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. 

My "Good Things That Happened Today" Journal

As part of my experiment in Ghana I looked not only at how different ways of seeing (through different avatars of myself) changed my experience, but also through the mediums I chose record it in.  This may be the weirdest thing you have ever heard of, but hey, this is a blog so I am allowed to be more personal than a conventional research paper.  I have been trying to work on being more optimistic and thinking positively lately, and right before I flew out my Okasan (step mom, Stacey), gave me this book and told me to write down all the good things that happen everyday.  So part of my nightly routine after field notes and my diary writing was in this little book, making it one of the ways I mediated my experience.  Call me crazy, but it was a large part of my experience, a viable medium, and I think it actually worked!

Cover: It was going to be a surfer, but I guess this was more indicative of the present me, Hawaii being over and all.

Inside Cover: Message from my parents about the purpose of this journal.

Preliminary Predictions and Where I'm Going From Here...

Well, I am back. Not all the way, but I need to start somewhere. It is time to reel in my five avatars and speak as a slightly less skitso, multiple personality disorder victim, and be just Rachel—a name that started to collect a little bit of dust.

Here is an overview of what I am hoping to do for the rest of my time on this blog and a prediction of what I think I captured before I dive into my notes. Time to decode, interpret, and assign the meaning to a polished, tweaked experience. Ghana in retrospect.

I think that my project was a great success in ways I never anticipated, and the way I see it, I can look at this through two different frames. First, how did my avatar—the way I chose to look at my day—affect my experience, and second, how did the medium I chose to record the experience alter what I captured? Here are my preliminary predictions.