Almost every day comes a minute or two where the increasingly smaller voice in my head asks: Why aren't you writing? When will you start again? Guilt, guilt, guilt. Truth is, I guess, that despite the fact that some projects have been moving along quite nicely; Christmas, New Year's, and my birthday have come and gone; and I'm living in freakin' Africa, I feel conflicted when I sit down to write. I guess that now that I have been here a year, the novelty has kind of worn off. My Holy-Shit-I'm-in-Africa moments are rare and almost non-existent now. The fun with the blog at the beginning was writing about these epiphanies I was having and being able to express them and share them at the same time. Now, I feel rather epiphany-less and that anything I write merely in an attempt to keep up with the blog and not with as a creative expression comes off as dull and stale. Consequently, the lined page remains blank or my computer cursor continues to blink.
I love the work. I love the fact that I've been able to identify community problems, choose which ones I want to address, create a solution or answer to them, find the tools to implement it, and then implement it. I love working for Peace Corps and being a part of the “Peace Corps Machine” if you will. I love several of the individuals I have met in the course of my time here, felt privileged to know them, help them, and witness their lives. I don't love Ghana. I am not summarily taken with or inspired by Ghana, West Africa, or its culture. I guess that that is a foundational reason why the fire has gone and I haven't tackled many of the things that I came here determined to tackle.
At the core of anthropology is tendency to romanticize culture. It is the profession's source of passion and its curse. The passion is what keeps new professionals finding it in university and fighting to study it even though they most likely won't make any money at it. It has what has prompted adventurous individuals to go to far flung places to live with peoples everyone else thought were strange and barbaric. It's what prompts anthropologists everywhere to say of those “strange and barbaric” people and practices, No they're not and I'm going to prove it to you. It's a curse because romanticizing culture can give one rose-colored glasses which can potentially blind you to many things. Romanticizing is not a far step from Exoticizing, something that can be very detrimental and very insulting to people. But, at least for me, it is the dose of romanticism that keeps me curious and motivated and exploratory. I came to the realization a while ago that I feel virtually no passion for Ghana, its culture, or its land. I feel no curiosity (beyond a few certain activities like cultural dancing) about how or why certain cultural quirks exist and have to desire to explore it in a way that I expected to upon touching down in Ghana. It has caused my focus to shift. I have set the anthropology on the back burner and have instead tried to focus my energies and motivation on the projects, the individuals, and Peace Corps rather than community integration, cultural study and professional anthropological methods. It seems I am not really alone in this feeling. Many other volunteers have expressed a very ho-hum attitude towards this country, and a lot of West Africa.
That being said, I am very satisfied at the moment with the pace of my grassroots development work, i.e. my projects. The school library is a long term, ongoing project and I am pleasantly surprised and excited about the way it is snowballing. All our money is in for the renovation stage, there is enormous enthusiasm at home for contributing books, and Damanko is equally as excited to receive it. They have gone even above and beyond in their contributions putting to shame everyone's complaints about their own communities that “just want handouts without contributing anything.”
I was also able to find good match in an organization for our community's household latrine needs. We are in the process of securing materials to build 100 latrines in Damanko and surrounding villages for households who really want one, but can't afford them because the cost of cement has increased more than gasoline. I am really testing the limits of Kwesi's public relations and community organizing abilities with this project and the family planning event we will be kicking off this Friday (I will save a description of that til after we've finished). He will rise and go beyond, I'm sure. I am beginning to think he is indefatigable.
So, life and work saunters on. I am doing enough that my ego is convinced I am appropriately busy, but the pile of finished novels grows exponentially higher.
Okay, so perhaps this is enough to get me started again. Baby steps, right? My computer is also operational again, so that helps immensely. Here's hoping a second chance will be successful!
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