My Group as a Mediator

I think I have come to terms with one thing. This blog, and this making sense of my experience in Ghana process, will NEVER END!!!!!

I forgot a serious part of my experience in my conclusions on the authenticity of travel documentation. My group. My six obruni brothers and sisters. Without them, my experience would have been incredibly different. We all act and behave differently when we around around different people, and so much of my analysis of the day to day events were because I talked them over with Chase, or vented my frustrations with Maggie. Things also tend to be a lot more funny when someone is there to witness it. Pretty much everything you currently see on my blog would all be different if I would have set out for Ghana solo.

It helps that we all love each other. I still see them all on a weekly basis. No doubt they have been a positive influence on my field study, but I can't help but wonder how much more I would have immersed in the culture had I been alone. Maybe picked up more Twi? Made more friends? Won't know now, but it would have made for a different experience altogether.

So What?

And we come back to that question of authenticity....

There is a proverb in Ghana that says, “one should not believe all stories narrated by a solitary traveler.”  Considering biased, inaccurate travel memoirs such as Henry Morton Stanley’s Through The Dark Continent and many others who have contributed to poor representations of the “cultural other,” I could not agree more.  However, I do think that the one traveler in our proverb has the capacity to narrate several different stories, and I think my experience is an example of how that could be possible.


Clifford Geertz is well known for his idea of “thick description,” the concept that having several layered meanings and interpretation is what gives ethnography a dimensional richness.  There is a concept in film that Professor Benjamin Unguren spoke on at the 2010 BYU Inquiry Conference called the “iterative film.”  By showing a film, and then filming the reactions of the subjects watching a film about themselves, you are essentially able to give your representation more dimension.  Can we not do this in writing by integrating other mediums and viewpoints?  Maybe I am harsh on Stanley, given that his one medium and viewpoint was much more limited than what we currently have access to, but is it not time that we take advantage of these new opportunities to enhance our own experiences and refine our limited portrayals of it?

While we must understand how fragile the nature of experience is (which is evident based on how different my experience could be depending on the avatar and medium I chose), recognizing that we can get a more accurate representation when we combine a few different viewpoints and mediums could be beneficial as we continue to undergo the process of writing creative nonfiction, and travel writing in particular.  Of course we can never have a completely authentic telling of an experience, but by adding more dimension to our representations this approach might get us one step closer.

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. 

Ava- The Romantic Anthropologist Avatar

As part of my field study project on the authenticity of experience, I looked not only at how different mediums of recording impacted my research, but also on the way I chose to see.  These different lenses I tried on I called avatars, or different parts of my personality that mediated the way I viewed what I was experiencing.  Having Ava, my romantic anthropologist, as an avatar was a life saver.  Being a student, and a clueless twenty something American who knew little about Ghana, this avatar allowed me to be romantic about my adventures and descriptive in my notes as I went along.

As an avatar, Ava was fairly straight forward and was probably the most stable of my avatars.  She underwent the least amount of evolution in the field.  Here are some of the things I learned as I saw through her eyes during my experience.

Pros:

1.  Romantic Spin- Like my "good things that happened today" journal, trying to be Ava helped me see my experience in a more romantic light.  By trying to see through that lens I was prone to have a better day, dealt with culture shock better, and handled different situations with more grace than an avatar like Gipsy (FN:7:18, FN:8:13, FN:17:1, FN:21:10, FN:23:1, FN:83:1, FN:84:3)
2. Productive- I got many more pages of field notes by far with Ava.  I found that being her was best in busy situations or when I was at school.  Whenever I was a student, this was the best choice of avatar to experience that moment, especially when coupled with some good jots (FN:18:17, FN:18:23, FN: 22:1, FN:22:321, FN:23:31, FN:27:1, FN:27:25, FN:62:32, FN:62:37, FN:69:1).
3. Observations- Since Ava is supposed to be more of anthropologist, I also recorded much more observations.  Some of them might not have seemed important at the time, but the actions of people and the things that they said could potentially have a lot of value looking back someday.  It also helped me be more aware of how to handle social situations (FN:17:3, FN:27:28).

Myra- The Photographer Avatar

In order to look at how limited experience really is, I chose to look not only at how the medium I recorded in impacted my experience, but also at the way I chose to see it in.  I divided different parts of my personality into different avatars to show these different view points and how different my experience was by being different avatars.  My photographer avatar, Myra, has been quite the learning experience.  The medium of digital photography itself offers a lot of questions about the authenticity of experience and brings in a lot of ethical questions.  However, what interests me the most about my Myra experiment was the difference between an “essence” and an “authentic” photograph. 

Somewhere along the lines I realized that my photograph experiment was failing.  I did not feel right about “taking” pictures of people that I did not know with little intention of giving anything back in return.  It made me serious question National Geographic, and more than ever I believe that establishing proper rapport is necessary to get those kinds of images.  Out of my frustration, I developed a new idea.  I would take a picture every hour on the hour and juxtapose that to the “essence” picture, or what I considered the posed National Geographic type of image that would go in a portfolio.  They are not pretty to look at, but it shows a more accurate presentation of my experience.  Granted, it is not purely authentic.  I could have taken a picture on the half hour, or the five-minute mark, and had a completely different experience.  I just think that it is one step closer to authenticity. 

Here is a slideshow of one of my favorite days where I did this every hour on the hour experiment.  To see the more of these photos click here.

Shelley- The "Experiencer" Avatar

In order to look at how fragile and limited our experiences are, I chose to conduct a project that looks at this phenomenon through analyzing the medium I recorded in, as well as the avatar, or aspect of myself I chose as a lens for that day.  Like my native avatar, Akua, my “experiencer” avatar, Shelley, was a little problematic.  Here are some of the reasons why I had to change my attitude when it came to this way of seeing my experience.

1. Because the essence of Shelley was about being in a moment and letting that dictate the experience, I was not able to plan for it.  I could not plan a whole day because it only came in glimpses.  A moment could not be planned for, even if I was open and receptive to it (FN:11:1-4, FN:26:2-3, FN:39:9, FN:41:2-3, FN:60:5, FN:60:13, FN:87:12, FN:88:5).
2. This avatar came to be what the others thought of as the “ideal.”  Because I had previously decided that she would not have a voice, and could only be seen from the point of view of the other avatars, this got a little tricky.  It was easier when I could show how my other avatars dropped their guard and tried to be more like Shelley.
3. There was also a lot of development with Shelley in the field, as with all of my avatars.  While I was still trying to figure out how to be her, I tried a new approach where I was kind of a yes man.  I agreed to do everything as long as it was honor code appropriate and safe.  It did open a few windows of opportunity, some more awkward than others, and I think that my experience was changed because of it (FN:41:23, FN:41:2, FN:58:1).
4. Because this avatar was not supposed to have a voice, it made field notes an issue.  To not take notes or write seemed almost impossible.  I would think that everything was passing me by, or try to memorize everything to record later.  It did not work.  I did not realize until trying to be Shelley that just experiencing and not making sense of it is a lot harder than we think. 

My conclusion for this avatar is that she could not be planned for.  If a moment arose where she could have a better experience than my other avatars, then I would switch into her and let the moment consume me.  Otherwise, it was more beneficial to be someone with a voice.

Photo credit to hm on flickr

(More data on Shelley can be found in my field notes FN:18:27, FN:26:5, FN:39:1, FN:39:4-5, FN:60:1-2)

Akua- The Native Avatar

In setting out to conduct my field study project on the authenticity of experience, I decided to look at the different ways my experience showed limitations and biases based on the medium I used to record, as well as the lens, or avatar, I used to see my actual experience.  As I have mentioned before, trying to be Akua, my native avatar, turned out a lot differently than I anticipated.  There are two main reasons why I think this was the case. 

1. I am not a native.  I cannot see like a native, let alone try to think and act like one.  Maybe if I would have spent a few years or decades among the community I could have pulled this off, but in just a short three months this was not going to happen  It was not like I could just go out and experience a day like a native would.
2. Language was a problem.  Again, if I would have had more time or language skills I might have been able to figure out how to write a native avatar, but the only luck I had was writing an aesthetic overlay of local phrasing.

I think that the closest to knowing how a native would think would be when I was trying to be Shelley.  Eating with my hands, being in a moment with the family, etc.  I found that these avatars seemed to overlap, except that Shelley was more feasible.  If I were to do this project again I think that I would merge these two avatars.

Photo credit to Heart of Afrika Designs on flickr

(Data can be found in field notes FN:16:1, FN:16:5-7, FN:16:18, FN:18:24, FN:22:24, FN:42:24, FN:58:8)

The Medium of Field Notes

When looking at the limitations of a field study, both the way I saw the experience (in avatars, or different aspects of my personality) as well as the medium I used to record my findings had a significant impact on my project.  Field notes was an extremely important medium I used. They are the delight of all field study students. Field notes are an interesting medium to look at, but with my computer luck I got to experience the joys of doing both written and typed notes. The way that I physically recorded my field notes actually changed a lot of what I documented. I think it is safe to say that “field notes” can be interpreted (and implemented) a lot of different ways. There is not one single answer.


Typed Vs. By Hand Field Notes: Compare and Contrast

Details- By typing up field notes I was able to record a lot more of the details that happened in the day than I did with handwritten notes. The most obvious evidence for this is that my typed field notes were much longer than my handwritten ones.

Corrections- I am the world’s worst speller. Spell check is a good friend of mine. I was also given the freedom to go back and insert ideas that I had forgotten or reorganize my thoughts if something made more sense typed somewhere else. Once I had to do notes by hand I lost that freedom. I could not go back, so I ended up with a lot of writing in the margins and PS’s. In general it was less linear than typed notes.

Easier- Because typing is easier than hand writing, certain activities like interviews were much better to do on a computer. They would have taken me a week to write up if I would have conducted the interviews after my computer crashed. It was easier on my hand, and I noticed that when I was hand writing notes I wrote less in my diary that night.

Digital Photography as a Medium: Benefits and Limitations in Fieldwork

As part of my research, I looked at how my experience was mediated by both the mediums I chose to record my experience as well as the actual way I viewed my time in Ghana.  By dividing parts of my personality into different lenses, which I called avatars, I was able to better see these limitations.  I will talk about Myra, my photographer avatar, and what I discovered with her in terms of an “essence” vs. authentic picture, but I think that since digital photography is so encompassing I want to break it down and look specifically at it as a medium through which I filtered my experience in Ghana.

Walter Benjamin is a great resource for understanding the digital photography as a medium.  It has altered the world of art and assisted in a push towards postmodernism by its lack of relationship with an original.  In his book Illuminations we get a clear feeling from him that photography is a medium that problematizes the notion of an “original” because it is created solely for reproducibility.  He states that “the presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity” and that the translation has no regard or relation to the original, thus having no relationship to it (Benjamin 220).

In the words of Clifford Geertz from The Interpretation of Cultures, all fieldwork is just our personal interpretations.  He bluntly states that “we do not understand the people” because we are not natives, and says that all “anthropological writings are themselves interpretations” and “second to third ones to boot” (15).  This idea that we cannot be native or express a native point of view because of our lack of context is critical for ethnography, travel literature, and any document that attempts to translate a foreign experience outside of the original context.

Pros:

Rapport- Having a camera was a great way to build rapport in the community, especially among the kids.  Showing them their image on the back with that immediate feedback was priceless.

My Blog as a Medium

Conducting an experimental project like mine on the authenticity of experience made it difficult to represent.  Because photography was such an important component to my research, mediating my experience through a blog made a lot of sense.  Having my final project in a blog format was something new to me, and it has been a bit of a learning experience.  Since digital writing seems to be taking over the realm of the conventional research paper, I also think it is important to learn to do it properly.  Being in Ghana, I ran into difficulties with the medium that I would not have experienced here at home.  Overall I have been exceptionally happy with the new way to explore my research findings and document my experience, but here are some of the benefits and challenges I was able to identify during my stay.

Pros:

• It was perfect for representing my different avatars in a meaningful way without getting too confusing
• It also allowed me to display different mediums, the big one being my photography, that enhanced my reporting
• With live feedback it made it easy to see how people were responding (or not responding) to what I had been writing.  Having that active audience made the medium a lot more personal, encouraging me to write more.  I was also able to find people with similar interests and benefit from their ideas
• Can provide links to earlier posts, other blogs, my photography sites, etc
• Blogging also allows me to share my experience and findings with anyone who might come across my blog, where with a traditional research paper it would likely be for an audience of one (me), and others could not benefit from it
• By documenting my progress I can show that the journey of my research was just as valuable as the final product
• It is a more personal medium, allowing me more flexibility in what I can talk about, making it more authentic to my experience.  Since that was the main theme of my project, having a medium that encouraged that was essential

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

My Diary

In considering the authenticity of experience, the medium I used to mediate my experience proved to be just as important as the avatar (the aspect of myself I used as a lens for that moment).  They told us in the preparation class before entering the field that every student should have a diary separate from field notes. That causes a few problems if we want to talk about authenticity, but some things even I am not about to have public on this blog.

So what kinds of things go in a diary, and why not in the field notes? After looking over my different mediums, I have decided that my journal had more of a personal tone to it (FN:7:20). They were more intimate and honest, things that I would not want other people to see (and honestly it would not interest anyone else). In my diary I tried to make sense of my experience in the larger context of my life, related more to my past, and was conscious of some of my personal issues. Because of that nature, it is also more enjoyable for me to read.  Of course, if I was not already recording the day-to-day details in my field notes, I would have recorded more of those types of details here.  Something to think about.

Another thing I included in my diary, just because I always have, but did not in any other medium was the setting. I always wrote down the time and place I was writing, and it adds a unique flavor.  I think it tends to set a mood.

One thing that kind of bothered me when I went back through my diary was that there were many entries where I talked about nothing that actually happened that day (FN:39:2). I went on and on about boys, drama at home, feelings, insecurities, etc but only mentioned in casual that I happened to be in Ghana that day. Our minds are probably rarely actually in one place, but I feel like this medium allows for more wandering into the realms of thought and away from reality.

Early Entry- This particular day was one of the first I had in Ghana.  I was still in Kejetia, and you could say that I was having the moment of "what have I done."  This is not the kind of image you would find in a field journal.  It also talks about a bad experience I had calling a friend back home and Rachel's whole peeing in a ziplock bag incident.  Maybe not academic, but one of the fondest memories I have.

My Jotting Notebook

In conducting my project on the authenticity of experience I evaluated the different mediums that used to mediate my experience.  As I have mentioned earlier, not only did the avatar I chose to see in dictate my experience, but also the medium in which I chose to express it. A jotting notebook is something that many writers and ethnographers carry around, but rarely consider as a viable part of their final product. There are a few reasons why I think this medium has been valuable to my research. Handwriting looks and feels more intimate, you have flexibility to doodle, chart, list, freewrite, plan, etc without too much pressure. Because I think this kind of scrapbook mentality does have an interesting value, not only documenting my project's progress, but also as a medium itself, I have selected a few pages from my jots to elaborate on this idea.

The Cover: This is the book I selected to go into the field. From this picture you can see that it is well used. Pages are ripped out, the corners are bent, and it has a very raw feeling to it. In the corner you can also see where I brainstormed some of my initial impressions of the weather once I got off the plane. Only a few of these ideas made it into my field notes.

Larium Dream: This is probably my favorite jotting entry. Somewhere along the line I decided to document my crazy dreams from the anti malaria medication I had to take. The first page is fairly legible. I woke up from a nightmare and was conscious enough to get the jist of it. The second dream I had was on the top of the page you see on the right. It was difficult to read, but a few words are distinguishable. The third dream I wrote I was so frustrated that I could not sleep that I did not turn on the flashlight to see what I was writing and wrote right over the top of dream number 2. A little more authentic to a Larium night than my field notes let on.

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.

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.