay, so this is after the "conclusion" post, but it is all part of documenting the process, right?  Well turns out there are a lot more things I need to mention-ways that I mediated my experience, etc. that I want to make note of if we are talking about the authenticity of experience within different mediums and worldviews, or in my case, my avatars. 

Maybe it is the fate of the English major to mediate life and experience through books.  I read a total of fifteen books for my course contracts in Ghana, to say nothing of all of the research and materials I read when composing my project proposal before entering the field.  The books I read before this summer helped orient me with some of the themes and scenes I was to expect (in the best way that a book can though).  On the other hand, the books I read during my experience helped me make sense of the present and the day to day happenings.  I particularl related to characters like Adela in A Passage to India, and I think that reading this in the field helped me to reevaluate my limited perspective, or at least put into the proper context.  In adition, things were clarified, especially in the books by African writers like Ama Ata Aidoo and Ben Okri.  Points of view that are difficult to access as a white outsider were easier to understand by looking at some of the narrators of these stories, and the themes and cultural practices were great to parallel with my experience in Ghana.  Books I read once I got home also helped me make sense of what I have been through, and I was surprised that everything I read always related to me in that instance.  Heart of Darkness for example, struck home talking about his return to England in a way I never read it before.  

Conclusions

This summer I set out to Ghana with an idea.  An experiment.  A crazy out there theory based project that I struggled to describe in one single sentence.  I wanted to know more about the nature of experience and the authenticity of travel documentation.  It was frustrating to see how European explorers like Henry Morton Stanley and Joseph Conrad had contributed to the stereotype of a “dark continent” of Africa based off of their limited interpretations of their experiences.  As a writer myself, I understand the desire to experience and the need to try to express these experiences as a personal kind of truth.  Still, how often do we consider the nature of how we experience a world foreign to ourselves, or the “truthfulness” or consequential effects of these accounts in regards to their cultural authenticity?  Whether these truths are more “truthful” than what really happened, we could find a copious amount of arguments stemming as far back as Aristotle’s Poetics, but truth was not what I was questioning here.  I was more interested in authenticity.   These questions were the fuel of my project proposal.  A lot has happened since I wrote my objectives, but I have been pleased to see that my project was a success.  Our experiences are indeed significantly subjective based on the way we see the world and the mediums we chose to record it in. 

Coursework and Cultural Proofs

Another very important way that I mediated my experience was through ten credits of BYU course contracts.  In order to conduct my research on the authenticity of experience, not only was the avatar, or the lens I used to see my experience, vital, but also the ways I recorded it and how and why I spent my day doing what I was doing.  A larger factor in that was in the classes I was required to take going into the field.  I ended up taking Travel Writing, West African Literature, Cultural Proofs, and a 1 credit IAS course for the Kennedy Center.  At times it was frustrating when my coursework got in the way of say, watching the World Cup, but after looking over my field notes I can now see what a crucial role these contracts played in the experience I had. 

Pros:

• Cultural Proofs- a three credit class that had different cultural immersion activities that helped me integrate in the community on a deeper level.  All of the activities I selected have been published on this blog.   Learning names, mapping the village, and singing with the neighbors all helped me establish valuable friendships.  While sometimes these required activities seemed like busy work, they really did help me build rapport in the community.  They were really valuable to my experience
• Heightened my sensitivity to things that could be overlooked without putting in the effort
• Was able to relate my experience to the different books that I was reading for my classes
• It gave me a much more meaningful experience than if I had skipped along as a tourist

Cons:

• There were some days when I had to stay home all day to catch up on work instead of experiencing (FN:40:1)
• Got stressful at times when I started qualifying my data (FN:40:3)
• Sometimes the formal coursework felt less personal and were not only more difficult to write, but were not as enjoyable to read, also running the risk of being like a book report instead of being personal to my experience
• Being in Ghana made me realize that there can be a gap between real life and a book (FN:36:12)

To put the weight of coursework on my particular experience into perspective I wonder how different my project would have been if I would have had different activities for cultural proofs, if I was taking a poetry class instead of travel writing, and if I would have been reading a cultural anthropology book rather than African literature.  Each played a significant part in the way I experienced each and every day.

Photo credit to the carpedimenproject on flickr

The Empire Writes Back- Bill Ashcoft, etc

The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures by Bill Ashcroft

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Reading this book was extremely helpful in putting postcolonial literature into perspective.  Considering the content, it was also fairly easy to digest.  Until reading this book I had been frustrated by some of the slang and accents of “english” (the different, but not lesser evolution of the English language in various countries) of postcolonial literature, or discouraged when I was not given a dictionary to make sense of it.  I still have a lot of questions, especially since my personal experience in Ghana, Africa this summer and the lack of literature in the school system, but overall this was the voice of clarity that I was waiting for.

I really appreciated the history lesson in English literature as a “privileged academic subject,” not that long ago (3).  Until I came to Ghana I never realized just how elitist my major, English, seems to be.  I used to read Victorian novels and covet the leisure of the upper classes, but that is probably me.  It is the useless on an everyday scale.  A book will not help me feed my family or till the farm.  These things that I have dedicated my life to studying are just that.  A privilege.  Something that few others could ever enjoy.  I feel ethnocentric in even being disappointed that the kids don’t read.  Why should they be reading the English classics from the “center?”  This book seems to argue that the “center” is an illusion, yet another concept imposed through colonialism.   

Walden- Henry David Thoreau

Walden and Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is saturated with the kind of quotes you would frame on a wall or see in motivational posters found in dentist offices.  The ideal that he talks about is something I have always longed for, and I love the messages he shares (even though there are some problems with the authenticity of his experience—a mile from town, mom doing laundry, etc).

To live consciously, to “be awake” and thus be alive, not wasting life, and living simply, are all things we could probably heed a little more.  I crave all of these things when I am bogged down with the mundane, monotonous tasks of daily living.  But this was surprising to me in some regard.  It seems to be the anti-travel narrative.  It is about changing the way you think, your state of mind, and as Thoreau beautifully put it, “to crave and paint the very atmosphere” from “which we look.”  This idea that we can “affect the quality of the day,” no matter who we are or where we are, seems to be an argument against the need to go far far away in the pursuit of travel to “live deliberately” (74).  Still, I think it can be fun do to do both, though I recognize the necessity of having that stability of mind no matter where you happen to be.  I think it is hard, especially being back from Ghana, to retain the peace and joy I felt when things did not seem so go-go-go.  When life was not marching to a clock, etc.  I hate it when I look around in a crowd or in a restaurant and everyone seems so down and dejected.  Do most men really “live lives of quiet desperation”(17)?

The Famished Road- Ben Okri

The Famished Road by Ben Okri

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was my first read, and favorite, out of my recent selections from West African authors.  The use of magical realism is very fitting, combining the spiritual beliefs with everyday life, very much like Wole Soyinka and Amos Tutuola have done before.  The cyclical plot structure also intensified the genre.  It felt like a lot was happening but going nowhere fast, reminding me of Yeat’s poem “Things Fall Apart” where “the center cannot hold.”  Yet, having lived in Ghana, Africa while reading this book, I had a different experience with it than I think I would have otherwise.  While there are countless things to talk about, I want to look at the review on the back cover of my copy from Boston Globe, who said, “that Okri should have wrestled such a book from the miseries of Africa life is all the more astonishing.”  That phrase “miseries of Africa life,” is something I want to look at a little closer.

      This was the first book I read in the field.  Dealing with culture shock, language barriers, a new diet, health issues, and the new scene it sometimes made it look like that phrase had a lot of truth to it.  Trying not to be ethnocentric, but the anthropologist in me had troubles romanticizing hungry people and dying children.  How do you reconcile with this coming from a Western paradigm?  It was in the midst of this struggle that I came across the speech of Azaro’s father to call him back from the spirit world.  “We have sorrow here, but we also have celebration.  We know the special joys.  We have sorrow, but it is the sister of love, and the mother of music” (337).  More than ever did I realize that everyone suffers, no matter where you are in the world.  All life is full of suffering.  It is the human condition.  No one is exempt.  In America it is just different.  And last I checked no one has cheated death yet.

Through the Dark Continent- Henry Morton Stanley

Through the Dark Continent:Volume 1 by Henry Morton Stanley

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I think I would rather get hit by a bus than try to read the second half of this 1000 paged narrative. I had to read it for a class to try to see where the "Dark Continent" stereotype began (the attitude towards Africa since European explorations and commentaries, like this, that Africa is dark, uncivilized, evil, dangerous, etc.) This was probably the most racist book I have ever read.  My earlier comments on this narrative can be found here.

Hardly anything is redeeming about this book, other than getting a snap shot of how people really did view this continent hundreds of years ago. The countless references to landmarks and descriptions were painfully boring, but the attitudes towards the death of natives is what bothered me the most. If a whiteman died, he would get a few pages and maybe a cute little sketch to mark the chapter. Even a dog would get at least a half of page. Yet, the natives who guided him along that died along the way were barely mentioned.

A Harvest of Our Dreams- Kofi Anyidoho

A Harvest of Our Dreams With Elegy for the Revolution by Kofi Anyidoho

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Of all of the books I read for my African Readings class this summer, this was by far the most problematic for me.  I wrote a paper about it here, but in general I was really confused who his intended audience was.

Anyidoho, like other African writers, writes in some local words and phrases instead of translating them, yet does not include a dictionary.  I would think that this makes the work more "authentic" if it is speaking to the native population and blatantly ignores the West, but when I went to the Ghanaian students and asked for clarification of who "Uncle Demanya" or the various God references were, they were just as clueless as I was.  If the students didn't have that cultural literacy, and if I am clueless, even having spent some time in Ghana, who is the intended audience?

Heart of Darkness- Joseph Conrad

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The first time I read this book I was in high school.  I hated it.  I could not even get through it, let alone understand it.  The second time was in the second half of British Literature class; surprised I found that I really enjoyed it.  That was before I knew what Achebe and others have said (Achebe called Conrad a "bloddy racist), and before I realized there was a lot of truth to that.


Now here I am.  My third time through.  I have been to Ghana.  I am home now.  Where do I put this book?  How do I wrestle with it?

I have been on both sides of the debate, but now I am back to the foggy gray middle ground after my experience in Ghana this summer.  One of my best students approached me when I was rereading Heart of Darkness.  I asked him if he had ever read the book.  "No."  I asked him if he had ever heard of the book.  He again replied, "no."  I continued to explain why it could be a problematic text.  I will never forget his response to me.

Nervous Conditions- Tsitsi Dangarembga

Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Reading this book in Ghana was a unique experience.  It was amazing to me how the issues seemed to line up with my personal experience that week.  Frightening really.  I guess I knew that others did not have the same privileges that I did as a woman living in the United States, but it was weird to see that by reading this book and looking at Nyasha, that I had a better perspective on what it means to be a woman at home.  Actually, women are not equal.  Don't believe me?  Tell that to my best friend who got dumped because she wanted a PHD and to keep her own last name.  We are much better off than say, the narrator of this book, but being a woman has implications.  Perhaps they are just expressed differently, like eating disorders and image obsession.  I think this books says a lot about the challenges of being a woman no matter who you are or where you were brought up.

A Harvest of Our Dreams in Perspective: The Place for Literature in the Ghana School System

This past summer I had the opportunity to conduct research at a secondary school in the Ashanti region of Ghana.  It was here I first encountered A Harvest of Our Dreams, a collection of early poetry by the Ghanaian poet Kofi Anyidoho.  One of the students, who I will call Ama, was reading a pristine library copy of the volume and came to me trying to make sense of the poem, “A Harvest of Our Dreams.”  Unfortunately I could not give her all of the assistance she sought because I too did not understand the cultural references to “Ootsa of the sea” or “Uncle Demanya” mentioned in the poem (Anyidoho 7).  With no glossary, no accessible Google for miles, and an education system swimming in colonial influence, what chance did Ama, or any student in Ghana, have to understand Anyidoho’s poem?  After careful consideration of Anyidoho and his messages I have discovered that the reasons why A Harvest of Our Dreams fails to be understood among the local community is because of an education system uninterested in preserving cultural identity and indifferent to literature.  By using textual evidence from A Harvest of Our Dreams, secondary sources, and my own person experience I will show how this particular brand of illiteracy is caused by the loss of traditional values in the adopted British school system, the estrangement from the local language, and the emphasis on the practicality of speaking English.

A Passage to India- E.M. Forster

A Passage to India by E.M. Forster

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of the best books I have ever read. I would give it a six star rating if I could. Forster is an amazing author and brings up some interesting tensions between England and her former empire in a way I had not previously been exposed to. Can't rave enough about this one.


This idea of an echo is fascinating to me. This inability to establish meaning until the event has past seems to be a main theme throughout the novel, and that can be seen especially through Aziz and his perspective on the friendship he had with Mrs. Moore, the English woman. The thought that "most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talk that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence" is profound (125).It seems depressing really, but there is something to this, especially in terms of the authenticity of travel writing.

No Sweetness Here and Other Stories- Ama Ata Aidoo

No Sweetness Here and Other Stories by Ama Ata Aidoo

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Aidoo does a great job of showing some of the current issues that are at the heart of modernization in Ghana today.  These short stories have quite the range of perspectives to give a broad picture of what it looks like to be Ghanaian, whether you are living in a small village in the north or are living the city life of Accra.  It also looks as the views of both men and women, elders and children, and this unique blend gives a very universal flavor to her themes and messages.

In "Everything Counts" there is a line that says "one did not really go to school to learn about Africa" (2).  I had the opportunity to do research at a secondary school in Ghana and found that this was more true than not.  The library shelves were full of donated copies of English Romantic Poets, European explorations of Africa, and outdated United States history textbooks.  Although I think they are incorporating more African literature into the curriculum, there is definitely a shortage of literature appreciation in the Ghanaian community until reaching the university level (which is not an option for the vast majority of the population).  I cannot help but think there is a lot of truth to what Aidoo is saying here.

The Palm-Wine Drunkard and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts- Amos Tutuola

The Palm-Wine Drinkard and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Amos Tutuola

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

These two stories were a great find! Savoring something like a fairytale by Brothers Grimm and a didactic morality play, but not at the same time. This form and tone seemed entirely unique, and reading the forwarded biography I second the claim that it is "perhaps fortunate that his schooling ended too early to force his story-telling into a foreign style" (10). Written in the 50's, this book was one of the first acknowledged stories to come out of West Africa.

Story telling is an art that, in my experience, seems to have been abandoned in the current Western African school systems aimed at a Western education. These tales seem to have that flavor of that oral tradition, said to be incomparable in a Western context.

I believe the most entertaining of the stories was "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts." The magical realism seems very fitting to the subject, a combination of spiritual beliefs and day to day life of a traditional African. Fears of "the Bush" and the adventures our narrator goes through take us into the mind of a brilliant imagination, allowing us a taste of some of the rich nature of traditional stories.

Arrow of God- Chinua Achebe

Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An interesting final book of a series of Achebe's tragedies, said in Achebe's introduction the book he is "most likely to be caught sitting down to read again."  Arrow of God is saturated in traditional themes and tensions from colonial influence and has some great proverbs!  My favorite proverb was that "a man who asks questions does not lose his way" (204).  There seems to be a lot of truth in that.  I think that many of the themes in this book can be tied up in the proverbs, which is part of a rich cultural heritage.

At first I struggled to understand the basic plot, but after keeping a list of the character names and vocab that kept popping up I was able to sort it out.  I highly recommend doing that if you are having a difficult time.  It is worth the extra bit of effort.

Collected Plays 1- Wole Soyinka

Collected Plays:  Volume 1 by Wole Soyinka

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


One of the first things I noticed about "A Dance in the Forest" is that it is not not very nationalistic, even though it was performed for the celebration of Nigerian independence in October 1960.  If anything it seems like a warning to move forward rather than get stuck in a past mindset.


There are also some pretty serious critiques of some of the changes due to modernization.  Rola comments that "this whole family business sickens me," to which Obaneja responds, "it never used to be a problem" (9).  From my experience in Ghana this summer I noticed that there is a serious tension between the traditional family (extended family, cousins, uncles, etc) and the nuclear family that has been introduced.  Disputes over land and inheritance and the whole view of family life have been in flux due to Western influences.

Sporatic Reading Report

The fifty-pound Through the Dark Continent is consuming most of my time. I am not seeing anything stylistic that intrigues me, but I do find it interesting that it maintains the Victorian style of writing that I have read in my last five Victorian novels. The difference is the content, and it surprised me to find it in the history section of the library. Henry Morton Stanley is extremely subjective and aesthetic about his writing, and in many places I can make out the thin veil of his limited portrayal. It reinforces my desire to do this project in Ghana because I can certainly see how this book contributed to the Dark Continent stereotype. Maybe I will notice a pattern and do an interesting counter argument of his observations using his same style.

My goal is to have read Through the Dark Continent and the packet for my travel writing course before I take off. So far finals preparation has not allowed me to practice imitating the styles, but I have had time to read through a few.

Robert Service’s “The Wanderlust” is something I feel I can certainly relate to. I like the dark tone it takes on, and I think it is more fitting for the real nature of traveling. I’m not sure why he has organized his stanzas the way he has, but it seems to split in two different kinds of voices. The even numbered stanzas seem to be more lyrical. I have never thought of constructing a poem this way, and I might want to try it and dramatize two distinct voices. Something to take a closer look at.

“The Learning Astronomer” by Walt Whitman was a poem I have read before. It just reminds me why I am going to interact with Ghana instead of studying it from a textbook. It is also short and simple enough that I think I can try to do a writing exercise off of it.

The worst of finals are over, time to make some spit wads!