Random Journal Posts #2

….Today I sat in on a different English class from Fobi’s classes. The teacher was giving a lesson about debate, and it was very interesting hearing the various debate topics he gave as examples. They were actually very culturally telling. The first one was about homosexuality, and whether gays should be allowed to marry or not. He even brought up that Obama, a man “of African blood” had made his support known for gay marriage. I have heard several people bring up the fact that Obama did this. They seem very surprised, which I can assume is because they do not have any idea about gay relations and controversy within America. Anyway, the other debate topics included whether boys or girls were smarter, if mixed gender schools or single gender schools were more conducive to learning, and –the topic for this year- if traditions are holding people back from progressing…

…For one, I fought a spider that literally could be close to being classifed tarantula if it had just a little more hair. I didn’t think it was possible, but I did. And I may exaggerate the sizes of creepy crawlers in the States, but I’ve got pictures to reinforce the validity of this monster. The same night that thing was crawling across our walls, a lizard friend also joined the part on the ceiling. And of course that was the night we did not have electricity, so all the fun happened by the light of my flashlight…

…The next day I was able to go to a wedding celebration for a woman Natalie works with at the clinic. She is a member of the Savior Church, which I was surprised to discover practices polygamy. We did not know what to expect at all, and the actual ceremony had occurred the night before, so this was like their equivalent of a reception. We sat down and waited for things to begin, and were treated to something truly wonderful. The older women wore veils, and the men wore long white robes, and one of the men started singing solo, with the others joining in with beautiful harmonizing that sounded like Muslim prayer chants. Then a small group started playing instruments, and the women began coming out for a large dance. It was a special kind of dance that used just a subtle shuffling of the feet, and the waving of a kerchief in the right hand. This dancing was joined in at different times by the men, young girls who had vowed chastity till marriage, and even us for an obruni dance! Everyone was laughing and smiling and having a wonderful time, and it really was a beautiful experience…

…However, in the ICT class, I met a very sweet girl named Evelyn. She is 20, and told me she really wanted to be a police officer. However, her father wants her to train to be a nurse, so she was in the study topic to be a nurse (home economics). She told me however, that she hated blood, and laughingly told me a story of pounding her sister’s hand while they made fufu, not being able to take the sight of blood, and her mother becoming angry with her because her sister needed to take her exams the next day. She also asked me how old I was, and like others who have asked me, seemed surprised. She said, “God has made you people special, you grow big in body, but are small in age” haha...

Places and Faces!

An A-Cultural God

We attend church in the village Jackie and Lauren stay in, Asamang. This week I had a thought while I looked around me at the beautiful members who had come for sacrament meeting. I realized that I always conceptualize God in the most culturally pleasing way for me personally - as a loving, American-cultured, English speaking, Father. I do not think anything is wrong with this; it is surely normal. However, I have not tried to think how a Ghanian young women imagines her Father in Heaven, or a Japanese girl, or a Peruvian girl. It must be so different, since their views would similarly be structured along their own socialized mental constructs. 

This led me to realize that God is an a-cultural God - at least in regards to the various cultures of our mortal world. My views about the nature of God call for a loving omnipotent Father, who can relate to any person, and who has the ability to appreciate the immense and equal worth of every individual one of His children. Therefore, His complexity in my mind has now had yet another layer added. He must be able to relate in countless ways to the innumerable variations of Man's mind and spirit and physicality and tangible and intangible experiences. He has to be able to touch the Ghanian's soul in a way that will convict the Ghanaian of the truthfulness of His existence - as well as the Peruvian's soul, and my soul, and the unimaginable remainder of unique human souls worldwide. 

This is incredible. 

I am really astonished by the miracle of humankind and its variations, and of a God and Savior who know and love even with all the difference. 

Random Journal Post #1

My English lessons went very well. I taught American phonetics, since they learn to pronounce the British way. They thought it was hilarious the way I said some words like "can" or "totally" and would repeat and laugh. We had a lot of fun. Many Americans (me for one) would be very surprised, after the way we stereotype about gender roles and education in Africa in general, to know that at least where I am in Ghana the main differences I am seeing when I attend the classrooms is a difference in aesthetics. Their buildings are crumbling, the doors and windows are open so bugs and bats and whatnot can freely fly in. They have worn out chalkboards and no electrical technology to speak of, except for a small lab at the senior high with some very old computers that do not have modems. But besides these materialistic differences, kids laugh and joke and cajole their teachers and the teachers often joke along with them. The girls are as vocal as the boys. One spunky girl, Monica, asked me to come in a class while their teacher was out. I asked her to teach the class, including me, so she went right along with the joke saying "quiet down! quiet down! I am the teacha!" She then would ask me questions like my age, if i had a boyfriend, she told me the entire class owed 2 cedi each and that I had to cough up first. It was very funny. She also brandished the stick and said "don't make me use this!" the way teachers do. She had me put out my hand and gave me a smart tap! 

I made good friends with the teacher staff at the junior high. One sweet girl named Pat had her birthday yesterday. This morning I woke up and made crepes to bring to her as a present. I filled one with nutella, one with peanut butter, and one with jam, then cut banana slices over them. She was very happy and grateful, and tried to eat the. She said they were nice, but that she could not take bananas haha. The other teachers tried bites, but did not like them and would not eat any more, they were obviously too sweet. It was funny because they were crinkling their noses at yummy crepes, but right after were eating a whole fish, head, tail, scales and all, and could not understand why I thought it was so disgusting. They also showed me pictures of a field trip they had taken the kids on to Cape Coast. One of the teachers was dressed very nice, and I said, "Oh I love his outfit!" His wife apparently was one of the teachers looking with us and she said "you cannot have him! I will beat you with this stick" Which made me laugh and I tried to explain I did not mean it like that at all. 

Last night, I Natalie and I headed up the hill to the village square because some Presbyterians had come to have a big religious save-your-soul-type thing, and I had been invited by some university girls who could speak English very well. When we got there, the children would barely let us be, grabbing our arms and hands, so we try to high five or shake hands with each one so that they do not feel left out. There were people singling gospel songs, and a whole band set up and speakers. However, the ominous thunder rolls and lightening started, which always means there will be some very hard rainfall. They started packing up everything, but the people singing stayed put. All the villagers started running to the outlying shops and the power went out, leaving things pitch black. I had my flashlight, and Natalie and I took shelter under some shop covers with some of the villagers. Kids surrounded us, waiting out the rain, and one fell asleep on Natalie's shoulder. It was really an experience standing there in the dark and thunder and rain with the villagers. The university girls I had met said they would still pray, so I followed them out into the rain, into the middle of the square where a small circle of Presbyterians stood praying. Some had their arms raised to the heavens, and some were mumbling their prayers, while one man yelled out praising God. Another man even dropped to his knees in the mud. It was quite a moment to see, standing there in the mud in Wiamoase, Ashanti, Ghana, hearing my brothers and sisters raise their own types of prayers to God while the rain and lightening came down. I realized these types of moments are of the sort that I will rarely have again. 

A Day in the Life

Finding my Footing, and Musings about the Variations of Man

The past week has provided me with ample opportunity for adventure and anxiety while plunging into my ethnographic fieldwork. I am learning to be flexible, to throw the usual structure of academia I have experienced in America out the window, and to attempt to enjoy my amazing time here simultaneously.  I am learning so much each day, and cliché as it is, beginning to love and become attached to the amazing community and friends I interact with routinely.

Regarding my project, my aims have already started to become largely modified, as several former field studies students warned me they would. My new project title is, “The Influence of Formal Education on Cross-Generational Perspectives about Cocoa Farming.” Here are a few brief things I have been able to do since starting my observation and research:

-I have visited a couple cocoa farms, accompanied by the farm owners. They look nothing like I expected, and it has been quite fun tramping through the jungle and bush, especially when it rained. Local villagers got a kick out of the crazy obruni in her bright blue rain poncho.

-I have started to gain insight into the forces of formal education and government shaping the younger generation’s hopes for the future and career pursuits.

-I have started to sit in on junior high and secondary school classes, and get to know the students. It has been a blast visiting with younger kids, and seeing the fun ways their teachers interact with them.

-I was able to sit in on a school staff meeting that was as exciting as full court of law, with yelling and laughing and demands for votes. I also will start teaching a few English classes tomorrow with the help of a Ghanaian teacher at the secondary school

-I have scheduled my first official interview for Wednesday, and am excited to start hearing the opinions of teachers, students, cocoa farmers and others on relevant issues surrounding education, careers, and agriculture here in Wiamoase.

Note: If you ever find yourself following a 75 year old man into the forest to see his cocoa farm, and he is shuffling along, practically dragging his machete, do not doubt that he can lift that machete in the blink of an eye and whack a tree blocking your way right in half. Haha!

I have started trying to do a deeper reading and analysis of Clifford Geertz’s classic Interpretation of Cultures than I have before done for classes. His writing and explanation of anthropological inquiry and the ethnographic research and inscription process is nothing short of genius.

I was especially impressed in the last couple days by his theorizing about how those in the fields of social science choose to go about trying to define human nature. While here in Ghana, I have often pondered to myself how it is that humans are connected biologically, but can vary so drastically in so many other ways. I just kept trying to wrap my mind around how I would be a different person if I was born a Ghanaian, or even into the family living in the next house over from my own family I was actually born into. Geertz helped me realize that the reality of this incomprehensible variation is actually one of the most breath-taking and spectacular parts about human nature.

He states that in the past, especially starting in the Age of Enlightenment, philosophers have tried to understand human nature through universal commonalities. They have searched for the constants between peoples, the mainstays of cultural and social systems – “consensual man”.  However, he points out that theorists may want to consider that more can be learned from studying the phenomenon of human variation instead, because if we known anything, we know human nature is variable.

His musings culminate in the conclusion that, “Out of such reformulations of the concept of culture and the role of culture in human life comes, in turn, a definition of man stressing not so much the empirical commonalities in his behavior, from place to place and time to time, but rather the mechanisms by whose agency the breadth and indeterminateness of his inherent capacities are reduced to the narrowness and specificity of his actual accomplishments. One of the most significant facts about us may finally be that we all begin with the natural equipment to live a thousand kinds of life but end in the end having lived only one” (1973, Geertz 45).

Studying culture could possibly be looked at as a way to honor God for his miraculous creation. The fact that, as Geertz says, we have the inherent ability to be shaped and molded to live a countless number of lifestyles is proof in itself of the beautiful and unfathomable creature God has created in the human being.

As I attempt culturally immersive research methods while living here in Wiamoase, I am trying to remember and apply the insights I am gaining. I am so grateful for this experience, and even now realize that I will be forever indebted to each and every one of the kind Ghanaians who have provided love, encouragement, and assistance already in the first two weeks  to an undeserving undergraduate who is trying to “find her footing,” as Geertz would call it, in a culturally foreign context.

PS: I will start posting a few photos, and selected parts of my journal entries each Tuesday, as well as insight posts like these, so watch out for those! 

Good Times in Ghana

First Impressions

Skim through parts of my journal entries from my first three days in Ghana here:

http://anthroprep21.blogspot.com/p/ghana-journal.html

Update: I am starting my official research and note taking tomorrow, and am anxious and excited. I will start posting insight entries once a week starting next Tuesday! So far, I have already had some incredible experiences!

Email me at: faezer@comcast.net