| Nomad on hiatus? |
[04 Jun 2008|01:00pm] |
Egads, I'm behind.
The only really relevant update (at least in my opinion): I was offered a sweeeeeet job that wants me in the city by June 16, so I'm heading home a few weeks early.
As in...six days from now. Call me!
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| Braidventure! |
[25 Apr 2008|08:08pm] |
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You know the kind of white girls who go someplace – Jamaica, perhaps, or, say, Ghana – and braid their hair in some misguided attempt at cultural experimentation, and look all stupid and pale and pinched and affected? They all blend together, these girls – you never notice their features, just their alarmingly out of place dirty blonde – and it’s somehow always dirty blonde – braids and their pink pink scalp peeking through, looking all exposed and vulnerable. The archetypal, wince-inducing, White Girl With Braids – surely we’ve all judged them.
So. Um.
I joined their ranks. And….it didn’t look half bad. No, really. It’s kind of interesting. And anyway, it’s about the ( experience. )
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| I heart Saltpond |
[25 Apr 2008|07:28pm] |
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The not-work stuff:
We stayed in a resort hotel with little (fully modernized) huts by the sea – even the restaurant was a little hut on stilts, where I could see the fishermen plying the waves every morning while I ate my breakfast, and then eat their catch that same night. In the mornings before work I walked along the surf looking for treasures – beads, shells, sea glass, and innumerable pictures for the taking. And trash, though I left that where the sea tossed and teased it and let its origins eddy in my brain. Whose shoe was this, and whose comb? What shoreline let them slip, and what other shores will collect and spit them back? And why do we never think of these things when we see the disappearing taillights of the garbage collector?
Most of all on these walks I would try to stay present – that perennial struggle. I would wade in to my calves and try to focus just on the moments when the undertow collided with the next wave, and me at the epicenter. But I drifted, literally and figuratively, and found myself holding imaginary conversations in my head or composing emails or narrating what I was seeing to myself instead of just…seeing. Annie Dillard’s newspaper over the eyes again. One of these days I’ll figure out how to do that, to knock the narration aside and just see. Although I suppose it’s lost in the instant that you recognize it, like an I-Thou moment. Sigh.
Saltpond proper provided plenty to ponder, too – and the aesthetics! Back in the late 1800s when the British took over from the Dutch, most activity took place in Saltpond or nearby in Cape Coast, the then-administrative seat of the Gold Coast. The very first British fort is built there, and the whole place maintains the aura of a pioneer town, with wide dirt avenues at sharp right angles nearest to the shoreline that wiggle into narrow snaking alleyways the further you get from the water. Most structures are old colonial buildings turned homes and shops – the rainbow curve of someone’s laundry hanging from the upper window of an old trade warehouse; the standard panoply of Ghanaian goods – handkerchiefs, empty canisters (recycling by necessity), matches, soap, juice, biscuits – impressively arrayed in the doorways of mansion after crumbling, colonnaded mansion. The outside of these buildings are neutral tones, but the inside walls are deep bright shades – magenta, turquoise, mustard – so that when the sun starts to set and the lights come on, the buildings recede into shadowy silhouettes with bright squares of color blazing from the windows. I cursed my lack of tripod nightly. (See my flickr for visuals.)
There was so much more going on than at Ajumako. I was constantly reminded of how much making do that involved, how much effort to see the silver lining. Here there was no such effort; I could have easily stayed in Saltpond for the next two months before I fly home. For one, there was a big ol’ market on Sundays, where I snagged a handful of lovely Indian tunics for…50 cents each. On weekdays, when Emma and I went exploring after lunch, there was an adorable daily chorus of Obruni bye bye! from the little kids leaving the nearby nursery school. My absolute favorite was a little girl, no more than two years old, who saw me, got this huge grin on her face, and squealed delightedly, Obruni ayekoo! Which roughly translates to, you’ve done well! The older kids would play tough and try to address me directly – Hey! Obruni! – to which I invariably responded, Hey! Bibini! Wo ho te sen? Their eyes would go wide. (I imagined the dialogue: Shit, dude, she speaks Twi! Run!) It never, ever got old. One day I got pulled into a conversation with an entire contingent of Catholic Women’s Fellowship sisters who, hilariously, were from Ajumako and told me I should come visit. Fat chance, ladies!
Oh and I got my hair braided. Proof in the next entry.
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[20 Apr 2008|09:40pm] |
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Two weeks in Saltpond, and the time just flew. Zoom. Being back in Accra, it all feels like some marvelous dream… Here’s what went on, work-wise; pictures and not-work stuff will follow, for those interested...
The first week Emma and I were mostly cooped up in the stuffy upper room, writing informational texts without the aid of internet for fact-checking purposes – but oh, what a relief from the stress of Accra! If we needed a break from explaining hydroelectric power or recycling or the life cycle of tadpoles in third grade terms, all we had to do was walk up one more flight to the unfinished roof and stare out at the sea for a bit. And besides, writing about tadpoles and recycling and the like is awfully fun stuff. Emma and I were given free reign to write what we pleased, as long as each text jived with the general theme of one of the units in the literacy textbook – what a cool opportunity, no? Writing interesting, relevant stuff with the aim of sparking kids’ imaginations and give them a new, broader perspective on the world? That’s pretty awesome, frankly. What was even cooler about this assignment is that a lot of these texts require technical, ‘scientific’ terms – terms detractors of local language programs claim don’t exist in these languages, making them unsuitable for use in an academic setting, or indeed any setting outside the scope of traditional activities. Leaving aside for the moment the fact that language doesn’t work that way – speakers adopt or invent the words they need, end of story – having books in schools that prove otherwise, books full of texts that use legitimate local phrases for ‘astronaut’ or ‘biological diversity,’ is a huge, huge step in validating Ghanaian languages in the minds of their speakers and on the global stage. Pretty awesome. Plus I got in a text on world sign languages and not discriminating against the Deaf that I’m particularly proud of. ‘Twas a good week for sociolinguistic victories. So week one was fun and meaningful, work-wise, and the next week was even better. A bunch of picture book stories for kindergarten were translated before we arrived, and then management subsequently went and made major revisions to the originals – necessitating retranslation of pieces and a ton of cutting and pasting. (Way to alienate your translators by making them redo their work, management!) Enter Emma and myself. We were to sit with a translator from each language group and make sure the right lines were on the right pages, that everything said what it should, that the stories were in the right order – nothing too intense, but most of the translators are of an older generation and aren’t terribly computer literate, and Emma and I certainly don’t read and write in all 11 of the Ghanaian languages we’re working with*, so it had to be a team effort. Though it sound tedious, but I felt, for perhaps the first time in this zany adventure, like FUCK YES, this I went to school for. I can type in Akan, recognize the parts of speech and syntactical patterns of languages I don’t understand, and identify areas where cultural adaptation is necessary (for instance, ‘slippers,’ in the mind of the author of one of the stories, means ‘shoes you wear before bed’; in Ghana, ‘slippers’ refers to any number of lace-less, heel-less shoes, from ballet flats to flip flops – a revision was necessary) -- all things I learned in the course of studying or thesising. What was even better was the delighted reaction of the translators when they saw that I knew where the â and ô vowels went, where the pronouns that needed to be capitalized were, which nouns were missing their definite articles, and so on. Oh, you’re fast, o! I was pretty damn proud of myself. And I got to do all that under an Indian Almond tree with the sound of the ocean crashing just over the wall. I am a lucky girl. (*NB: There are upwards of 60 languages in Ghana; we’re only using the 11 that the government, for reasons that have more to do with politics than anything else, have deemed acceptable for use in education. To graduate from a public university here, you have to take Ghanaian language and culture courses, and these are the 11 you can choose from to fulfill your Ghanaian language requirement. At least two are actually mutually intelligible dialects of other languages on the list, but their populations have political and economic clout, so they get to count as their own language. Fascinating stuff, the intersection of language, identity, and state politics...)
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[29 Mar 2008|01:31am] |
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I worked every day last weekend. It was a four-day holiday weekend; Magdeleine and I were the only people in the entire country not drinking, sleeping, or at church. I have worked every day this week. I worked every day last week. Things have not been good. Sigh. My visa extension coming back with the wrong dates? Great! Being jerked around about going to Saltpond for the translation workshop? Fun! My boss/housemate – who did *not* work all weekend – accusing me of being rude, unprofessional, disorganized, and unable to handle stress in front of a room full of my colleagues? (Projecting much?) Fantastic! (And she still blithely thinks she can convince me to stay past June.) Learning of (utterly false) rumors that I’ve slept with a coworker? Sweet. Being followed almost all the way home by a persistent (intoxicated?) rasta who had to be detained by my friendly neighborhood posse? Splendid! At least, on the latter, I know that people have my back; still, buying pepper spray pronto.
Sigh.
Good thing I have distractions, like dinner with the new visiting prof and his hilarious fam the other night – oh, how I miss nerdy American family dinnertime dynamics. And knitting! And then, you know, the ( love thing. )
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| Ambivalence. |
[27 Mar 2008|05:08pm] |
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I’m way behind. I keep trying to map out my shifting feelings towards being here, and I end up lost in the squall. Things get brighter, then bleaker, in such rapid succession that it’s almost not worth keeping track.
Backpages:
3.9.08//
We are at war, Magdeleine says again and again. She is the general. And this lady, she says, winking and wagging her finger at me, is my lieutenant. We take a walk after dinner and stand out beyond the courtyard in the cool charged air while heat lightening flashes. What you are doing is absolutely incredible, she says. I could send you anywhere, and you would survive. I’m surviving but I’m not happy, I say. Well, bon. For them, it is…leur vie. Leur vie quotidienne. Mais pour nous…nous sommes en parentheses. It is not your life. But it is unique! What an opportunity. When you go back, you will make a list of your accomplishments – I can help you if you like – you will see how much you have learned. And then, pah, you close the door on it. And you can return to it happy. It is not your life. But really, look at you. Twenty two, it’s incredible, frankly. I am trying to believe her. It don't feel it.
After we part ways, I find myself at the path through the courtyard right as the power goes; a collective cry goes up from the dining hall across the circle of trees. Everything is black, startlingly black, like a veil over the eyes, then lit with the eerie silhouette light of heat lightening. Contrast and flickering, like silver negatives, branches lit and stark and plunged into darkness. I am overwhelmed. Tears. The rain starts. I run for the portico and sit on the cool concrete with my knees tucked under my chin and watch the earth flicker on and off, trying to remember who I am and what I want.
3.10.08//
I feel disconnected from my own brain. I feel incredibly unreflective about this whole experience, I know I should be taking it down, making note. Commence: The way the colors deepen in the twilight after the rain, the sweet acrid scent of the bushes that you taste in the air on the back of your tongue. The bougainvillea under the windows tricked out in shocking magenta blooms, much brighter and wilder than the deep purple blossoms on church crescent. The absolute blackness when the power cuts out, the incredible way the moon and stars blaze in absence of light. I see Orion and say nothing…save a secret for the moon. The inexplicable rainshowers, thunderous and captivating. The walk from the secretariat to the main hall, heat, gray brick tiles, dirt, concrete, steps and the cool of the room, the path down through the trees glimpsed on the way. Being obsequious, please auntie, food is ready; please auntie, can I have your corrections, please I’ll bring it right away. The body language of politeness, learned gestures. Oh, you are a Ghanaian now. The alarming zyklon b chic of the shower. The stencil GESDI in black paint on everything, sheets, bed, chair, mirror, tablecloth, door, toilet, window slats, curtains. The way Emma takes care of me. How lucky I am that everyone likes me so much, even if they don’t want to listen to me. The gaggle of school kids that runs up grinning and shrieking, obruni obruni! And trap me in a collective hug, stroking my arms, clutching at my hands, trying to reach my hair, tugging my underarm tufts. I feel like every black kid that ever landed in rural Iowa. (Can I touch? Will it come off?) The townspeople that come to sell their wares when a big group arrives at the complex, dictionaries and evangelical sex advice (what every good Christian should know about sex…which is to say, as little as possible), men’s trousers, watches, cufflinks, sandals. Oranges, with the peels piled up in front of the table. Aloe whitening cream. Ginseng. Hand cranked torches. The cheap counterbalanced aluminum chairs that fall over at dinner. Jam and milo at breakfast, adding condensed milk and sugar to everything. The treat of going into town, buying kyofi and fried fish and bread. We know where everything is now – lorry station, pharmacy, best convenience shop, salon, internet café, chop bar. People I don’t recognize call me Yaa and ask me to find the accountant for them. Alfred calling me Yaa Asantweaa, warrior Queenmother! and making onlookers chuckle. I need to do character sketches…
3.11.08//
Perfect, improbably blue sky; fluffy storybook clouds. I wore my flirty new burgundy rose petal skirt, made the Ghanaians laugh at my clipped pace, went into town and back alone, spoke as I pleased. I feel a new balance settling itself; I can be me, unabashedly, cultural sensitivity be damned, and laugh too loud and curse and drink and walk fast and go around unshaven and barefoot and singing in a short skirt (perplexed Ajumakan: ‘Obruni, what are you doing? Why are you in such a hurry?’ Me: ‘I’m a New Yorker, it’s how we do’), but I am Ghanaian(ish) now, I can inhabit the phrases and gestures and body language of politeness that this space requires. It feels perfectly natural to play the part.
We had emo tuo and groundnut soup AND delicious wakye for lunch; yummy yummy rice and noodles and fried egg for dinner. I had a whole blessed hour at the café. Emma was delighted with the pictures I took, laughing and joking about what we’ve been through here, told me I was really good and should pursue it. She was proud of me for eating so much today. Thank you, mother hen. I love it when she calls me meine liebling and strokes my hair when I’m upset. Deep breath; think about your boy. (What would I do without her?)
So, huh. This is who I am right now. I am not fucking up as badly as I thought. I hope I can hold onto this feeling.
3.14.08//
The stationary store – add it to the list of hidden gems. If only Catreen and Kuh could have seen! Row after row of beautiful notebooks full of blank promise and possibility; myriad pens, pencils, inks and paints; envelopes for every conceivable situation! Scissors! Glue! A rainbow of cardstock! What joy.
3.15.08//
Foray out to Emma’s place: tro tro to first junction Teshie, and then a dropping taxi to the last stop, and a short walk up 2nd avenue – only her 2nd avenue looks remarkably like the tri-cities in Washington State, all low bungalows on rolling streets, flowers spilling over whitewashed walls. Met her stepmom, who I didn’t realize existed, and the funny younger brother she talks about incessantly, and her sixteen year old sister with a tomboy attitude and a lisp who avoided studying for her biology exam by asking me question after question. Her dad gave me a big hug and said he thought I was more Ghanaian than American.
Later Emma told me the little bro and her sister had been all agog at my impending visit. No offense, she said, but we’ve never had an obruni at the house. They didn’t know what to expect. Is she really coming? How is she getting here? (Here stepmom smacks li’l bro) She’s taking a tro tro like everyone else, of course! Not all white people take taxis everywhere. Don’t ask stupid questions.
She took me around to all her favorite shops, and we both spent far, far too much money – but after working twelve days straight from 8am to 10pm every day with no time off, we needed a reward. Beads! Batik! Skinny jeans! Embroidered slippers! Because clearly, what I need is more clothing. Sigh. Again and again Emma handed me rather scandalous items – pink, frilly, altogether un-me. Er, this isn’t really my style, I said. I know that, she said, narrowing her eyes, I’m thinking of your boy here, now try it on. I finally had to tell her, um, you know, he’s not really into pink and frilly either…
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[17 Mar 2008|03:05pm] |
I know, I know -- I'm way behind on the updates. The post below was written on March 3, but I haven't had regular internet access for the past few weeks since I've spent more time in Ajumako than Accra this past month. Things are not quite as miserably dire as they were, but it's still not exactly sunshine and roses. Hopefully it won't take me another month to bring things up to date, but in the meantime -- my state of mind as of two weeks ago:
We are three months shy of the one year anniversary of graduation for the class of 2007. We are Avenue Q – broke? Twenty-three? More than a little confused about purpose in life? Yep. That entire show feels sickeningly appropriate in ways it never did before. Does this make anyone else feel prematurely old and vaguely alarmed? I think the above statement is pretty telling of my emotional state of late. I have this favorite analogy of life after graduation – the well-lit, clearly marked, well-manicured path leading from kindergarten to commencement suddenly falls off into a swamp, full of unpredictable mists and boggy ground. And it’s not the end of the world, this swamp; it’s not a fatal diversion. It’s just a temporary patch you have to slog through for a bit, and you have to trust that you’ll come out okay (if a bit muddy) on the other end. The problem being, it’s nearly impossible to tell if the path you’re cutting through the swamp is the right/best/safest one – all the mist makes it mighty hard to trust your eyes to guide you. And you can’t trust the ground in a swamp, either, you have to test it and take a few steps before you realize, ohshitohshitbadmove, you’re sinking, and flail away in another direction; and at every misstep, you have to battle the increasingly overwhelming sense that you’re stuck, trapped, wasting your energy. But then every now and again – oh rapture! – the sun breaks through, and the ground is solid, and you think YES! The universe is not quite as miserably tilted as it seemed, I am going to do just fine. Better than fine; stellar.
And then the mist drifts in again, and you lose your footing and your starry-eyed confidence in one muddy squish. All of which is to explain that I have hit a particularly marshy spot on my trek, and I’m feeling sodden and sore and isolated. The project is in irreversible shambles and getting personal about it – no matter what I do or say, someone is displeased; I’ve been sick and sicker; my living situation is absurd; I don’t have the energy for my own research; my social life is beyond non-existent, everyone I love is thousands of miles away, etcetera, ad finitum, ad nauseum. This sucks, frankly. I know I’m being a big fat whiner, but mein gott! I have to believe fieldwork isn’t always going to be this demoralizing – precisely because this isn’t really fieldwork, it’s development work – or else I would have to question nearly everything about my self-conception for the past 22 years. And frankly, I don’t have the energy for that right now. Dear fellow Type A Perfectionists, Do not go into development work.
It will only confirm, on a daily basis, your deeply held suspicion that nothing you do will ever be good enough. Sincerely Yours, Neurotic Nora Things that are bad: Watching When Harry Met Sally when you are already homesick and lovelorn; losing sleep musing about how the city gets under your skin. (You fall in love with it and it belongs to you and only you, because no one else will ever understand the particular constellation of street corners and layered memories that means New York in your mind. And so you can watch the Arch come into view on the screen, knowing full well that this is an iconic image circulated around the globe, an image that says ‘New York’ to people who will never set foot in the city, or who will only pass through and think they get it – you can watch that same shot and think, Mine. Home. Is that not extraordinary?) Boys who blink and ask, “Well, is he here?” when I say I have a boyfriend. A social life cut by three quarters (at least) by wisely eliminating boys who ask, “Well, is he here?” Passive aggressive hypocrisy in housemates. Corruption in immigrations officers. Resenting your job and your coworkers; resenting your own inability to appreciate your luck. Infections, and intense antibiotics that leave you open to other infections. Meeting the kid who did get the Fulbright…and the five Billyburg hipsters he brought along to keep him company. Bastard. Being a would-be linguistic anthropologist who cannot for the life of her determine what it is that she keeps saying to piss people off. (This is unbelievably alarming.) Being afraid to articulate just what is making you so miserable for fear it will take over. The deeply inculcated need for instantaneous-gratification-communication instilled in we sorry babes of the internet age, and the shocking disconnect that occurs when are forced to go without hello/goodbye/I love you from thousands of miles away and the distance suddenly becomes thuddingly, dizzyingly real; needing someone, anyone, to share an experience with before it feels real. Serious self-doubt as a direct result of inability to deal with all of the above. Things that are good: Taking long walks and finding hidden pockets of urban cosmopolitanism – Chinese groceries with tapioca pearls (hell yes, homemade bubble tea!), Lebanese cafés with old men smoking hookah and watching bizarre Iranian dinner theater on a flatscreen tv. Finding the lesbians. (More on that later.) A sister who polls her coworkers at PC-Boston for assurance and advice for me: you are missing the things you need to be okay in this space; it’s fully legit to be unhappy. You have not failed. Fanti girls who call just to tell me to stop being so hard on myself (E), or take me to the new seamstress and assure me the new kids are boring if they don’t want to hang with me (L), or ply me with milo and treats to get a smile (B). Oh, my Fanti ladies! What would I do without you? Being warm; not being nauseous. Skype, and having important voices in my ears when I need them – like, say, the ol’ daddio at one am after watching When Harry Met Sally and making myself miserable. Being in love. Trusting it from across the sea. The singularly sustaining drama of mutual escapism. Pando, and distraction in the form of new music. (Where have Tegan & Sara been all my life?! Call; I’ll be down on the floor hiding out from it all. Pretty much mes dudettes, pretty much. And St. Vincent? Talk about a dreamboat Annie…) Book clubs. I’m joining one! I’m the only member under 40. Our next book will be, handily enough, Suite Francaise, which I have just finished. Ravelry, and Bitch magazine. (Thank you, momma!) Cartomancy as therapy; finding an eight of clubs outside the alleyway. The emphasis is on the necessity of change and the challenge of keeping up with it. With the turning of the seasons we are constantly being forced to deal with change, and there is no remedy but to live with that in mind. So, get busy -- there is no time to waste! Alright, alright already. I get it. Knowing that no condition is permanent. Everything in life is only for now. You. All of you.
Thank you for thinking of me and missing me and sending warm gratifying words and news from the home nest, reminding me of how I fit. I needed that badly. It sucks to be us, but not when we’re together. I love you, too.
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| Things that are not Events, but are nonetheless Worth Noting: |
[20 Feb 2008|08:33pm] |
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I am reading Irene Nemirovsky’s posthumously published Suite Francaise. It is good, if for no other reason than that it is diverting. I recently finished Life of Pi, making me the last literate human being alive to read it. Also quite good, for many reasons, including being utterly, fantastically, marvelously diverting. Thumbs up, Yann Martel.
Proof that socialization is contextual: some weeks past, Anais, Amuchi, and Kaliche all married Adrinana’s stuffed Elmo. Because Elmo is Muslim, you see, so he can have three wives. No cognitive dissonance there.
Adriana is a total gremlin these days; Anais is fast becoming a wayward and conniving adolescent, but wraps me in the tightest of hugs whenever I come home and refuses to let go. I missed you soooo much. Which bursts my heart. Adriana proudly tells the new nanny one day, She’s my big sister! Not quite, my little screamer, not quite. D.H. and I contemplate her future as the next Annie Sprinkle – it’s a distinct possibility.
The Don has resurfaced! Hallelujah. E and I downed a box of that ol’ “mezclan de vinos differentes” (that would be Spanish for ‘spit-bucket wine’) on Val’s Day, as they call it here – when they’re not calling it National Chocolate Day, that is. Belated Happy V-Day, by the by! I wore my favorite red dress and thought happy vulva thoughts and wished I had thought to bring my copy of the Monologues with me. Next time.
I’ve noticed of late that the pictures on my flickr with the most hits are the supermarket, the sanitation workers, and the footballers – indicators of a modern, urban, fairly affluent West Africa that is so often elided in mainstream media representations. I want people to see that this exists and is no less authentic than the standard AIDs/rebellion/corruption/starvation stories that have become the frame in which all other knowledge about the continent is understood and contextualized. So, yes. Good. Keep looking, everyone. It’s not as dire out here as you’ve been led to believe.
Daniel, the translator, keeps calling. He’s fun in small doses – catching up on the gossip on the staff from my old pad, that crazy Mme. Lien, etc. – but I don’t really want to hang out. He and his friend Sam, who has a car, gave me a lift home the other day, poking fun at each other in ‘Broken’ (pidgin) all the way to Labone Junction. I love listening to broken. Why you de talk, my brodah? He de no get for shiver, you de forget am, o. There was a pidgin ad for coca cola on the radio the other day! I nearly plotzed.
I hate the new dog. The new dog, frankly, is possessed. It bites people’s ankles. Adorable old Sandy, on the other hand, delights in licking my feet. It sends her into a state of frenzy, tongue a-flapping, tail a-wagging. I love it. If my hug quotient is down overall out here, at least there is some compensation. Speaking of which: snugglefest, sometime after July 1? Who’s in? I’m taking advance bookings now.
Oh yeah, Dubya and contingent are here, you’ve probably heard. My dad worries that I will be arrested; I take this as a compliment, but since I’ve been puking my guts out, that seems unlikely. They took over one of the five star hotels by the beach, blocked strategic roads all over Accra, and closed down the international school for two days. Pretty absurd, if you ask me. While waiting for my lab results at the hospital the other night: So, you should feel better, your president is coming! Uh, he’s not my president. (Perplexed look.) Right, well, you don’t have malaria, so…
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| Emma, Yam Kyofi, &...The Don |
[20 Feb 2008|08:31pm] |
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Missive from the front, dated 20th February, 2008.
Ack, almost done with February? I need to get my research on, y’all. Yikes. Why have I not as of yet, you may ask? You might guess Procrastination, for which I have a B.A. (with a minor in Freaking Out) – but no! No, I have been stuck in Bumblefuck, Ghana, otherwise known as Ajumako, for the past two weeks. Nothing against the town or anything, it’s lovely really, but it’s rather far and isolated and internetless. I would make a terrible Buddhist; I’m far to attached to material things. Or not even *things* really, but people. Or at the very least access to people. I’ve always been a wee bit suspicious of that Buddhist detachment from material existence – yes, fine, attachment = suffering, granted, that’s quite clear. But how else do you know you’re alive, Siddhartha darling, hm? Hmmm? So yes, I’ve been in Ajumako being alive and suffering from my attachments, and being majorly stressed out by the textbook writing process that I was implicitly left in charge of by absent management and then not taken seriously by the people actually doing the writing. If that makes sense.
...And then getting sick, again, in similar fashion to that other time, and the time before that. Only this time I landed in a rural clinic full of ants and spiders and not much in the way of doctors, before bouncing to Accra for another nice injection in the bum and a rest. So I should be done with that for a few months yet, eh? E went above and beyond the call of duty and accompanied me down to Accra and stayed up way past her bedtime and called me half a dozen times to make sure I was okay. Thank god for friends. She told me everyone back in Ajumako was super concerned about me; at home, the cook brought me lunch in bed and Ruth, the housekeeper, poked her head in all day, and Beryl came from the office herself TWICE and sent me text messages around the clock. (Oh dear, our Obruni is sick!) Sometimes it’s nice to be fussed over, especially since K did not check on me *once* for over 24hours. Very comforting, that.
I’m super glad I’ve got E around – she’s a really good bridge, since she’s 100% Ghanaian and loves her country and her culture, and fully believes her aunts had a supernatural hand in her mother’s premature death, but because she went to an international school and grew up in a really westernized version of Ghana, there’s a lot that I feel like I don’t have to explain or apologize for when it comes to my perspective on things. And in turn, she digs that I want to immerse myself and learn the language(s) and ‘eat local’ and really understand how everything works. And she sticks up for me when people tease me in languages other than English. (The other day at lunch, in Fanti to the waiter: Of *course* she knows how to eat banku! Stop asking silly questions and go bring us more mineral water.) And *damn* when that girl cops an attitude with people! Snap. Watch out. And put your wallet way, you’re not paying full price.
We went into town the other night, about half an hour away, partly to avoid the cranky ministry people and partly because the food at the GESDI complex in Ajumako is sooooo bad (sardines with banku instead of fresh tilapia? Ghanaian SPAM in the meat pies instead of ground beef? Ew). All the rural kids were getting way weirded out by the Obruni, and I made some comment like I wish I had an invisibility cloak so I wouldn’t cause such a sensation everywhere we go, and she just laughed and told me I’d been reading too much Harry Potter. Is that great or what?
There have been a lot of we’re-not-in-Kansas-anymore moments, two big city girls out in the country…we tried to buy some pineapple, and the lady said 10,000 – which in old money is about a dollar, and in Accra that’s a decent price for a nice big pineapple, so we said, sure, in fact, make it 20,000 so we have some for tomorrow. And she’s smiiiiiling, and her assistant is clapping, and we’re a little confused as to why…until she starts loading pineapple after pineapple into our bag and asking in Fanti, where’s your car? And we’re like, what do you mean, we didn’t bring a car, we thought we were buying two pineapples, what are you doing? And she’s like, well this is 20,000. And she smirkingly indicates no fewer than 15 pineapples. (Uh, 13 cents a pineapple?) So we’re like, no no no no, just give us back half the money and we’ll be on our way, we can’t drag 15 pineapples back to Ajumako. But she was not about to let go of her biggest sale all day. So…we eventually got into a taxi with fried yam and kyofi (honey roasted turkey legs – alternative dinner, major yum), a torch in case of ‘lights off’ – as in, every electrical gadget in the room gives a blip and dies: ‘oh, is it lights off?’, batteries, matches, soap, powdered milk, bread, a new pair of sunglasses for E, a snazzy pair of patent leather sandals for me (for the same cost as the pineapples), incense, cough drops, immodium…and 15 pineapples. We paid the taxi driver in pineapple. We left pineapple for the kitchen staff at Ajumako. As I am writing this, we still have at least four pineapples to eat before they spoil. Because we can’t waste food! There are starving children in Africa! And…we’re in Africa! So they’re right next door!
So there you have it – existential suffering, sickness, isolation. Why, my life is practically a Dostoyevsky novel these days! Except considerably warmer and more enjoyable, I assure you. Really.
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| GOAAAAAAL! |
[16 Feb 2008|10:12am] |
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I wrote out a whole long post about how awesome it was to hang around outside the stadium while Ghana throrughly whooped Nigeria, but it has vanished. So...look at the pictures! And imagine being the only little obruni in all this insane revelry, getting hugs from total strangers. (Dance, obruni, dance! We wooooooooon....)
Amazing. I could get into sports if they were always this fun.
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| Sefwi Wiawso: the only place in Ghana where people can pronounce my name. |
[16 Feb 2008|09:43am] |
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This was the biggest adventure I’d undertaken in quite a while, so the telling of it is more labor intensive, and has therefore become a Task i.e. something to be avoided. But I’m stuck out here in Agyumako without facebook or skype to distract me, so I may as well.
I had mentioned the Jews in Sefwi (I remember posting two years ago on my previous adventure with the lost tribe, but I can't find it now...) to R over drinks some weeks back; she was, as any good linguistic anthrokid ought to be, thoroughly intrigued. We decided to give it a shot the very next shabbis. I had conveniently forgotten the logistical nightmare that getting there actually entails. The usual mishegos of getting to any rural area was compounded by the fact that the number I had for the layleader of the community was two years old, unsurprisingly, out of service; some investigation revealed that there had been a community-wide falling out and the folks I had stayed with last time were on the questionable side of the argument, and now hold their own services separately from the rest of the group. (Apparently, two Jews, three shuls is universal.) R was able to get in touch with someone late Thursday, and early Friday morning we were off!
Transportation here is always something of a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants type venture; this was no exception. Having foolishly tried our luck at getting STC tickets same-day (all sold out, no surprise), we hopped a taxi to the main lorry station near Nkrumah Circle – and from there on out, it was all an exercise in serendipity. Someone ran up alongside our cab before we even got out – whereyougoing, Kumasi? Actually…yeah! So from taxi to express tro-tro to Kumasi, to cab, to express tro-tro to Sefwi (whereyougoing – Sefwi Wiawso? – what luck! And we got to ride up front with the driver), to cab (Hey driver, do you know Joseph’s house? Hm, I don’t know the place but my brother will know, we will ask him. Yep, it’s a pretty small town)…and as we pulled up to the compound, there was Joseph himself smiling and saying, Shabbat Shalom! We have been expecting you. What a world.
The rest of the weekend was a beautiful series of impressions – Joseph’s spectacles reflecting gold candlelight while he spoke ancient Semitic words with a Ghanaian accent; jasmine on the night air and a sea of stars above the green outhouse; a pregnant woman singing prayers in Twi (onyame, medase) over the shabbis candles, everything in darkness save her upturned hands, the swell of her belly and her eyes; goats (everything is better with goats – Megs, when we start out commune we are getting a goat and naming it Sylvia); soft smiles from shy children and laughter from bold ones; Kiddush over coca cola; the realization that the words If you do not heed these words, I will turn the heavens against you and hold back the rain and the earth will not yield its produce; you will soon disappear from the land that the lord has given you are a lot more immediate and startling when you’re actually living the sort of pastoral existence to which those words initially applied, and that religion serves a far more immediate purpose in such circumstances. The house was full of books and all the children spoke perfect English and want to become doctors. They invited us for pesach; if we go back, we’re bringing school fee money and Spiderman movies for Joshua, a new soccer ball for the older kids, a sweater for Sarah, playing cards for sassy little Rahel (Three Rs in one house!), wine for the Kiddush.
Oh and then there’s the Joshua’s uncle. He died recently, he informed us. Oh, how sad, we said. Yeah, he replied. He’s in the fridge.
(!)
We couldn’t help it. It’s so inappropriate, but we burst out laughing and couldn’t stop. We felt like such jerks, but my god! In the fridge!
Most of the time was spent eating (AMAZING fish stew and rice), sleeping, and wandering lazily around town with Rahel and her cousin Bright – a Shabbat well spent. Services were much different from the last time I was there – much more relaxed, much more participatory, far less English, and no glaringly overt nods to evangelical rhetorical styles. That clearly had a lot to do with who was in charge two years ago. The oldest boy read the Torah portion out of a Twi bible, sentence by sentence, which Alex, the rabbi, then elaborated on, with occasional added insight from Joseph, our host and Alex’s uncle. From the nods and thoughtful looks around us (from the adults, anyway, the kids were fidgety and fell asleep), it sounded like a good drash. People were wore draped cloth to services, and sang prayers in Twi – it definitely felt far more like they had claimed it as their own. Last time there was a consistent underlying desire to approximate what American Jews do – which after all is only one way of being Jewish, tribal commonalities notwithstanding – instead of doing their own thing and figuring out what it means to be a Ghanaian Jew. The emphasis has clearly shifted, and for the better I think.
R and I were bonding nicely over shared conservative Ashkenazi upbringings and yiddishisms until she starting going on about seniority and making me feel like an awkward uncool camp counselor instead of her friend, so things got a little strained. Not sure what to think about that. Regardless, it was so, so good to get out of Accra and remind myself that I’m capable of picking up and disappearing on down the road for a while. It’s a good feeling. I’ve gotten complacent.
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| Brown sugar all over her boogawooga. |
[16 Feb 2008|08:31am] |
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Accra is changing pretty dramatically these days – there’s the Accra Mall, that cornucopia of consumer choice; Melting Moments, the new bakery café in Cantonments; Churcheese (kind of like Chuck-e-Cheese, only it’s Ghana, so of course church is involved). And now...there’s Kristy’s Toy Box. Yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like.
And no, there are no other sex shops in Accra, at least not that I’m aware of. Burning with curiosity, I decided to check it out recently after work. Who is this Kristy? How does she see her role in shaping Accra’s shifting sexual norms and tastes? And, given the typical Ghanaian attitude towards homosexuality, how risqué is this Kristy, anyhow – is it all hetero gear, or is this a first mainstream outlet for the bubbling sexual diversity hidden (or so I presume) below the city’s surface? Alas, Kristy was not in, but her extremely enthusiastic shop assistant was only too happy to show me *everything* in the store – including the crowning glory of the glass case by the register: the large black vibrating dildo with suction cup and rotating head. (!) Given that the rest of the store was stocked with relatively unremarkable lacy underthings, I was a little taken aback. Big black dick notwithstanding, you’re out of luck if you’re into same sex revelry, or, for that matter, anything kinkier than red high heels. (Sorry, LGBT folks and bondage fans; maybe next year.) The funniest moment came at the close of my visit: as I headed out the door, I passed a new customer, a well off guy in his late 20s – your typical university-educated hotshot with UK pretensions – lounging in a lawn chair (where did that come from?) in front of the glass case. While the shopkeeper pulled item after item out of the case, Mr. Lawnchair blushingly relayed everything to his girlfriend over his mobile (baby, can’t I just get whatever’s most expensive and be done with it?) – including (of course!) the enormous rotating dildo, which the shopkeeper promptly stuck on the wall with the suction cup in order to demonstrate the various settings. Mr. Lawnchair looked like he was about to die. It was great. Thanks for a good time, Kristy. On a somewhat related note, E showed me a book the other day called Everywoman: a gynecological guide to life, that she claims every girl on campus has. I was a little suspicious – most popular Ghanaian literature runs in the direction of evangelical self-help books, even when they look on the surface like something entirely unrelated – but it was surprisingly free of inaccuracies or rhetoric. In fact, it was pretty progressive, if broad. It was written by a (male) British gynecologist, and touches on everything from the wage gap and social construction of gender roles to female anatomy to sex positions to nutrition in pregnancy. Wow, huh? But, like I said, broad and written by a man about women’s bodies and feelings – anyone want to ship a carton of Our Bodies, Ourselves over here? I’m completely serious. It could very well foster some global CR. More thoughts on gender soon; some stuff has been percolating.
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| Snap me one! |
[04 Feb 2008|08:52am] |
Check back soon for adventures! Accra's first sex shop, a second visit to the Jews of Sefwi Wiawso, and Ghana-Nigeria football revelry. Wheeee...
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[30 Jan 2008|07:36pm] |
Walked to work for the first time since I got back, following my feet down Ring Road and meandering quiet and calm in my own head, munching on baflot and tea bread bought along the way. Ahh, autonomy; it needs to reclaimed now and again, especially when K takes my presence for granted at bedtime. I’m happy to read bedtime stories – Thunder Cake, by the wondrous Patricia Palacco! I gave the Babushka my best Russian accent – but that’s not really my job, now is it?
On my way through the alley at the start of my walk, what should I find, but my ripped-trouser card shark has been trailing ahead of me again: a queen of hearts to add to the one I found in the city this summer, and a nine of spades upside down. Google (that great revealer of arcane knowledge) says: “The nine of spades is regarded as the absolute worst card in the pack and indicates forthcoming illness, loss of money, the infidelity of a loved one, or the failure of a business.” Good thing I don’t take this too seriously, eh?
 Hung out with E a lot during the most recent workshop, she’s so fun. We met Ivorian footballers in the courtyard and were giggling and joking like schoolgirls for three days straight. And then they won their match against Mali! (Did you see our boys? Number Twenty – the one with the great legs that smelled so nice? He scored the winning goal!) She’s such a flirt; it’s a little like being back in high school, playing the bespectacled sidekick with bad skin to the dark-eyed best friend, who inexplicably wins the attention of everyone in the room – whether she wants it or not. There’s a tiny new addition at the house; her name is Fudanita and she poops all over the living room – because M brought her home but declines any responsibility for her wellbeing. Big sigh. The animals in this house are so neglected, there’s a menagerie outside my door every night whimpering and scratching to be let in and loved. Not my first choice for bedfellows, but one makes do. I really need to get away this weekend. I’ve been thinking about where my loyalty lies in this space, where I am invested and embedded, and why, and where it is reciprocated. Playing the guide for visitors and new arrivals alike renders visible the depths and limits of my knowledge – I feel a little like a glass of dirty water, shaken, suspended sediment obscuring and revealing in turns. Or maybe it’s just the Harmattan dust, clouding up my brain.
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[26 Jan 2008|12:41pm] |
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mood |
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 pleased |
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Another week; hour follows hour like water in a river, sings my beloved Ani. The roller coastering continues: The weekend was grand – there was the NYU revelry, and then I ran into four people I knew on lazy meander into Osu and back (resonating in my own environment, score!), snagged a quiche and a tall glass of pineapple coconut juice (oh, sweet ambrosia!) at the new café in Labone (hello, gentrification, didn’t expect to see you here…), and taught myself how to play All I Want Is You by fellow Marylander Barry Louis Polisar on the ol’ geetar. If you were a wink, I’d be a nod; if you were a seed, I know I’d be a pod…If you were applesauce, I’d 110% be your cinnamon; please, you don’t even have to ask. At one point on my walkabout, I glanced down at my hands, stained orange from henna and pink and callused at the fingertips from the guitar, and thought, Well will you look at that? Here’s proof that I’m in a place where I have the freedom and wherewithal to do things that make me happy. I went home and reread my word doc journal from sophomore year, right before I left for Ghana the first time: I also thought, I am never going to be the brave strong amazon activist I aspire to being. I’m too nice. Too afraid people won’t like me, too obsequious and uncertain. Too polite and careful. Neurotic. Always have been. I keep imagining this self out in the future, biding my time and waiting until it comes to fruition. When I get back to school. When I get home for the summer. When I get to Africa. When I get back from Africa. I’ll have the munitions I need then, the experiences and the mental fire. I’ll be ready, I’ll take on the world. But I’m only ever going to be me, me sitting and waiting, me reading about other people going out and wrapping their arms around this wounded earth and giving it love it deserves. And I get so frustrated with my own inertia, but I can never seem to figure out how to get started. After all, that’s the scary part. So I just keep wasting time, writing instead of doing. I don’t think I can yet call myself an activist per se, but wonder of wonders: I’m out in the world, doing good things, working on being brave and adventuresome. And I’m full of all this pleased (if a bit shaky) confidence in myself and my trajectory, and faith in the universe and in my ability to pull off whatever I want to pull off. Damn, huh? It’s all so goshdarn novel and unexpected and marvelous. I don’t think my sophomore self would have believed it. I believe they call this growing up. So I was finally feeling good about being back here, and then, boom, my laptop falls off a desk and cracks in two. I overexaggerate. The left side of the casing for the screen is cracked, exposing some of the cabling for the screen, which is not the end of the world – it still functions perfectly fine – I taped it up with duct tape, the universal salve (duct tape! On my shiny cherryred wunderkind of a machine! Sniff), but it’s super fragile and vulnerable now, and ugh! It’s practically brand new! I was trying to be so careful with it, as it is (sad but true) my best friend here. I was so incredibly distraught all week, especially since the feeling of disconnect was horribly compounded by the lack of internet at all the usual spots. (I’m pretty much addicted, no denying it.) This is what happens when you get attached to things. But I am, once again, being a spoiled brat: it’s still totally functional, and I’m lucky I have a laptop and an internet connection here at all, so let’s just hope it holds out for the next six months in its current state. Big sigh. M’s reaction when he heard about the crack was sympathy followed by, “Oh, you should sell it to me! A crack doesn’t bother me.” Okay, NOT THE POINT. I’ve been avoiding him as much as possible, it’s just not worth the aggravation. He and K fight and he rides off on his motorcyle, rumblerumble – ooohhh what a MAN we’re all so fucking impressed. Momma suggests my rocky first week might be blamed on jetlag and testosterone; I think she’s onto something. So that was a big chunk of Downer, and then Ghana won the opening game of the African World Cup! (Forget Ghana @ 50; the air of festivity and the decorations and ongoing celebrations for the cup put the anniversary to shame.) I didn’t watch it on tv or even listen on the radio – I didn’t need to. Every play was in surround sound – from the stadium off in the distance, the houses all up and down Church Crescent, and spilling out into the rest of Labone and beyond. GOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL!!!! It’s fucking amazing. The city erupts. I got no sleep that night, and the streets were a sea of redgreengoldgoblackstars for days before and after. I got a kickass world cup shirt showing three teletubbies painted in Ghana colors playing football – absurd and amazing. I promise, pictures soon. And then work was rather stressful the rest of the week – there’s a expat consultant in town, and a workshop involving ministry people in progress, and major cross-cultural (heck, cross-bureaucratical) miscommunication. Which is of course my forte, but it’s hard to maintain academic curiosity when you’re so invested in it. Welcome to the real world. Biiiig sigh. But Emma, a girl my age who is fulfilling her national service (required civil or military service post following university) at the ministry of education, is totally my friend now! Score. She was educated at an international school in Accra K-12, so she’s got an unusual perspective – and her senior thesis was a quasi-anthropological exploration of exchange students’ experiences at University of Ghana-Legon (i.e., what are the bundled notions of Ghana they bring to the experience, and how does that shift when they’re here – what is the Ghana they’re engaging with, and why, and how much does that reflect the Ghana of their local peers?). Pretty awesome. I think she’s going to be a good ally. But no word from the NYU kids all week, after that initial burst of extremely gregarious sociability. (Did I do or say something untoward after they broke out the Kasapreko…?) That plus the stress of work and the stress of home (avoiding M + new nanny for the girls, oh lordy), the laptop situation, Lindalinda being strangely standoffish, and my utter inability to get Skype to cooperate when I need it most had me feeling pretty blue. An extended chat with dear Em and few calls later – one from my momma, one from my beloved Armenian and one from my would-be-academic-doppelganger down the street inviting me out to Celsbridge – and I’m feeling fine again. Ladies and gentleworms, your hapless heroine is quite the summer storm these days. Patter patter BOOM; rinse, endure dry spell, and repeat. Postscript: It has come to light that the girl responsible for the phrase “I’m used to something a little more primeval than this” from my last post has a banjo. A BANJO. HERE. With her. Down the street. In House 2; quite possibly in my old room. She must needs be my new best friend!! Sorry, laptop, you’re old news. Borrowing M’s extra guitar of late has been a marvelous salve for my nerves, but a banjo takes the cake any day. (Not literally though, banjos don’t have hands, don’t be silly.)
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| Heading towards the middle of the river... |
[20 Jan 2008|10:22am] |
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…where the current picks up. I spent the day with sleep, guitar, laya; now I sit out on the balcony in the dark with a glowing stick of nag champa, and when the breeze shifts the air smells like a summer night in union square, full of the fog of incense and cab exhaust. It’s time to take a step back and look around: a new season. For the harmattan, it’s surprisingly balmy; I’ve been sleeping with the window slats thrown open, balcony door letting the in night air and reflected palmgreen fluorescent light through the screen.
The moon sits higher, rises sooner; the sun rouses itself later, a dusty, sluggish red – the tired sun of National Geographic safaris, plunked with worn familiarity over the traffic and construction of Accra. Home? (For now? I feel more plugged in, even though people on the street in Labone assume I must be part of the new batch of students, and greet me accordingly. Nope dudes, been here. I live here. Me te Twi, o.) I have lost my mini travel alarm, but wake up daily to Adriana throwing a fit at 6:30 am, like clockwork. Life telescopes in and out of focus; what felt so far away and daunting a week ago is solidly real, and warm, and surprisingly unremarkable. Schoolwork and snow and 9-5 on the subway seem altogether unreal (that was fast). I miss in slightly different ways every day; with the immediate lemon-juice-on-papercut sting of departure, at the back of my throat like trapped tears, deep in my gut, a little hollow and restless, fading and growing, changeable as weather. And it’s only been a week. What a roller coaster! Departure: fairly miserable.
Layover: potentially best layover to date. Kisses are a marvelous antidote for anxiety.
Arrival: preposterous. M pulled into a no-parking zone when he picked me up, necessitating a $40 fine, payable immediately. Bullshit welcome, thanks a bunch Ghana.
First four days: miserably sleepless; DSL installed (YAY!); DSL cuts out (BOO!); M kirks out on me and then acts like a child about it (eugh, grow up); much heart-warming communication from my darling farflungs by way of email, skype, and hidden love note. And then Friday, oh Friday! It was surreal. I met the new Church Crescent gang. They were full of adorable questions bearing the mark of NYU brainwashing (Do you ride trotros? Do you drink the water? Can you get tampons here? What’s your take on the associate director? -- they call her Tyra! I love it). We went – get this – to the mall. I swear, it looks like the Atlantic Avenue stop on the Q, all low ceilinged corridors and middle income stores dressed up in glass and marble -- replace Daffy's and Target with Nallum and Game, and you've got it. Play-doh? Scrabble? Shabby chic furnishings? Lingerie? Coke floats and pizza? (Where am I?) I kept wanting to turn to them and say, You kids have it so easy! When I was your age, we didn’t have dozens of school supply options, or cheap imported bottled wine, no! One kind of notebook! One kind of cheap ballpoint pen! One kind of flimsy blue cardstock folder! Box wine! Where’s the challenge people? I ask you. (It occurs to me that this is those sister sirens, globalization and capitalism, at work. This is the sort of obvious thing you’ve always known that suddenly bites your thumb: neither of those concepts sits all that well with me, but they are the reason I have so many millions of choices, here and at home – school supplies, wine, careers, shoes, books, coffee, curry, conceptions of self…how do I reconcile my politics with my sense of entitlement to innumerable choices? Do they even need to be reconciled? Ponder, ponder. ) We ran into one of the new visiting profs out at the mall with his wife and orthdontured daughters. (Where do you go for braces in Accra?) He does history, education, language policy. (!) John told him I was one of his shining stars. (!!) I’m going to visit his class when they cover language and give my two cents. (!!!) Sweet. That night, they invited me to an NYU/Ashesi/Legon mixer at the new residence, Abafom. I felt like a celebrity, or like I’d returned to high school as a Popular Girl – which was unnerving, given our semester’s take on particular returning students (i.e. sour-grape-scorn). Oh my god, are you R’s friend? I had to come say hi! That’s sooo cool that you live here. You’re coming with us to the club, right? I hope you like Star, because I just got you a big one, the bartender is bringing it! Do you have friends your age at work? No? Aw, you should totally hang out with us all the time! (Uh, woah? Are you people for real?) So many oh-so-New-York questions and strands of conversation – So, are there gay bars here?
Yeah, this music is okay, but I’m used to something a little more primeval. (Tisch much?)
Oh my god, no way, my best friend used to work for Ira Glass!
Well actually, when we had our Holloween party at Water…
Do you think we could get a van back? I don’t want to walk.
So, are you one of the two fabled straight guys?
Well what was your major? Oh yeah we have one of those… (now THAT’s a first) The kicker was R's response to the look on my face in the midst of all this collegiate revelry -- 'Welcome back!' 'What? I've been here!' 'No, man, to college. *wink*' (Yeah. It's weird.)
We went out for more drinks afterwards at After-1 (Bamboo, and its associated puns, has sadly gone the way of the dodo), and then to Epo Spot in Osu – the hip hop joint that kept me up when I slept at the faculty house – and then late night anthro pillow talk with R. It was marvelous. It was all the tipsy fearless in-group hilarity that one needs to stay sane in youth. It was probably too good to be true. Good god, I really want (NEED) friends without visa aspirations and cultural disconnects! Aiie! A note for those in the know: house 2 still smells exactly the same. It’s indescribable, it made me feel sad and homesick and nauseous and nostalgic for Geneva and Matt. I was startled at how emotionally I reacted – I didn’t realize how much I had internalized that space. I think I rejected a lot of attachment based on the associated pettiness that occurred there. I feel like there’s a lot more to say, but my brain is having trouble making sense of the shifting emotions in my gut. I keep dreaming that the choice is still before me and I’m preparing anxiously to leave (only in the dreams, it’s by steerage and prop plane). One week down; 24 to go. Terrifying and exhilarating. We shall see…
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| (Am I really here?) |
[13 Jan 2008|02:22am] |
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I should not be up right now. I am so far beyond jetlagged that it’s turned into Grade A Insomnia. The scoop: I’m back for six months, they gave me a contract and a stipend, I’m still living with my boss, it’s still a wee bit strange. For those of you just joining our broadcast (or perhaps for all interested parties, since I’m often inadvertently obscure), I’ll be working with a US-based NGO that’s partnered with the ministry of Education to try and make teaching primary school in local languages viable. (Currently it’s English-only, which means the majority of Ghanaian students who don’t speak English at home are being taught in a language they don’t understand, and unsurprisingly aren’t learning all that much.) There’s a policy element, a textbook production element, and a public advocacy element, and I’ll have a hand in the latter two. The double scoop: I’m a big spoiled whiner. Came home full of gusto; leavin' more than a little deflated and sad to be going far away from the people I love and kicking myself for being such a ninny about a measly six months. As per usual: need to get the fuck over myself. Here I have created this opportunity that resembles the goal I set for myself post-graduation of doing something meaningful out in the world before grad school, and it’s not only meaningful but related to my life goals, and I’ve got a big room in a big house with a big gate in a great neighborhood with a cook and a housekeeper and an herb garden and a well stocked kitchen, and I’ve got plenty of books and knitting and pictures of all of you beautiful people and endless research opportunities sitting outside the window…and I’m not digging it. I know I haven’t really given myself a chance to dig it yet, but there’s this resistance in my gut that I can’t seem to deconstruct. Hello self, it’s me calling. YOU’RE ALLOWED TO BE HAPPY. Words of wisdom from the inimitable Eleanor Roosevelt, via the equally inimitable Carey: You must do the thing you think you cannot do. This is so apt that I get choked up writing the words.
The triple scoop (pistachio, mint chocolate chip, and coffee, plus sprinkles): 1. I’ve figured out New York is my context. That’s where I make sense. I feel more tethered this time around, which is both comforting and painful (tug tug tug, but less wrenchingly so than last time). 2. I’ve embraced my inner snoot. (See above.) I love artisanal cheese and specialty ales and skinny black jeans and pitchfork media and I’m not going to apologize for it! Well, maybe the jeans. 3. I left my heart in San Francisco. Kidding! It’s actually at 15 Cliff Street, if anyone’s looking for it. 4. I realized this afternoon that I officially take too many pictures of myself when I’m alone just to prove that I exist. It borders on compulsive behavior.
5. In addition to teaching myself guitar, Arabic, and Hausa, conducting additional codeswitching research, outshining all previous volunteer-to-employees at work, infiltrating the NYU student population for social purposes, weaning myself off #4, submitting my paper for publication, traveling one weekend a month, finishing my lace stole and doing yoga more regularly, I will self-analyze and cure my absurd overachiever-perfectionist tendencies over the course of the next six months. Wish me luck.
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| Memorandum to New York Posse, specifically: |
[29 Nov 2007|08:47am] |
I'M COMING HOME DEC. 12!!!
(Yay.)
The plan at the moment is to go back in January, but I need to see you. All of you. (Minus Hyun, alas, I wish we had some magic for that one...) I miss you all like salt. Let the planning commence! I want a big pile of love (and bubble tea and cappuccino and hookah, etc.) before everyone scatters for the holidays, so let me know when you'll be in the city, folks, and I'll take me a greyhound on the Hudson River line. (You think Billy Joel would ever take the chinatown bus?)
There's a bunch more to be said, including that I fuckin' ROCKED the sociolx conference, yay, but I could tell the rest of the stories in person, yeah? Hoooooo doggies, I am stoked.
It appears the universe is not, in fact, quite as mean as I had previously thought. Please note.
Over and out, posse. Be in touch.
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| Bleargh. |
[18 Nov 2007|07:06pm] |
I know I owe manhy of you an explanation of what the hell is going on over here, and you'll have it, but I'm not in a place to explicate just yet -- I was fine, and then I wan't and then I was again, and then I was fucking EXHILIRATED and simultaneously miserable (that one having to do with a new bloom up on a high shelf in my mind marked 'replant in six months,' which, if watered occasionally from both sides of the Atlantic, may yet be a damn beautiful thing), and now, wih absolutely no certainty about the next two weeks let alone the next six months, and with a conference paper in shambles, I am feeling the sickeningly familiar tendrils of deepswampgreen Anxiety in my gut. Why, it's almost like being a student again!
But the real reason for posting is to alert everyone who hasn't taken glance at their facebook newsfeed lately (or does not *have* a facebook newsfeed) that I have a coupla new pictures up, which can either be seen by moseying on down to my profile or by clicking these links:
General: http://nyu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2243752&l=ef31c&id=801222
Signs: http://nyu.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2225849&l=fdb22&id=801222
Enjoy. OR ELSE.
Also, put your orders in now for Diabolo 3, the latest installment in the snake man series from the impressive Ghanaian video industry, wherein a man turns into a snake, fucks a white girl, and as a result she vomits American currency! I can't make this stuff up, people! It's pretty much amazing. Just remember, if you're ever low on cash, all you have to do is turn into a snake and find your way into some unsuspecting Obruni's panties. Not mine, though. Translator Daniel tells me I'm no longer an Obruni -- and even if I was, I'm pretty suspecting -- so you're out of luck, ye cashless reptilian horndogs.
Okay I think this is a sign that I need to chill the fuck out. WHERE IS MY BANJO WHEN I NEED IT?!!
Oh speaking of banjos, I saw John Collins! He says hi, those of you who know him.
Over and out, faithful posse. I fucking miss you.
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| My new theme song: |
[13 Nov 2007|11:06am] |
Change 'a captain with seven children' to 'six months in West Africa,' and it's pretty spot on. I have a lot to say to everybody, but have a listen first. Can you see me waltzing through the alps with my banjo singing this like Maria?
What will this day be like? I wonder.
What will my future be? I wonder.
It could be so exciting to be out in the world, to be free
My heart should be wildly rejoicing
Oh, what's the matter with me?
I've always longed for adventure
To do the things I've never dared
And here I'm facing adventure
Then why am I so scared
A captain with seven children
What's so fearsome about that?
Oh, I must stop these doubts, all these worries
If I don't I just know I'll turn back
I must dream of the things I am seeking
I am seeking the courage I lack
The courage to serve them with reliance
Face my mistakes without defiance
Show them I'm worthy
And while I show them
I'll show me
So, let them bring on all their problems
I'll do better than my best
I have confidence they'll put me to the test
But I'll make them see I have confidence in me
Somehow I will impress them
I will be firm but kind
And all those children (Heaven bless them!)
They will look up to me
And mind me with each step I am more certain
Everything will turn out fine
I have confidence the world can all be mine
They'll have to agree I have confidence in me
I have confidence in sunshine
I have confidence in rain
I have confidence that spring will come again
Besides which you see I have confidence in me
Strength doesn't lie in numbers
Strength doesn't lie in wealth
Strength lies in nights of peaceful slumbers
When you wake up -- Wake Up!
It tells me all I trust I lead my heart to
All I trust becomes my own
I have confidence in confidence alone
(Oh help!)
I have confidence in confidence alone
Besides which you see I have confidence in meeeeeeeee! (Whooof!)
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obruni's journal
