In church this morning (I know…my blogs have never started with these words…bear with me, please), the pastor gave a sermon on imperfection, greed, and dishonesty; on the impossible world we live in and how difficult it can be to do the right thing and how sometimes doing the wrong thing isn’t always such a bad thing (apparently Jesus did it, too). Now I don’t go to church often, and I’m currently in a stage where I’m deciding whether church is the right place for me right now, but today it was like the sermon had been hand-crafted for me and where I’ve been these last few weeks.
Since I turned 25, I’ve been on a bit of a spiritual journey. Something about hitting that number made me realize I needed to have more to my life than stories about foggy Saturday nights spent with too much wine and I’m-not-sure-what-his-name-was-but-he-made-me-laugh.
So for the last few years I’ve attempted (strong emphasis to be placed on the word attempt) to begin making healthy-life-choices, like “I really shouldn’t smoke that cigarette, even though I’ve had enough booze to sink a ship” or, “I should totally get the garden salad WITH the cheeseburger ”. "Does running away from the police count as exercise?" Or, “No, I really need to pass on the birthday cake. I’ve had three donuts for breakfast already.” Somehow, I feel these choices redeem the thousands of bad ones I’ve made since I turned 18. I get the salad dressing on the side, don’t I!?
In line with such healthy living, I’ve had this sneaking suspicion that I should find a spiritual community, too (which is not to say that when my girls and I have had enough to drink that we aren’t about as spiritual as it gets), but I'm talking about a community that can help me continue to make these healthy choices. And I can’t lie that I have another reason for seeking a church community: maybe I’ll find a nice young, independently wealthy church-going man who likes children, folk art, and wine and who wants to let me volunteer professionally and sit on committees and boards for the rest of my life and spend all of our winters in Africa (Jesus made wine out of water, people, have some faith).
I’ve been church-hopping for a few years now and I've struggled to find just the right congregation for me—somewhere that feels comfortable, and safe. Somewhere that supports my diverse lifestyle, and the lifestyles of my loved ones (read: a lot of my friends are really, really gay and I really, really love them and really, really lack the tolerance I need to be around people who are intolerant), and a church that focuses on peace-making and justice. And that's not to say that I haven't found churches that I like. I’ll find a place that seems nice enough, but beyond a powerful sermon or two, I find there’s really no one like me there—someone who believes the same things I believe and who even begins to understand what I do for a living (which I can totally understand, because I can barely explain it myself).
Partially, I wonder if this lack of church success is because I can’t seem to decide what I actually believe these days. And despite everything I’ve seen, and everything I’ve done, I feel like I’ve just begun to scratch the surface of what exists out there for me. So church has been low on the totem pole. And it doesn’t help when there are crazies out there burning religious texts in the name of “God”. I know they’re only about 40 people deep, but 40 people deep too many, I think.
These last few weeks have been challenging and exhausting and at times, painful. I’ve been working impossible hours and facing pretty impossible to-do lists for just one person. I truly love my job, but there are weeks when there are never enough hours and certainly not enough hands to actually get what we need done.
A pretty horrible tragedy happened last week, too. One of my dearest friends and colleagues L. lost a close friend, C., suddenly and tragically, at the hands of a domestic dispute. Though I didn’t know C. well, I had met her a few times through L. and I can’t help but feel devastated by the loss, not to mention the loss for this woman’s children, family and friends. Domestic disputes should never lead to the death of two parents—regardless of who was responsible. It’s eerie to hear the news and know the people that they’re talking about. One would think that I'd become immune to the tragedy of everyday life, when you deal with it as much as we in Baltimore City do, but it never stops hurting. Or stinging. Or biting. It forces you to pause and take a deep breath, even when you haven’t allotted that pause and deep breath into your schedule for the day.
Death is never something we’re truly prepared for, and even when we know it’s coming, it stings hard and shuts down life temporarily (and sometimes a bit longer than temporarily). I know because I’ve grieved for friends and grandparents, students and mentors. I’ve felt the sting. The sinking stomach. The numbness. I started writing this blog about this time last year because my grandmother was dying. I used this space, and you, my readers, as a way to cope with what didn’t make sense. And in the process, I rediscovered a voice I’d lost over the last few years of academic writing and grant writing and all the writing that had nothing to do with me.
And a year later, I’m still using this space to process the things that don’t make sense and to celebrate the things that work and to share the things that don’t work. And this public stage is refreshingly raw and revealing. There are times where I hesitate to write what I’m thinking because I wonder how it will be received, or who might read it, but I generally push forward and think, “if not now, when?” And what is it that causes the hesitation? What kind of super human expectations do we have on ourselves if we can’t be true to ourselves? If we can’t be honest with our friends and families about our stories?
I’ve written a lot about expectations in the past—expectations that sometimes feel unfair and that confuse me and that overwhelm me. Expectations that cause me to wake up at four in the morning and pace and write emails (and sometimes online shoe shop or bake muffins). Expectations that we women weren’t told about when we were whispered stories by our mothers about someday being Wonderwoman. The things they didn’t tell us when they taught us to idolize the suffragists and to become good feminists—to raise the bar for ourselves and to destroy the glass ceiling. I mean, I almost hesitate to compare our lives now, as modern women, to the lives of women one hundred years ago, or even fifty years ago, but I can’t help but wonder if the expectations now are almost too high.
The things we women are expected to want to do—don’t you want to pump your breast milk with your automated breast pump in your $600 tailored suit in between meetings? Don’t you want to be expected to want children but to also want a career, too? Don’t you want to have the burden of figuring out how to fit it all in—the growing up, the going to graduate school, the finding of someone who isn’t a total freak and/or apeshit NUTS that you actually want to share a life with (and then the follow-up dating that needs to happen), the marriage (the planning), the birthing of babies, and then the subsequent raising of said babies, while not giving up on the education you spent $200,000 on (okay, you, your parents, that bitch Sallie Mae, and the federal government)? Don’t you want to have a conference call on your iPhone while you’re waiting in the carpool line? And we're supposed to do this in high heels, something gracefully feminine, without ever looking tired, and without ever falling victim to the all-day-yoga-pants and arch-supportive-shoe. Or without going into debt. Or without getting too fat.
These last few weeks I’ve been running around at breakneck speed, zooming in and out of meetings, eating lunches out of plastic wrappers, working fourteen, fifteen hour days and planning every minute of my day, down to the exactly three times I’ve allowed myself to pee. My dog has been so mad at me that she pooped in the house twice last week (and I admit, I’m jealous that I too can’t take out my anger by pooping in the middle of someone’s floor) and she keeps giving me this look that screams, “go ahead and leave again. I’ll just be here at the house. Doing absolutely nothing while you’re gone. All day.” My Blackberry has become my best friend. My confidant. And my accomplice to this messy lifestyle. She never leaves my side, even when she's been silenced. Sometimes her little red blinking light is like my very own personal lighthouse.
And a part of me feels so accomplished when I survive these weeks. This is, in part, what they wanted, I think. This is what those women, for so many years, fought tooth and nail, so that I could run around with a Blackberry, saying the things I’m supposed to say in meetings, looking the look, with that ease that says, “oh hey, yeah, I made these muffins from scatch at three a.m. when I couldn’t sleep.” I’ve conquered not only one domain—but TWO. I can work AND bake. Hand me a breast pump. I’m a modern superwoman.
But theres the part of me that hates it too, and hates what it does to me. The me who doesn't ever want to be like the women in Sex and the City or the women in a bad Bravo reality series. The me that hates that we're expected to pull all this off; to be smart and feminine, sexy and maternal, nurturing and understanding, successful and yet, still simple, and low-maintenance.
But then when we're forced to pause, when the cycle gets disrupted, we're allowed a finite window of time in which we can really evaluate our lives. We can challenge our own truths and be critical of ourselves: Am I doing the things that make me happy? Am I doing the things that fulfull me? That enrich me? That propel me forward?
This morning we talked about a parable in Luke that deals with a shrewd manager and a greedy landowner. The sermon went deep into the story, theorizing all the ways it could be interpreted, but more importantly, discussing the many, many ways in which our world is imperfect. That we’re guided towards choosing wealth and greed because we’re supposed to advance ourselves and grow our bank accounts and 401Ks and become someone. But that Jesus tells us that we need to get in the habit of making choices for the good, even when what’s good doesn’t seem clear. This, of course, led us to a discussion about how to even know, or understand, what good and bad means anymore. The many, many ways in which we’re expected to make smart choices when there actually aren’t always smart choices to be had among the handful of choices we’re usually being asked to decide between. We make the best choices we can, with the best of intentions, and hope that we’ve done the right thing. And ideally, the take-home message for someone like me is that the expectations I’ve put on myself for anything above and beyond just doing the right thing shouldn’t consume me anymore.
I laughed inside because I’ve spent so much time convincing myself that there is no place for me at church, and here I am, at church, feeling like the sermon was written for me. Feeling like the sermon was written for C. and for all the women around me who are expected to accomplish the impossible, everyday. For all of us who keep ourselves awake at night, worried that someone will punish us for having made the best choice out of the choices we were given, even though it might have been the wrong choice. That someone will pull the tablecloth out from under us and surprise us with a mandated "stay-at-home-and-bake" day and secretly give our jobs away.
Which causes me to pause. And think.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Two-headed monster
Sometimes after I’ve been on vacation for a while or, say, I've spent two weeks in another country (or on another continent), I have this sobering re-entry into the real world. Into my real life. For the short amount of time I’m away from my daily life, I disconnect just long enough to remember what life can be like when it isn’t a total bat-shit crazy race. I’m reminded of another kind of life that exists—“Island Life”, I call it. And I lust for ways to integrate island life into my Baltimore life. My noisy, has-and-wants-too-much wandering life.
When I was in college I’d sneak away to my quiet, picturesque mountain town during holidays and breaks and I’d so quickly fall back into my old patterns. I’d hang out with the people I’d known since toddlerhood, cracking the same old jokes since 1985, and falling into a kind of lazy comfort that only comes from years and years of life shared with friends and family. I’d drive the long way home just to see the sunset over the mountain ridge. I’d leave my house and take my ancient Honda station wagon, covered in liberal, peace-mongering bumper stickers, “up in the forest” (which is what we’d say when we’d take the windy road up into the mountains and into the national park that covers a large portion of the county) and park my car along the side of the road. There are hundreds of spots where you can just wedge yourself between the trees and the river and listen to the noise it all makes when you’re quiet. And I would sit, often stunned, next to that river, comparing my two worlds. The noise of the water just loud enough that I was comfortable thinking whatever I wanted—no one else could possibly hear it. Here was this life that was really quite charmed—safe and secure, nestled between the river and the valley. I knew everyone I needed to know—and they knew me. I didn’t have to prove much to anyone anymore because they’d known me since I was in diapers. They knew what I was capable of (and they knew my faults, too). Life, in general, was pretty quiet and slow. Things happened gradually. People lived pretty simply.
Then there was this new life I’d discovered in this bizarrely large city called Baltimore and this small, wooded, suburban college campus. I could never find my way anywhere (accept around the one loop road that outlined my college), the city roads made no sense to me, the drivers honked and drove too fast, and these “beltways” that wrapped themselves around Baltimore and Washington, D.C. felt more like boa constrictors than highways, slowly choking the life out of the communities they “belted”. But there was this group of people I’d met who were so much like me it scared me (because that didn’t happen often in that small town of mine). They were liberal and progressive and snarky and thought the same weird things I thought were funny to be funny, too. There were things in this city that were wholly new to me—things that scared and excited me, equally. I encountered people and situations I thought only existed in movies (uhh…lesbians are real!?). I made all kinds of messes. And mistakes. It was exciting and shiny and new and I had to work, for the first time in a long time, to have an identity—to find that same “comfort” I’d had in my cozy little hammock of Western North Carolina. Oh and did you see The Wire? Yeah. It was like that, too.
I’d take the flight, or ten hour drive, back to Baltimore, fretting over the transition that would inevitably happen in the coming days. The giving up of what I knew for the gnawing discomfort of the unknown. The speeding up of life. The loss of my sweet, subtle southern accent. The lack of understanding people had about where I was from and what real life could look like without giant shopping malls, access to designer anything (because we had Sky City and Wal-Mart…take your pick), or anything too complicated, really. Not to mention there was this charming naïveté I’d come to love about the people I grew up with. It couldn’t be more different from the cynicism and biting commentary I was growing to love from my new Northeastern friends (although I wasn't entirely sure I really liked it just yet). I almost felt like the two worlds couldn’t possibly share space in my identity. It was too exhausting to go back and forth. It was basically culture shock, every single holiday and vacation.
And I’ve discovered, for better or for worse, that gradually, I’ve shifted my identity. I’m still from that small mountain town and my childhood is an inescapable part of who I’ve become—but I’ve modified my home base. I’ve allowed a lot of complication into my life. It’s messier and noisier than I ever expected it to become. I care too much about the brands on my feet and the realness of the pearls in my ears. I still fall in love with all the wrong people (and some of the right ones, too). Baltimore has become my home, without asking (rude), and while I’ve come to love the noise and rats and quirky appeal of Charm City, there is still something wonderful about getting away. About sneaking out at the crack of dawn and watching the harbor fade in the distance as I head south (or just out).
It never fails, though, that the getting away triggers all these questions and leads me into this deep, dark journey into the “person I’ve become”. And it awakens the Piscean gypsy in me that feels uncomfortable with being so settled—so embedded in a lifestyle that I can’t quickly pack up and leave from without a moving truck and at least a month to do laundry and buy boxes. It makes me think questions like, “Have I become the asshole I never wanted to become?” or “Would I like me if my high school me met me now?”
There is no doubt that Baltimore has changed me. Working in a low-income urban community in an inadequately resourced public school system will change your life. It changed the way I think and the way I talk and the way I see the rest of the World. It changed how I think about systems and education and accessibility. In fact, it changed my whole path. I never intended to stay this long. I had a one year plan. This turned into a five year plan. And it looks like it’s quickly become a ten year plan. I think I suck at plans.
And the timing of this internal babbling is pretty spot on. For those of you who work in higher education, you know what the months of August and September are all about. It’s like our January. Our spring. Our Easter. Also, our living hell. We are reborn into a new academic year with a new freshman class of students, so wide-eyed and brimming with excitement and fear and all those feelings of being torn between their old life and the new life they’ve yet to realize.
These last few weeks have also been trying, to say the least. These are the weeks where we all cuss under our breath, all day long, wondering why the hell we pissed away June and July with retreats and half-days and week-long vacations (although if I recall correctly, my summer wasn't particularly quiet, either). These are the weeks we work 10 hour days and weekends without even realizing it (what day is it, anyway?). These are the days we deal with hovering parents and toxic levels of anxiety and lots of tears and lots (and lots) of whining.
But these are also the days where I find myself questioning, just like the first-year students, "Where have I come from?" And "where am I going?" Sometimes the motivational talks and speakers and events continue to reach me, and to move me (perhaps more than the students?). The messages of "explore with wonder and awe" and "challenge yourself to grow" are messages I have to remind myself every morning. Because it's easy to become okay with the mundane routine. It's easy to get caught in the cycle of blah and to forget that a part of living life is actually enjoying it.
As I've been readjusting to a new semester, a new year, and frankly still trying to process all the things I'm thinking and feeling about this last trip to West Africa, I'm feeling contemplative and like I'm just on the verge of some new breakthrough--some new insight into my world.
When I'm traveling or headed home, I often don't look at a watch. I try my damndest not to have a schedule or a plan. I try my best to go with the flow (although the "work" me has been so well trained that it often takes days to really slow down and disconnect). But coming back is like a slap in the face. My inbox has piled up, I've forgotten just how mean people really are, and the soft, quiet, subtlety of not really caring what happens is replaced by the loud, blinking, anxiety of my working life.
This week I've been having lots of long talks with friends and colleagues about the nature of life and the nature of our work in higher education and in the community. These have been deep, philosophical conversations that ebb and flow somewhere between, "why are privileged white people so stupid!?" and "does the work we're doing even really accomplish anything?" And somewhere in those discussions, too, is this private battle of mine between these two people inside me, like a two-headed monster; the "Baltimore" me who has become hardened and bold; the small town girl who still remembers what the frogs on the pond sound like at night and how the dew smells first thing in the morning. The girl who empathizes with the urban poor and all the issues wherein (and has become pretty vocal about it, too) and the girl who understands small-town values and who wasn't shocked when George W. Bush was elected again. The girl who has spent months of her life in places like Ghana and Benin, experiencing new cultures and religions and tastes and sounds and people and the girl who remembers being afraid to drive to the other side of the county because it was too far away. The girl who still smiles anytime she smells honeysuckle and the girl who doesn't even notice anymore when a rat darts across her path in the alley.
The girl who is still trying to figure out how to have the best of both worlds. And how to be happy about it.
When I was in college I’d sneak away to my quiet, picturesque mountain town during holidays and breaks and I’d so quickly fall back into my old patterns. I’d hang out with the people I’d known since toddlerhood, cracking the same old jokes since 1985, and falling into a kind of lazy comfort that only comes from years and years of life shared with friends and family. I’d drive the long way home just to see the sunset over the mountain ridge. I’d leave my house and take my ancient Honda station wagon, covered in liberal, peace-mongering bumper stickers, “up in the forest” (which is what we’d say when we’d take the windy road up into the mountains and into the national park that covers a large portion of the county) and park my car along the side of the road. There are hundreds of spots where you can just wedge yourself between the trees and the river and listen to the noise it all makes when you’re quiet. And I would sit, often stunned, next to that river, comparing my two worlds. The noise of the water just loud enough that I was comfortable thinking whatever I wanted—no one else could possibly hear it. Here was this life that was really quite charmed—safe and secure, nestled between the river and the valley. I knew everyone I needed to know—and they knew me. I didn’t have to prove much to anyone anymore because they’d known me since I was in diapers. They knew what I was capable of (and they knew my faults, too). Life, in general, was pretty quiet and slow. Things happened gradually. People lived pretty simply.
Then there was this new life I’d discovered in this bizarrely large city called Baltimore and this small, wooded, suburban college campus. I could never find my way anywhere (accept around the one loop road that outlined my college), the city roads made no sense to me, the drivers honked and drove too fast, and these “beltways” that wrapped themselves around Baltimore and Washington, D.C. felt more like boa constrictors than highways, slowly choking the life out of the communities they “belted”. But there was this group of people I’d met who were so much like me it scared me (because that didn’t happen often in that small town of mine). They were liberal and progressive and snarky and thought the same weird things I thought were funny to be funny, too. There were things in this city that were wholly new to me—things that scared and excited me, equally. I encountered people and situations I thought only existed in movies (uhh…lesbians are real!?). I made all kinds of messes. And mistakes. It was exciting and shiny and new and I had to work, for the first time in a long time, to have an identity—to find that same “comfort” I’d had in my cozy little hammock of Western North Carolina. Oh and did you see The Wire? Yeah. It was like that, too.
I’d take the flight, or ten hour drive, back to Baltimore, fretting over the transition that would inevitably happen in the coming days. The giving up of what I knew for the gnawing discomfort of the unknown. The speeding up of life. The loss of my sweet, subtle southern accent. The lack of understanding people had about where I was from and what real life could look like without giant shopping malls, access to designer anything (because we had Sky City and Wal-Mart…take your pick), or anything too complicated, really. Not to mention there was this charming naïveté I’d come to love about the people I grew up with. It couldn’t be more different from the cynicism and biting commentary I was growing to love from my new Northeastern friends (although I wasn't entirely sure I really liked it just yet). I almost felt like the two worlds couldn’t possibly share space in my identity. It was too exhausting to go back and forth. It was basically culture shock, every single holiday and vacation.
And I’ve discovered, for better or for worse, that gradually, I’ve shifted my identity. I’m still from that small mountain town and my childhood is an inescapable part of who I’ve become—but I’ve modified my home base. I’ve allowed a lot of complication into my life. It’s messier and noisier than I ever expected it to become. I care too much about the brands on my feet and the realness of the pearls in my ears. I still fall in love with all the wrong people (and some of the right ones, too). Baltimore has become my home, without asking (rude), and while I’ve come to love the noise and rats and quirky appeal of Charm City, there is still something wonderful about getting away. About sneaking out at the crack of dawn and watching the harbor fade in the distance as I head south (or just out).
It never fails, though, that the getting away triggers all these questions and leads me into this deep, dark journey into the “person I’ve become”. And it awakens the Piscean gypsy in me that feels uncomfortable with being so settled—so embedded in a lifestyle that I can’t quickly pack up and leave from without a moving truck and at least a month to do laundry and buy boxes. It makes me think questions like, “Have I become the asshole I never wanted to become?” or “Would I like me if my high school me met me now?”
There is no doubt that Baltimore has changed me. Working in a low-income urban community in an inadequately resourced public school system will change your life. It changed the way I think and the way I talk and the way I see the rest of the World. It changed how I think about systems and education and accessibility. In fact, it changed my whole path. I never intended to stay this long. I had a one year plan. This turned into a five year plan. And it looks like it’s quickly become a ten year plan. I think I suck at plans.
And the timing of this internal babbling is pretty spot on. For those of you who work in higher education, you know what the months of August and September are all about. It’s like our January. Our spring. Our Easter. Also, our living hell. We are reborn into a new academic year with a new freshman class of students, so wide-eyed and brimming with excitement and fear and all those feelings of being torn between their old life and the new life they’ve yet to realize.
These last few weeks have also been trying, to say the least. These are the weeks where we all cuss under our breath, all day long, wondering why the hell we pissed away June and July with retreats and half-days and week-long vacations (although if I recall correctly, my summer wasn't particularly quiet, either). These are the weeks we work 10 hour days and weekends without even realizing it (what day is it, anyway?). These are the days we deal with hovering parents and toxic levels of anxiety and lots of tears and lots (and lots) of whining.
But these are also the days where I find myself questioning, just like the first-year students, "Where have I come from?" And "where am I going?" Sometimes the motivational talks and speakers and events continue to reach me, and to move me (perhaps more than the students?). The messages of "explore with wonder and awe" and "challenge yourself to grow" are messages I have to remind myself every morning. Because it's easy to become okay with the mundane routine. It's easy to get caught in the cycle of blah and to forget that a part of living life is actually enjoying it.
As I've been readjusting to a new semester, a new year, and frankly still trying to process all the things I'm thinking and feeling about this last trip to West Africa, I'm feeling contemplative and like I'm just on the verge of some new breakthrough--some new insight into my world.
When I'm traveling or headed home, I often don't look at a watch. I try my damndest not to have a schedule or a plan. I try my best to go with the flow (although the "work" me has been so well trained that it often takes days to really slow down and disconnect). But coming back is like a slap in the face. My inbox has piled up, I've forgotten just how mean people really are, and the soft, quiet, subtlety of not really caring what happens is replaced by the loud, blinking, anxiety of my working life.
This week I've been having lots of long talks with friends and colleagues about the nature of life and the nature of our work in higher education and in the community. These have been deep, philosophical conversations that ebb and flow somewhere between, "why are privileged white people so stupid!?" and "does the work we're doing even really accomplish anything?" And somewhere in those discussions, too, is this private battle of mine between these two people inside me, like a two-headed monster; the "Baltimore" me who has become hardened and bold; the small town girl who still remembers what the frogs on the pond sound like at night and how the dew smells first thing in the morning. The girl who empathizes with the urban poor and all the issues wherein (and has become pretty vocal about it, too) and the girl who understands small-town values and who wasn't shocked when George W. Bush was elected again. The girl who has spent months of her life in places like Ghana and Benin, experiencing new cultures and religions and tastes and sounds and people and the girl who remembers being afraid to drive to the other side of the county because it was too far away. The girl who still smiles anytime she smells honeysuckle and the girl who doesn't even notice anymore when a rat darts across her path in the alley.
The girl who is still trying to figure out how to have the best of both worlds. And how to be happy about it.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Paradise Lost and Found
My next few blogposts are going to be about Ghana and Benin. Because, well, it's whats on my mind. And my friends won't let me talk about it with them anymore, so deal with it. And isn't that the whole point of a blog? To write about the things people don't want to hear you talk about anymore?
….
Keta, Ghana
August 3, 2010
K. and I have been on the road for several hours. The rainy season has just ended and as a result the seasonal rains have left the roads in terrible shape. Our car pivots around man-shaped holes in the just-barely paved highway. Near the smaller villages, they return to dirt. The merchants and markets on the side of the road are veiled in a thin layer of red-brown dust. I’m always shocked by how dusty the air can be; by how much I’ve been spoiled by paved roadways (and I live in Baltimore City, the land of potholes). When the pavement ends, it just ends. There is no transition or sign. Like most things in Africa, you just roll with it.
The dusty red road, once smooth, has become a series of ridges and dips compacted by the enormous trucks that take this route. Trucks from Benin, Togo, Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire, loaded twenty feet high with goods and fuel cans and anything else they can cram into these enormous vehicles, navigate these small dirt roads as if they were four-lane highways, barely slowing to avoid the women and children selling bread and food from baskets precariously perched on top of their incredibly balanced heads. You drive behind them praying that they won’t hit a bump at the wrong angle and flip over entirely. And on occasion you see the aftermath of the flip; they’re on the roadside, turned completely upside down, tomatoes and okra and ears of corn spread everywhere as if an explosion has gone off inside the bed of the truck. Our little car feels like the little man out. Our driver struggles with the roads. It’s obvious he is being careful with us—I want to tell him, “Just drive! Stop breaking! We can take it!” Although I’m not entirely sure I mean this. It’s easy to forget how bad the roads really are once you’re gone and back on the smoothness of the Baltimore beltway. Right now I’m aching from my center, because my body has been bouncing and swerving and unintentionally bracing itself since we landed. I’m exhausted just from sitting.
What once was a one hour car ride has become three because of these roads. We’ve decided our final destination is truthfully too far to travel today. We’ll be crossing the borders soon to Togo and then onto Benin and we know you should never do the border crossings too late. You would never want to get stuck in between the borders at night. The space between Ghana and Togo that has been declared No Man’s Land is a place I’d never want to spend the night. I hardly want to be there as we’re walking through the borders, navigating through all the insanity that happens here—the border agents who want your cash for lunch, or your hand in marriage (or both), the young men selling cassette tapes of Whitney Houston, hand luggage, bubble gum, and white dress shirts (from the same cart), the disabled children wheeling around begging for money, or the guys who want to “help you” get through the border (and to make some quick cash). The borders are overwhelming to all the senses and the worst part is that you can’t take any pictures to prove it. You gotta rely on your words and your memory to replicate the experience. From Aflao, Ghana to Cotonou, Benin you have to go through four major borders, each stop taking anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour, depending on the moods of the agents. Not to mention you have to drive through Togo to get to the last two borders. And it seems such a shame to just drive through Togo without stopping and doing something. If you don’t start early enough in the day, you don’t arrive at the final borders until dusk.
Night driving, in general, is a risk. I’ve heard terrible stories about night robbers, although I think most of these tales stem from urban legends and a tale told to small children about the “bush-men” taking you in the night, to prevent children from going outside alone at night. But the six year old girl inside me believes the stories because as soon as the day is over, the landscape goes black. Once the sun goes down, you lose your visibility of anything beyond 10-20 feet in front of you. The lack of streetlamps and only limited indoor electricity keeps the whole place pretty dim. And when the power blacks out, something that happens often because the power grids lack infrastructure and proper engineering, you’re dependent on a combination of fire and flashlights (if you’ve remembered to bring one). The child in everyone sort of wakes up, keenly aware of our lack of darkness in the US (because how often do we find ourselves somewhere that actually goes pitch black at night?), and all the pre-adolescent fears about darkness emerge into your consciousness and you realize what a wimp you’ve become and how much you’d suck if you ever found yourself on Survivor.
K. and I have decided to stop in a small village near the Togo border. This district is known as Keta, but this smaller, more residential area is known as Dzelukope. This is the home village of my dear friend, C. I’ve been here several times with C to visit her father and to take a necessary bathroom break on the way to the border crossings. But I’ve never really paid too much attention.
The area is really quite beautiful. We’re driving East and the Gulf of Guinea is on my right, smashing itself over and over again into a rocky, but beautiful coastline. But to my left is another vast body of water, the Keta Lagoon. I’m told this is one of the largest lagoons and wetlands in Ghana, covering about 1200 square kilometers. The roads leading to Keta are lined by small plots of land growing shallots, an interesting crop that supports this entire region. Local methods of irrigation are used and it’s pretty fascinating to watch. Being a coastal village, this is also an area for a lot of fishing and salt production. Early in the morning you hear it before you see it—the chanting and the singing and the rhythmic pulling in of the nets and the late afternoon dragging out of the nets. And the middle of the day drying out of the nets. It's quite a process and involves a lot of people.
Over the last few years, I've taken to reading everything I can get my hands on about West Africa. I waiver somewhere in between being disgusted by the blogs and memoirs I read to feeling homesick and wishing I could be exactly where the author has taken me. There is an arrogance that even I have about these places; I can leave. I have big, fat US dollars in my pocket and a credit card with me in case something happens. Even in the spaces that I “rough it”, I can’t help but feel arrogant about my observations. How much space do I really have to comment? To pass judgment?
Almost all of these writers talk about the fishing villages. It’s really something incredible to watch. But it’s hard for me to ignore that this isn’t just a show for the tourists—these fishermen (and women) do this five, sometimes six, times a day, and it’s a part of the reality of life here. There is no shortage of hard work and it seems the fish, although keeping these small villages alive on market day, couldn’t possibly make anyone as much money as they’d like.
The beaches here are breathtaking. It’s hard not to think, for a moment, that you’ve discovered paradise. The beaches in the US are covered in crappy stores and neon signs and rental houses with fancy amenities. Even the most noncommercial beach towns have found a way to be commercial. Beaches sell. People love to sit on beaches for hours, burning our skin to a beautiful dark brown, and then lazily eating our weight in deep-fried fish and shrimp. But here, there is less room for luxury. And there is something very refreshing about that. I mean, there are certainly beaches in Ghana that have picked up on this idea of commercializing the beachfront. There are small shops selling shark teeth and seashells and beaded necklaces. There are bars on beaches and restaurants that overlook the sea. But even with those things, this area and the beach still serve a legitimate purpose. The beach is used for fishing and a stark contrast exists between the tourists on holiday, stretched out in the sand, while the locals pull in the nets. It's almost uncomfortable. It would be like putting million dollar condominiums in the middle of the inner city and telling the local people not to touch it (oh wait...Baltimore...didn't you already do that?).
It's also hard to ignore the history of these beaches. Most of these small coastal villages are dotted with three to six hundred year old trading forts, built by the Europeans, to trade gold and spices and slaves. Some of these structures are better survived than others and the ones that are still standing, and still open to the public, are dark and intense experiences. In most of these forts you can still the dungeons and caves where slaves were bound to each other and bolted to the walls. You can almost smell the death that happened within these structures. These realities, coupled with the white-girl-guilt-complex I seem to carry in my purse, can make these days emotional and exhausting.
As we're driving to our lodge for the night, we hit a point in the road where the lagoon merges with the sea. I’m fairly certain some kind of magic happens in these spots—these places where one thing becomes another. We ask W, our driver, to pull over so we can just sit and watch for a moment. The entire coastline is rather stunning. Hand-carved boats perch on the almost pink sand. Fishermen and women speckle the coast.
I mutter, "I think I've discovered Paradise." I quickly take my words back, watching a woman in the distance carry a giant bowl of water on her head. A woman in a small boat makes her way to the shore with the back half of her boat filled with reeds and palm fronds, I'm sure on their way to be dried and woven into something useful. A group of small children play around on the beach, singing to me in Ewe. I've been around Ewe-speaking people long enough, but the language is difficult to learn and there are tones used that my tongue has never attempted. I've mastered a handful of courtesy phrases, like "thank you" and "how are you?" but I only recognize one phrase in their singing: "Yevo". "White person". I remember feeling so offended by this on my first visit to the Volta region, thinking, how dare they call me out for being a white person!? Now I know the word is a harmless greeting, a humorous and sincere word and as far from rude as can be. If you want to get some giggles out of the children, you respond with "Amebo". "Black person". I always think to myself, What would happen to me if I did something like this in my own "village" in Baltimore City? I already know the answer to that and I laugh at my two divergent white girl roles in my two divergent worlds and how seriously we Americans take our words.
Behind me in a small shed built from scrap metal, an exhausted motor grinds cassava roots into a fine powder. Bags of sea salt line the road, collected and harvested by humans, not machines. Four or five people are bent over entirely, harvesting shallots from a small plot of land. I rethink my statement, embarassed to have been so boldly arrogant. Paradise for who, exactly? Paradise for me, the exhausted American woman who is tired of the pretention and novelty of the beaches along the East Coast? Paradise for the adventurer who wants to see and feel something really different and new? Who wants to immerse themselves in local African culture? Paradise for tourists on holiday who can afford the luxury of laying around in the sand, watching the locals work harder than I've ever had to work ever in my life?
We head towards our lodge, a really lovely spot to spend the night. The whole place has been westernized to keep the tourists comfortable and secure. I laugh at the inconsistencies and thoroughly enjoy my evening, sitting pool side, drinking local beer, eating freshly grilled chicken and jolloff rice (a delicious spicy rice made with tomatoes and peppers). A local man has dragged a television outside so that he can watch his "stories" poolside, too, while drinking local beer and making quick demands of the bar girl. This makes me laugh almost more than any of it.
The lodge itself is enormous; a series of long hallways connected like an octopus with a central front desk and restaurant adjacent to a pool and an outdoor bar. The rooms are actually very good for the price. A simple room with a small desk and chair, and a television that plays only two channels: the news and the African soap operas (dramas that are easy to follow and even easier to become addicted to because they play everywhere and in every hotel). A giant poster of Jesus is over my bed, along with a small chandelier, but the room is filled with mosquitoes, and I've had to cover myself from head to toe to avoid the bites that could be carrying all kinds of things that I probably don't want.
There is an air conditioner, a real luxury in these parts, but the room has been left open for however long the room has been unoccupied (which I suspect has been a while) and the small unit struggles to catch up, and I frankly would prefer the natural air, if it weren't for the mosquitoes. The bathroom has been tiled with outrageously fancy tile, creating an almost absurd affect to the traveler who has become accustomed to the basic amenities of a simple toilet, a large bucket, a water line running straight into the bathroom, and a drain in the corner of the room so that you can sponge bathe your way to clean. The bathtub is equally funny because it has been built almost like a tomb, nearly five feet high in the air, seperated from the rest of the bathroom by a shower curtain (another non-existent amenity in most hotels and lodges) and covered in the same absurd replication of an expensive Italian tile. A very expensive looking shower head is perched along the edge of the tub and I smile for a moment, imagining the bubble bath I might take later to soothe my aching center, and to process all the things I've been seeing and feeling these last few days. Not to mention, I might actually be able to shave my legs without falling over. There is still a large bucket in the room, which I will end up using to bathe myself in the morning (and to shave my legs) because the fancy looking shower head doesn't work and the tub doesn't appear to actually hold water for long, but I find the efforts of the lodge to be charming and I refuse to complain about it to anyone because who has the right to complain about such things?
K. and I decide we like this place. A lot. And that we're coming back with our students in January. And we're hoping that they experience all the things that we have and that they appreciate all the things that we do. And can laugh at all the same inconsistencies. And can feel heartbroken at all the same grave realities. And that they have the same moment of finding paradise here and losing it again, somewhere between the ocean and the lagoon.
Somewhere that looks an awful lot like this:
….
Keta, Ghana
August 3, 2010
K. and I have been on the road for several hours. The rainy season has just ended and as a result the seasonal rains have left the roads in terrible shape. Our car pivots around man-shaped holes in the just-barely paved highway. Near the smaller villages, they return to dirt. The merchants and markets on the side of the road are veiled in a thin layer of red-brown dust. I’m always shocked by how dusty the air can be; by how much I’ve been spoiled by paved roadways (and I live in Baltimore City, the land of potholes). When the pavement ends, it just ends. There is no transition or sign. Like most things in Africa, you just roll with it.
The dusty red road, once smooth, has become a series of ridges and dips compacted by the enormous trucks that take this route. Trucks from Benin, Togo, Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire, loaded twenty feet high with goods and fuel cans and anything else they can cram into these enormous vehicles, navigate these small dirt roads as if they were four-lane highways, barely slowing to avoid the women and children selling bread and food from baskets precariously perched on top of their incredibly balanced heads. You drive behind them praying that they won’t hit a bump at the wrong angle and flip over entirely. And on occasion you see the aftermath of the flip; they’re on the roadside, turned completely upside down, tomatoes and okra and ears of corn spread everywhere as if an explosion has gone off inside the bed of the truck. Our little car feels like the little man out. Our driver struggles with the roads. It’s obvious he is being careful with us—I want to tell him, “Just drive! Stop breaking! We can take it!” Although I’m not entirely sure I mean this. It’s easy to forget how bad the roads really are once you’re gone and back on the smoothness of the Baltimore beltway. Right now I’m aching from my center, because my body has been bouncing and swerving and unintentionally bracing itself since we landed. I’m exhausted just from sitting.
What once was a one hour car ride has become three because of these roads. We’ve decided our final destination is truthfully too far to travel today. We’ll be crossing the borders soon to Togo and then onto Benin and we know you should never do the border crossings too late. You would never want to get stuck in between the borders at night. The space between Ghana and Togo that has been declared No Man’s Land is a place I’d never want to spend the night. I hardly want to be there as we’re walking through the borders, navigating through all the insanity that happens here—the border agents who want your cash for lunch, or your hand in marriage (or both), the young men selling cassette tapes of Whitney Houston, hand luggage, bubble gum, and white dress shirts (from the same cart), the disabled children wheeling around begging for money, or the guys who want to “help you” get through the border (and to make some quick cash). The borders are overwhelming to all the senses and the worst part is that you can’t take any pictures to prove it. You gotta rely on your words and your memory to replicate the experience. From Aflao, Ghana to Cotonou, Benin you have to go through four major borders, each stop taking anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour, depending on the moods of the agents. Not to mention you have to drive through Togo to get to the last two borders. And it seems such a shame to just drive through Togo without stopping and doing something. If you don’t start early enough in the day, you don’t arrive at the final borders until dusk.
Night driving, in general, is a risk. I’ve heard terrible stories about night robbers, although I think most of these tales stem from urban legends and a tale told to small children about the “bush-men” taking you in the night, to prevent children from going outside alone at night. But the six year old girl inside me believes the stories because as soon as the day is over, the landscape goes black. Once the sun goes down, you lose your visibility of anything beyond 10-20 feet in front of you. The lack of streetlamps and only limited indoor electricity keeps the whole place pretty dim. And when the power blacks out, something that happens often because the power grids lack infrastructure and proper engineering, you’re dependent on a combination of fire and flashlights (if you’ve remembered to bring one). The child in everyone sort of wakes up, keenly aware of our lack of darkness in the US (because how often do we find ourselves somewhere that actually goes pitch black at night?), and all the pre-adolescent fears about darkness emerge into your consciousness and you realize what a wimp you’ve become and how much you’d suck if you ever found yourself on Survivor.
K. and I have decided to stop in a small village near the Togo border. This district is known as Keta, but this smaller, more residential area is known as Dzelukope. This is the home village of my dear friend, C. I’ve been here several times with C to visit her father and to take a necessary bathroom break on the way to the border crossings. But I’ve never really paid too much attention.
The area is really quite beautiful. We’re driving East and the Gulf of Guinea is on my right, smashing itself over and over again into a rocky, but beautiful coastline. But to my left is another vast body of water, the Keta Lagoon. I’m told this is one of the largest lagoons and wetlands in Ghana, covering about 1200 square kilometers. The roads leading to Keta are lined by small plots of land growing shallots, an interesting crop that supports this entire region. Local methods of irrigation are used and it’s pretty fascinating to watch. Being a coastal village, this is also an area for a lot of fishing and salt production. Early in the morning you hear it before you see it—the chanting and the singing and the rhythmic pulling in of the nets and the late afternoon dragging out of the nets. And the middle of the day drying out of the nets. It's quite a process and involves a lot of people.
 |
| Fishing in Grand Popo, Benin |
Over the last few years, I've taken to reading everything I can get my hands on about West Africa. I waiver somewhere in between being disgusted by the blogs and memoirs I read to feeling homesick and wishing I could be exactly where the author has taken me. There is an arrogance that even I have about these places; I can leave. I have big, fat US dollars in my pocket and a credit card with me in case something happens. Even in the spaces that I “rough it”, I can’t help but feel arrogant about my observations. How much space do I really have to comment? To pass judgment?
Almost all of these writers talk about the fishing villages. It’s really something incredible to watch. But it’s hard for me to ignore that this isn’t just a show for the tourists—these fishermen (and women) do this five, sometimes six, times a day, and it’s a part of the reality of life here. There is no shortage of hard work and it seems the fish, although keeping these small villages alive on market day, couldn’t possibly make anyone as much money as they’d like.
The beaches here are breathtaking. It’s hard not to think, for a moment, that you’ve discovered paradise. The beaches in the US are covered in crappy stores and neon signs and rental houses with fancy amenities. Even the most noncommercial beach towns have found a way to be commercial. Beaches sell. People love to sit on beaches for hours, burning our skin to a beautiful dark brown, and then lazily eating our weight in deep-fried fish and shrimp. But here, there is less room for luxury. And there is something very refreshing about that. I mean, there are certainly beaches in Ghana that have picked up on this idea of commercializing the beachfront. There are small shops selling shark teeth and seashells and beaded necklaces. There are bars on beaches and restaurants that overlook the sea. But even with those things, this area and the beach still serve a legitimate purpose. The beach is used for fishing and a stark contrast exists between the tourists on holiday, stretched out in the sand, while the locals pull in the nets. It's almost uncomfortable. It would be like putting million dollar condominiums in the middle of the inner city and telling the local people not to touch it (oh wait...Baltimore...didn't you already do that?).
It's also hard to ignore the history of these beaches. Most of these small coastal villages are dotted with three to six hundred year old trading forts, built by the Europeans, to trade gold and spices and slaves. Some of these structures are better survived than others and the ones that are still standing, and still open to the public, are dark and intense experiences. In most of these forts you can still the dungeons and caves where slaves were bound to each other and bolted to the walls. You can almost smell the death that happened within these structures. These realities, coupled with the white-girl-guilt-complex I seem to carry in my purse, can make these days emotional and exhausting.
As we're driving to our lodge for the night, we hit a point in the road where the lagoon merges with the sea. I’m fairly certain some kind of magic happens in these spots—these places where one thing becomes another. We ask W, our driver, to pull over so we can just sit and watch for a moment. The entire coastline is rather stunning. Hand-carved boats perch on the almost pink sand. Fishermen and women speckle the coast.
I mutter, "I think I've discovered Paradise." I quickly take my words back, watching a woman in the distance carry a giant bowl of water on her head. A woman in a small boat makes her way to the shore with the back half of her boat filled with reeds and palm fronds, I'm sure on their way to be dried and woven into something useful. A group of small children play around on the beach, singing to me in Ewe. I've been around Ewe-speaking people long enough, but the language is difficult to learn and there are tones used that my tongue has never attempted. I've mastered a handful of courtesy phrases, like "thank you" and "how are you?" but I only recognize one phrase in their singing: "Yevo". "White person". I remember feeling so offended by this on my first visit to the Volta region, thinking, how dare they call me out for being a white person!? Now I know the word is a harmless greeting, a humorous and sincere word and as far from rude as can be. If you want to get some giggles out of the children, you respond with "Amebo". "Black person". I always think to myself, What would happen to me if I did something like this in my own "village" in Baltimore City? I already know the answer to that and I laugh at my two divergent white girl roles in my two divergent worlds and how seriously we Americans take our words.
Behind me in a small shed built from scrap metal, an exhausted motor grinds cassava roots into a fine powder. Bags of sea salt line the road, collected and harvested by humans, not machines. Four or five people are bent over entirely, harvesting shallots from a small plot of land. I rethink my statement, embarassed to have been so boldly arrogant. Paradise for who, exactly? Paradise for me, the exhausted American woman who is tired of the pretention and novelty of the beaches along the East Coast? Paradise for the adventurer who wants to see and feel something really different and new? Who wants to immerse themselves in local African culture? Paradise for tourists on holiday who can afford the luxury of laying around in the sand, watching the locals work harder than I've ever had to work ever in my life?
We head towards our lodge, a really lovely spot to spend the night. The whole place has been westernized to keep the tourists comfortable and secure. I laugh at the inconsistencies and thoroughly enjoy my evening, sitting pool side, drinking local beer, eating freshly grilled chicken and jolloff rice (a delicious spicy rice made with tomatoes and peppers). A local man has dragged a television outside so that he can watch his "stories" poolside, too, while drinking local beer and making quick demands of the bar girl. This makes me laugh almost more than any of it.
The lodge itself is enormous; a series of long hallways connected like an octopus with a central front desk and restaurant adjacent to a pool and an outdoor bar. The rooms are actually very good for the price. A simple room with a small desk and chair, and a television that plays only two channels: the news and the African soap operas (dramas that are easy to follow and even easier to become addicted to because they play everywhere and in every hotel). A giant poster of Jesus is over my bed, along with a small chandelier, but the room is filled with mosquitoes, and I've had to cover myself from head to toe to avoid the bites that could be carrying all kinds of things that I probably don't want.
There is an air conditioner, a real luxury in these parts, but the room has been left open for however long the room has been unoccupied (which I suspect has been a while) and the small unit struggles to catch up, and I frankly would prefer the natural air, if it weren't for the mosquitoes. The bathroom has been tiled with outrageously fancy tile, creating an almost absurd affect to the traveler who has become accustomed to the basic amenities of a simple toilet, a large bucket, a water line running straight into the bathroom, and a drain in the corner of the room so that you can sponge bathe your way to clean. The bathtub is equally funny because it has been built almost like a tomb, nearly five feet high in the air, seperated from the rest of the bathroom by a shower curtain (another non-existent amenity in most hotels and lodges) and covered in the same absurd replication of an expensive Italian tile. A very expensive looking shower head is perched along the edge of the tub and I smile for a moment, imagining the bubble bath I might take later to soothe my aching center, and to process all the things I've been seeing and feeling these last few days. Not to mention, I might actually be able to shave my legs without falling over. There is still a large bucket in the room, which I will end up using to bathe myself in the morning (and to shave my legs) because the fancy looking shower head doesn't work and the tub doesn't appear to actually hold water for long, but I find the efforts of the lodge to be charming and I refuse to complain about it to anyone because who has the right to complain about such things?
K. and I decide we like this place. A lot. And that we're coming back with our students in January. And we're hoping that they experience all the things that we have and that they appreciate all the things that we do. And can laugh at all the same inconsistencies. And can feel heartbroken at all the same grave realities. And that they have the same moment of finding paradise here and losing it again, somewhere between the ocean and the lagoon.
Somewhere that looks an awful lot like this:
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Seeing is Believing
I’ve been back from my adventures in West Africa for just over a week now. I keep saying that this “culture shock” thing keeps getting easier each time I take one of these trips. Considering I talk to my students about culture shock all the time, it always comes as a surprise when I still experience it. And I guess in some sense it does actually get easier, but in others, I find it harder and harder to cope. I’m less jarred by the transition from the shiny, sanitized, orderly United States of America to the dusty, noisy, unruly ways of the developing world. I'm already prepared for the noises and the smells and the tastes. I know what I want to do as soon as I land and I have a list of things and places and people I want to see before I leave (just like a visit home). I'm ready for the "Africa Time" and the waiting and the endless marriage proposals. I can recognize phrases in local languages and navigate the borders with a confidence you only get from experience. So in this sense, yeah, the culture shock is “easier” because I’ve done it more. I know what to expect. In fact, I’ve come to anticipate it—to enjoy the mere chaos of it all.
But because of this I see more. On my first trip to Ghana I was so overwhelmed with what I was seeing—thatched roofs and mud huts and half-naked children running around—that I could barely understand these things. I couldn't recognize the details and the defining characteristics of each of these villages. I didn’t notice the subtle differences in the tribal scars on men’ and women’s faces. I didn’t notice the road signs and the names of towns as we went in and out of them. I wasn’t paying attention to the commerce—this village sells tomatoes, that one sells fish, etc. But this time around I almost felt overwhelmed by all the pieces I was seeing. I’m not spending so much of my energy just trying to see everything. I'm now working on processing it. Which is way harder, for the record.
But it also gets harder to leave. Coming back to the United States pretty much just makes me angry. Standing in the Kotoka airport (in Ghana) before departure, I actually considered getting out of line. I thought up approximately one hundred and one reasons why I couldn’t go back just yet. I was already beginning to craft the email in my head to my office explaining what happened (see there was this goat...and a flat tire…and an unexpected funeral party…and a marriage) and why I was going to need a few more hundred dollars wired to me. Knowing this was absurd and that I already had appointments on my calendar back in Baltimore, I continued to stand in the longest line ever, feeling sorry for myself.
There are always a lot of Americans in Ghana. I guess Ghana has become a fairly easy place to navigate, being all Anglophonic and politically stable and democratic and what not, and the missionaries come in by the boatload (although I’m not sure there are many people left to convert). Standing in this bulging, unruly queue, I hear a familiar sound behind me. American accents. I turn to the small group of Americans who were looking around Kotoka for signs on what to do—because airports in developing countries have hundred of unspoken rules and approximately three signs, and those are usually in another language, despite being English speaking and politically stable and democratic and what not.
This group behind me is southern (I'm guessing Texas or maybe Alabama, based on the tone) and I’m also guessing, based on their monogrammed backpacks, gold cross necklaces, and rolling floral suitcases, that they’ve been here charged with God’s work. And I'm not hating on the work these good people do (or did), but at some point you get tired of congratulating people on their "hard work" when you don't see a place as desperate anymore. It's like when people do mission work in Baltimore. I get it. I just don't necessarily like it.
I’m usually dead on with these American spottings—the random Peace Corps volunteer, the best-of-intentions-missionary, the curious professors, the overly-zealous ex-pats, etc., each time becoming more and more conscious of my growing irritation towards the “American” in “Africa” (kindly ignoring that I, too, am American). This is sometimes easy to forget when you’ve convinced yourself you aren't really American.
Standing and waiting and moving up a few feet every 20-30 minutes, I'm growing anxious about leaving Ghana. I just left my "family" and giant plates of food and 3 beers I didn't have time to finish. I didn't get enough time with my "big sisters" Christine or Skinny or my "niece" Woewoe. I'm already thinking of the things I didn't scratch off my list in the eleven days I was there. I decide to be chatty instead of being depressed. I casually ask the group, “How long have you been here? Have you loved your visit?” Inside my head I’m not really listening, and frankly I’m not sure why I even asked because I can’t say that I really particularly cared to know when and where and why this group has been traveling in this place I’ve become almost protective of; ready to attack anyone who dare say they had a miserable time in West Africa. I learn that the group has been visiting the Volta region of Ghana, and as I suspected, working with a mission group. One gentleman in particular says, “It’s been great but I’m sure ready to get home!” His statement is simple enough, and completely innocent, but I translate it to: “Get me the hell out of this uncivilized place!” I resist the snarling noise that seems to come from inside me, like a rabid dog, and I forcefully smile at him, nodding in a sympathetic way, hoping he can’t sense that I’m struggling to empathize. And the fact that I completely put words in his mouth that he didn't say (because he probably wouldn't say hell).
And it’s not that I'm upset with these people who have probably been doing really good work. It's not that I resent the missionaries. These communities have embraced Christianity with a zealousness that's almost unnerving. God has done his work in Ghana. Churches from around the world have built schools and they support hospitals and provide medical care throughout this continent. But if you really spend some time here, you start to see the gaps. You start to see the thousands of unfinished projects started by people with good intentions. You start to see the false hope spread by people with valid passports and multiple entry visas that allow them to travel in and out of these communities, when the going gets tough. You start to see the loss of tradition at the hand of western dominance. Which is not to suggest that Africa shouldn't be allowed to have things like potable water, Facebook, and Blackberrys. This statement is merely to suggest that development and globalization comes at a cost.
So his eagerness to get home leads me to believe that he hasn't seen this place yet. And I'm not holding that against him. In fact, I’ve had that feeling standing in this airport. My body drained from a week-long bout of traveler’s diarrhea and some bizarre stomach bug I can’t seem to shake; my soul shaken from what I’ve seen and felt and heard, desperate for some kind of normalcy, like a McDonalds or a grocery store or a flushing toilet. But this time, I couldn’t be further from understanding his emotion. I mean, I love a good flushing toilet, and I could kill a McChicken sandwich right about now, but I’d rather stay, frankly. I’m sure I can find a chicken later, kill it, clean it, and make it into a sandwich.
When we land in the US, the Americans from the line wave at me in passing, and I can sense that they’re beaming to be back in the shiny, sanitized, orderly United States. I, on the other hand, am grumbling at the sparkling floors and the big, clean windows and the excessive signs in English (I get it! I can read it!). The shiny brushed nickel barricades that force everyone to get in neat, orderly lines (whether I like it or not) are making me irritable. I’m mad at the petulant Customs agents for not smiling ever and for yelling at a group of Ghanaian teenagers who are in the US for the first time (welcome, kids). I’m irritated that I can probably safely sit down on the toilet seat, because it has probably been cleaned and sanitized, on an orderly schedule, every 2 hours, since it was made functional. I’m looking at the rotating luggage belt with disdain—what makes YOU so special!? So what? You go round and round. Want a shiny, clean American award? Grumpy. Like as if I were in DisneyWorld kind of Grumpy.
I’m feeling cross and tired and missing the sounds of goats and chickens and a sea of languages I don’t understand. There is no one standing outside of the airport waiting to haggle me. There is nothing exciting happening. There is no ocean and no fishermen and no singing and no obnoxiously loud gospel music playing 200 decibels too high. `Just a lot of boring, expressionless people yelling at their kids to walk faster while they play their handheld video games. I guess I won't be singing any patriotic songs today.
Each time I take this journey, I get more and more attached. Each time I become less and less afraid of what makes this place so different. Each time I push myself a bit further outside of my comfort zone. And today I’m having one of those moments where I think to myself, I could maybe do this. Like for real. Because this airport is freaking bananas. (Did I mention that bananas are better in West Africa, too?)
Do you ever have those moments where you’re staring at something, and you’re questioning yourself and God: Is this a sign? Am I supposed to DO something right now?
Since I’ve been back I’ve been looking around my life wondering, what holds me to this place? What is it about my job that I love? What about Baltimore? My friends? What would happen if I just took a giant leap? Not for a lifetime, but maybe a year or two. What would happen if I actually moved to West Africa?
Because something happens to me over there that I can’t quite describe. It’s like the restless part of me settles down and I get downright spiritual. The “things” I think I need to be happy are challenged and I always find myself opening my heart a bit wider with each person I meet and each experience I have. And it’s not all peaches and roses and flowering bushes. Africa is Hell. I remember. I get it. Cities lack infrastructure, governments lack decency, the economy lacks liquidity. People suffer from hunger and poverty. HIV/AIDS and other diseases are rampant. Health education and women's rights are generations behind the West. But it’s like reminding me that Baltimore’s murder rate is high. Yeah. I know. I heard a gunshot last night. What of it?
I guess we'll wait and see where life takes me. But for now, when I dream, this is what I see:
But because of this I see more. On my first trip to Ghana I was so overwhelmed with what I was seeing—thatched roofs and mud huts and half-naked children running around—that I could barely understand these things. I couldn't recognize the details and the defining characteristics of each of these villages. I didn’t notice the subtle differences in the tribal scars on men’ and women’s faces. I didn’t notice the road signs and the names of towns as we went in and out of them. I wasn’t paying attention to the commerce—this village sells tomatoes, that one sells fish, etc. But this time around I almost felt overwhelmed by all the pieces I was seeing. I’m not spending so much of my energy just trying to see everything. I'm now working on processing it. Which is way harder, for the record.
But it also gets harder to leave. Coming back to the United States pretty much just makes me angry. Standing in the Kotoka airport (in Ghana) before departure, I actually considered getting out of line. I thought up approximately one hundred and one reasons why I couldn’t go back just yet. I was already beginning to craft the email in my head to my office explaining what happened (see there was this goat...and a flat tire…and an unexpected funeral party…and a marriage) and why I was going to need a few more hundred dollars wired to me. Knowing this was absurd and that I already had appointments on my calendar back in Baltimore, I continued to stand in the longest line ever, feeling sorry for myself.
There are always a lot of Americans in Ghana. I guess Ghana has become a fairly easy place to navigate, being all Anglophonic and politically stable and democratic and what not, and the missionaries come in by the boatload (although I’m not sure there are many people left to convert). Standing in this bulging, unruly queue, I hear a familiar sound behind me. American accents. I turn to the small group of Americans who were looking around Kotoka for signs on what to do—because airports in developing countries have hundred of unspoken rules and approximately three signs, and those are usually in another language, despite being English speaking and politically stable and democratic and what not.
This group behind me is southern (I'm guessing Texas or maybe Alabama, based on the tone) and I’m also guessing, based on their monogrammed backpacks, gold cross necklaces, and rolling floral suitcases, that they’ve been here charged with God’s work. And I'm not hating on the work these good people do (or did), but at some point you get tired of congratulating people on their "hard work" when you don't see a place as desperate anymore. It's like when people do mission work in Baltimore. I get it. I just don't necessarily like it.
I’m usually dead on with these American spottings—the random Peace Corps volunteer, the best-of-intentions-missionary, the curious professors, the overly-zealous ex-pats, etc., each time becoming more and more conscious of my growing irritation towards the “American” in “Africa” (kindly ignoring that I, too, am American). This is sometimes easy to forget when you’ve convinced yourself you aren't really American.
Standing and waiting and moving up a few feet every 20-30 minutes, I'm growing anxious about leaving Ghana. I just left my "family" and giant plates of food and 3 beers I didn't have time to finish. I didn't get enough time with my "big sisters" Christine or Skinny or my "niece" Woewoe. I'm already thinking of the things I didn't scratch off my list in the eleven days I was there. I decide to be chatty instead of being depressed. I casually ask the group, “How long have you been here? Have you loved your visit?” Inside my head I’m not really listening, and frankly I’m not sure why I even asked because I can’t say that I really particularly cared to know when and where and why this group has been traveling in this place I’ve become almost protective of; ready to attack anyone who dare say they had a miserable time in West Africa. I learn that the group has been visiting the Volta region of Ghana, and as I suspected, working with a mission group. One gentleman in particular says, “It’s been great but I’m sure ready to get home!” His statement is simple enough, and completely innocent, but I translate it to: “Get me the hell out of this uncivilized place!” I resist the snarling noise that seems to come from inside me, like a rabid dog, and I forcefully smile at him, nodding in a sympathetic way, hoping he can’t sense that I’m struggling to empathize. And the fact that I completely put words in his mouth that he didn't say (because he probably wouldn't say hell).
And it’s not that I'm upset with these people who have probably been doing really good work. It's not that I resent the missionaries. These communities have embraced Christianity with a zealousness that's almost unnerving. God has done his work in Ghana. Churches from around the world have built schools and they support hospitals and provide medical care throughout this continent. But if you really spend some time here, you start to see the gaps. You start to see the thousands of unfinished projects started by people with good intentions. You start to see the false hope spread by people with valid passports and multiple entry visas that allow them to travel in and out of these communities, when the going gets tough. You start to see the loss of tradition at the hand of western dominance. Which is not to suggest that Africa shouldn't be allowed to have things like potable water, Facebook, and Blackberrys. This statement is merely to suggest that development and globalization comes at a cost.
So his eagerness to get home leads me to believe that he hasn't seen this place yet. And I'm not holding that against him. In fact, I’ve had that feeling standing in this airport. My body drained from a week-long bout of traveler’s diarrhea and some bizarre stomach bug I can’t seem to shake; my soul shaken from what I’ve seen and felt and heard, desperate for some kind of normalcy, like a McDonalds or a grocery store or a flushing toilet. But this time, I couldn’t be further from understanding his emotion. I mean, I love a good flushing toilet, and I could kill a McChicken sandwich right about now, but I’d rather stay, frankly. I’m sure I can find a chicken later, kill it, clean it, and make it into a sandwich.
When we land in the US, the Americans from the line wave at me in passing, and I can sense that they’re beaming to be back in the shiny, sanitized, orderly United States. I, on the other hand, am grumbling at the sparkling floors and the big, clean windows and the excessive signs in English (I get it! I can read it!). The shiny brushed nickel barricades that force everyone to get in neat, orderly lines (whether I like it or not) are making me irritable. I’m mad at the petulant Customs agents for not smiling ever and for yelling at a group of Ghanaian teenagers who are in the US for the first time (welcome, kids). I’m irritated that I can probably safely sit down on the toilet seat, because it has probably been cleaned and sanitized, on an orderly schedule, every 2 hours, since it was made functional. I’m looking at the rotating luggage belt with disdain—what makes YOU so special!? So what? You go round and round. Want a shiny, clean American award? Grumpy. Like as if I were in DisneyWorld kind of Grumpy.
I’m feeling cross and tired and missing the sounds of goats and chickens and a sea of languages I don’t understand. There is no one standing outside of the airport waiting to haggle me. There is nothing exciting happening. There is no ocean and no fishermen and no singing and no obnoxiously loud gospel music playing 200 decibels too high. `Just a lot of boring, expressionless people yelling at their kids to walk faster while they play their handheld video games. I guess I won't be singing any patriotic songs today.
Each time I take this journey, I get more and more attached. Each time I become less and less afraid of what makes this place so different. Each time I push myself a bit further outside of my comfort zone. And today I’m having one of those moments where I think to myself, I could maybe do this. Like for real. Because this airport is freaking bananas. (Did I mention that bananas are better in West Africa, too?)
Do you ever have those moments where you’re staring at something, and you’re questioning yourself and God: Is this a sign? Am I supposed to DO something right now?
Since I’ve been back I’ve been looking around my life wondering, what holds me to this place? What is it about my job that I love? What about Baltimore? My friends? What would happen if I just took a giant leap? Not for a lifetime, but maybe a year or two. What would happen if I actually moved to West Africa?
Because something happens to me over there that I can’t quite describe. It’s like the restless part of me settles down and I get downright spiritual. The “things” I think I need to be happy are challenged and I always find myself opening my heart a bit wider with each person I meet and each experience I have. And it’s not all peaches and roses and flowering bushes. Africa is Hell. I remember. I get it. Cities lack infrastructure, governments lack decency, the economy lacks liquidity. People suffer from hunger and poverty. HIV/AIDS and other diseases are rampant. Health education and women's rights are generations behind the West. But it’s like reminding me that Baltimore’s murder rate is high. Yeah. I know. I heard a gunshot last night. What of it?
I guess we'll wait and see where life takes me. But for now, when I dream, this is what I see:
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Africa is Hell
Since I was a little girl I’ve had this bubbling desire to do something—to help people and to make things right. I remember the first time I recognized class: I was a little girl and went home with one of my classmates after school. Being a kid, I didn’t really know the difference yet between new furniture and old; I didn’t know what to look for in a kitchen or a bathroom for signs of new-improvements. I didn’t even know the difference between a house and an apartment. I was focused on the Barbie dolls and the glue sticks and the make believe. I guess I didn’t really comprehend it, but it was something I felt—this place was different than my house. When I got home and started asking questions about the difference I quickly was told to be thankful and polite—furthering my suspicions that something other existed. I suddenly felt overwhelmed with this new knowledge and uncomfortable about how to deal with it.
Throughout my childhood, my father was the director of Social Services in my small, southern, mountain town. I would go to his office and see people I knew in the lobby. Years later I would understand what this meant—friends of mine that were in the lobby because their parents were applying for food stamps or welfare. I didn’t understand how lucky I was. As I become more conscious of this lucky place I had landed in life, I also learned how to feel guilty about it.
When I got to college, this only exacerbated itself. I discovered not only my guilt about class—but my guilt about race, as well. I suddenly become aware of what it meant to be white and privileged. I read book after book about how evil I was—an honorary white, female member of this budding bourgeoisie class coming from the small, private, liberal arts colleges of the world.
And in my sophomore year, I decided to go on a three-week study abroad program to Ghana. That first trip rocked my world. I experienced these things every day, all day for a month. I felt my white skin, for the first time, as a minority. I was questioned, out right, about my class and my guilt—didn’t I feel horrible for what had happened to the African man?
On this first trip, walking through the slave castles, a young Ghanaian stops me and asks: Don’t you feel terrible for what your people did to us? His question is so blunt and so forthright that I stumble on my words and can’t answer him. Here I am, walking around feeling heavy about this whole experience, and this total stranger pins the whole thing on me. I'd never thought to ask myself if I felt responsible for slavery. He walks away with a smirk on his face. He had won.
I searched my soul for a response to the young man's question. I sought some kind of a reaction that would illicit some large scale change in myself. I arrived home with a false sense of simplicity. I threw away clothing, I scaled down my possessions—seeking solace in a temporary reduction of the stuff I felt cluttered my life and my vision. I felt almost pious about these acts. As if these reductions had somehow made me a better person. In truth, the possessions crept back in to my life, over time. After all, it was never really the possessions that bothered me in the first place. It just seemed like the simplest place to start. The least messy place to begin. If I didn’t start with my stuff first, I’d have to actually look into myself for answers.
But the question, and the thousands of new questions that stem from that first one, have sat on me for eight years. Don’t I feel like I need to do something? Is there something I can do to help? To make amends? To change things?
On each of my trips, I watch children with distended bellies reaching out for my hand. Grown men and women beg for money. Young men run scams for the tourists, desperate for American dollars or something from our luggage. Women in markets offer you their children (mostly as a joke, but some not so much), begging you to take them to America. Posters in shack-like store fronts proudly display images of America—red sports cars in front of McMansions—referencing the American Dream.
And each time I struggle with myself. How can I have so much and be here with people who have so little? And most of all, how do I even begin to understand—to empathize—what this space is about? How do I cope with who I am? How could I sit comfortably with myself, knowing what I now know about how wrong the white man did Africa? And even worse, I'm always met with questions when I come home that I don't know how to answer. Why do you like it there so much? Why doesn't it scare you? Questions that make me angry and I don't always know why.
My work with urban youth in Baltimore has helped; these kids have taught me an awful lot about the realities of race and class in America. And I’ve learned a lot about my own skin. I’ve become sensitive to the way people talk about others, as if somehow ethnicity, class, and race affect a person’s humanity. I haven’t just read about poverty in textbooks—I’ve seen these things. I’ve felt it. It’s a different beast all together to feel these things.
So today while I'm packing a bag with my designer white jeans and my malaria pills and my expensive arch-supportive sandals, I’m struck by how far I’ve come since that first trip. How much more comfortable I’ve become with my status. I guess I’ve become more comfortable with myself, in general, and most importantly I think I’ve gotten over the self-righteousness that comes with being a “do-gooder”. I spent too many years of my early twenties feeling really, really proud. It wasn't doing me any good.
I feel a distinct difference in my heart from the first empty hand I turned away. I feel that my guilt has shifted to a new space. I still feel like shit, at times, but I have a different understanding of things like community and wealth and race. I’ve come to love these communities—these places I travel. I’ve learned a lot of hard lessons about history and a human’s capacity for forgiveness.
I also have a new understanding, and perhaps appreciation, for what my role is while I’m traveling through these communities. I’ve become more okay with who I am. I am a white woman of privilege. I am American. I remember on my first trip wanting so desperately to be somewhere where I didn’t stick out. Where I wasn’t the subject of everyone’s conversation. Where I wasn’t the white girl. It was another first encounter with other. I didn’t know what to do with the feelings I was having. I couldn’t find words to explain myself. I didn’t know how to get over myself.
When I was working in the Baltimore City Schools, I had hundreds of moments where I felt like this. Where I wanted to be liked. Where I wanted to blend in. To not be the white lady. To not carry the baggage of all the horrible things the “white people” seem to do around here. And I learned, as most of my friends who teach in schools where they are the minority, that this was, fundamentally, my issue. The kids didn’t really understand what it really meant—they barely recognized me as a white woman. It was me who recognized myself as a white woman. As a contrast. And I had to sit on it. I had to feel uncomfortable for a few months. And it eventually changed--but I think it was me who changed. Not the situation.
And the kids helped me cope with myself. One afternoon, a small child, we’ll call her Jada, was sitting next to me in the cafeteria. For some reason she’d been calling me “Godmama” all week.
She asks, “Godmama, can I have another cookie?
“No, Jada,” I reply, “only one for every one.
Another child walks by, sucking his teeth, “Man, she can’t be your godmama! SHE WHITE!"
Jada, without skipping a beat, replies to him without the slightest bit of hesitation, “SHE NOT WHITE! SHE LIGHT-SKINNED!"
She then quickly and innocently turns to me, places her hands on my face and says, “When people call you white, it hurts your feelings.”
Breakthrough. Not white, light-skinned. All about perspective.
And I’ve had to dig deep on what these things mean. And I’ve learned that I’m not afraid to feel hurt or scared or to get my hands dirty. I crave to understand. Yeah, those things suck when they’re happening but what comes out on the other end is something that I often can’t name (although I’ll probably try).
And yes, I still have moments when I feel terrible, but I am who I am. I must start from this point. I can’t be anyone but who I am and I cannot continue to make excuses for where I come from. We all have a role to play in this world—the question becomes: what do we do with the power we have?
I know now that I'll never really save the world, despite all the liberal idealism I once had for myself. I've learned too much. I've had to get over myself. These last few years of traveling back and forth, I know I’ve been taught a lot more than what I’ve brought with me. I’ve seen more in these small self-sufficient villages that will educate me about community, about living, about humanity, than I would ever get from a lesson in a classroom. But it doesn’t make turning away those hands any easier.
I recently flipped through a travel book preparing for my site visit. Stuck between a paragraph on volunteering in Africa and safety tips was a sub-chapter entitled “Africa is Hell”. At first I read the short paragraphs waiting for the punch line—for the intended joke. There wasn’t one. The author was being genuine. He wanted to remind his readers not to get caught up in the fantasy of Africa. He wanted to include a reality check—a remember the-AIDS-rate-and-the-fact-that-civil-wars-erupt-overnight message. As if anyone whose ever really gone and known what it feels like could forget that. I'm not sure the editor really read this book before it went to print. Or maybe he did because he fundamentally believes this.
I've spent weeks laughing about this "Africa is Hell" chapter. And just today, as I'm packing and thinking and anxiously blogging, have I really processed what it means. I guess I can't blame the guy for including the chapter. I've seen the hellish parts. I've walked past people in such unfortunate situations that will permanently sit on my heart; I've seen images that I'll never shake. The place has changed me. The Africa is Hell message ringing true. And there are so many Americans who buy into the fantasy. Who go to "Africa" (a place to many think is a country) to find their roots and to go on Safari and to dance with other just long enough to feel excited but not really digging deep or asking questions. Africa is Hell, he wants to tell these people. Don't go. Don't ruin it. Don't exploit it.
I can't ignore the facts. No amount of sugar coating can take away the simple truths of what poverty really looks like. Hunger does horrible things to someone’s eyes. But I can’t shake this feeling that there is something more important happening under the surface of this pain and devastation. If Africa is Hell, why do I feel changed? Different?
And I struggle with myself. Am I one of those Americans? I don't feel like I am, but can I possibly be anything but that American? I feel like I've got an exemption pass. That I've earned my place here. I've asked all the questions and I've cried and I've kept myself awake at night riddled with guilt. I feel like I've had breakthrough. Perhaps in this space, I'm light-skinned. Because I've also seen the opposite.
Crashing parties is West Africa has become one of my favorite activities. Between shots of local gin, and the hundreds of libations made to the gods (and to the elders), my liquor-soaked eyes observe smiling faces and joyful dances. Women proudly prepare mounds and mounds of food, asking you to help and teaching you generations-old lessons on pounding yams, and everyone happily shares. Small children hold onto your thumb and giggle when you repeat words in your terrible Twi and Yoruba. This couldn't possibly be Hell.
And of course all of this rationalization serves one purpose: to make me feel better about what I’m doing. To make me feel more comfortable in my expensive jeans and pearl earrings.
As I'm packing, I'm remaining positive. I'm looking forward to another few weeks in this place I've come to consider a second home. I'm packing the gifts I'll bring to the people I've come to consider family. The children I've watched grow-up. The women I've become sisters with. But the guilt never subsides for long. It creeps back in with a mighty fist, demanding answers. Questions that I’m not sure I know just yet how to answer.
Throughout my childhood, my father was the director of Social Services in my small, southern, mountain town. I would go to his office and see people I knew in the lobby. Years later I would understand what this meant—friends of mine that were in the lobby because their parents were applying for food stamps or welfare. I didn’t understand how lucky I was. As I become more conscious of this lucky place I had landed in life, I also learned how to feel guilty about it.
When I got to college, this only exacerbated itself. I discovered not only my guilt about class—but my guilt about race, as well. I suddenly become aware of what it meant to be white and privileged. I read book after book about how evil I was—an honorary white, female member of this budding bourgeoisie class coming from the small, private, liberal arts colleges of the world.
And in my sophomore year, I decided to go on a three-week study abroad program to Ghana. That first trip rocked my world. I experienced these things every day, all day for a month. I felt my white skin, for the first time, as a minority. I was questioned, out right, about my class and my guilt—didn’t I feel horrible for what had happened to the African man?
On this first trip, walking through the slave castles, a young Ghanaian stops me and asks: Don’t you feel terrible for what your people did to us? His question is so blunt and so forthright that I stumble on my words and can’t answer him. Here I am, walking around feeling heavy about this whole experience, and this total stranger pins the whole thing on me. I'd never thought to ask myself if I felt responsible for slavery. He walks away with a smirk on his face. He had won.
I searched my soul for a response to the young man's question. I sought some kind of a reaction that would illicit some large scale change in myself. I arrived home with a false sense of simplicity. I threw away clothing, I scaled down my possessions—seeking solace in a temporary reduction of the stuff I felt cluttered my life and my vision. I felt almost pious about these acts. As if these reductions had somehow made me a better person. In truth, the possessions crept back in to my life, over time. After all, it was never really the possessions that bothered me in the first place. It just seemed like the simplest place to start. The least messy place to begin. If I didn’t start with my stuff first, I’d have to actually look into myself for answers.
But the question, and the thousands of new questions that stem from that first one, have sat on me for eight years. Don’t I feel like I need to do something? Is there something I can do to help? To make amends? To change things?
On each of my trips, I watch children with distended bellies reaching out for my hand. Grown men and women beg for money. Young men run scams for the tourists, desperate for American dollars or something from our luggage. Women in markets offer you their children (mostly as a joke, but some not so much), begging you to take them to America. Posters in shack-like store fronts proudly display images of America—red sports cars in front of McMansions—referencing the American Dream.
And each time I struggle with myself. How can I have so much and be here with people who have so little? And most of all, how do I even begin to understand—to empathize—what this space is about? How do I cope with who I am? How could I sit comfortably with myself, knowing what I now know about how wrong the white man did Africa? And even worse, I'm always met with questions when I come home that I don't know how to answer. Why do you like it there so much? Why doesn't it scare you? Questions that make me angry and I don't always know why.
My work with urban youth in Baltimore has helped; these kids have taught me an awful lot about the realities of race and class in America. And I’ve learned a lot about my own skin. I’ve become sensitive to the way people talk about others, as if somehow ethnicity, class, and race affect a person’s humanity. I haven’t just read about poverty in textbooks—I’ve seen these things. I’ve felt it. It’s a different beast all together to feel these things.
So today while I'm packing a bag with my designer white jeans and my malaria pills and my expensive arch-supportive sandals, I’m struck by how far I’ve come since that first trip. How much more comfortable I’ve become with my status. I guess I’ve become more comfortable with myself, in general, and most importantly I think I’ve gotten over the self-righteousness that comes with being a “do-gooder”. I spent too many years of my early twenties feeling really, really proud. It wasn't doing me any good.
I feel a distinct difference in my heart from the first empty hand I turned away. I feel that my guilt has shifted to a new space. I still feel like shit, at times, but I have a different understanding of things like community and wealth and race. I’ve come to love these communities—these places I travel. I’ve learned a lot of hard lessons about history and a human’s capacity for forgiveness.
I also have a new understanding, and perhaps appreciation, for what my role is while I’m traveling through these communities. I’ve become more okay with who I am. I am a white woman of privilege. I am American. I remember on my first trip wanting so desperately to be somewhere where I didn’t stick out. Where I wasn’t the subject of everyone’s conversation. Where I wasn’t the white girl. It was another first encounter with other. I didn’t know what to do with the feelings I was having. I couldn’t find words to explain myself. I didn’t know how to get over myself.
When I was working in the Baltimore City Schools, I had hundreds of moments where I felt like this. Where I wanted to be liked. Where I wanted to blend in. To not be the white lady. To not carry the baggage of all the horrible things the “white people” seem to do around here. And I learned, as most of my friends who teach in schools where they are the minority, that this was, fundamentally, my issue. The kids didn’t really understand what it really meant—they barely recognized me as a white woman. It was me who recognized myself as a white woman. As a contrast. And I had to sit on it. I had to feel uncomfortable for a few months. And it eventually changed--but I think it was me who changed. Not the situation.
And the kids helped me cope with myself. One afternoon, a small child, we’ll call her Jada, was sitting next to me in the cafeteria. For some reason she’d been calling me “Godmama” all week.
She asks, “Godmama, can I have another cookie?
“No, Jada,” I reply, “only one for every one.
Another child walks by, sucking his teeth, “Man, she can’t be your godmama! SHE WHITE!"
Jada, without skipping a beat, replies to him without the slightest bit of hesitation, “SHE NOT WHITE! SHE LIGHT-SKINNED!"
She then quickly and innocently turns to me, places her hands on my face and says, “When people call you white, it hurts your feelings.”
Breakthrough. Not white, light-skinned. All about perspective.
And I’ve had to dig deep on what these things mean. And I’ve learned that I’m not afraid to feel hurt or scared or to get my hands dirty. I crave to understand. Yeah, those things suck when they’re happening but what comes out on the other end is something that I often can’t name (although I’ll probably try).
And yes, I still have moments when I feel terrible, but I am who I am. I must start from this point. I can’t be anyone but who I am and I cannot continue to make excuses for where I come from. We all have a role to play in this world—the question becomes: what do we do with the power we have?
I know now that I'll never really save the world, despite all the liberal idealism I once had for myself. I've learned too much. I've had to get over myself. These last few years of traveling back and forth, I know I’ve been taught a lot more than what I’ve brought with me. I’ve seen more in these small self-sufficient villages that will educate me about community, about living, about humanity, than I would ever get from a lesson in a classroom. But it doesn’t make turning away those hands any easier.
I recently flipped through a travel book preparing for my site visit. Stuck between a paragraph on volunteering in Africa and safety tips was a sub-chapter entitled “Africa is Hell”. At first I read the short paragraphs waiting for the punch line—for the intended joke. There wasn’t one. The author was being genuine. He wanted to remind his readers not to get caught up in the fantasy of Africa. He wanted to include a reality check—a remember the-AIDS-rate-and-the-fact-that-civil-wars-erupt-overnight message. As if anyone whose ever really gone and known what it feels like could forget that. I'm not sure the editor really read this book before it went to print. Or maybe he did because he fundamentally believes this.
I've spent weeks laughing about this "Africa is Hell" chapter. And just today, as I'm packing and thinking and anxiously blogging, have I really processed what it means. I guess I can't blame the guy for including the chapter. I've seen the hellish parts. I've walked past people in such unfortunate situations that will permanently sit on my heart; I've seen images that I'll never shake. The place has changed me. The Africa is Hell message ringing true. And there are so many Americans who buy into the fantasy. Who go to "Africa" (a place to many think is a country) to find their roots and to go on Safari and to dance with other just long enough to feel excited but not really digging deep or asking questions. Africa is Hell, he wants to tell these people. Don't go. Don't ruin it. Don't exploit it.
I can't ignore the facts. No amount of sugar coating can take away the simple truths of what poverty really looks like. Hunger does horrible things to someone’s eyes. But I can’t shake this feeling that there is something more important happening under the surface of this pain and devastation. If Africa is Hell, why do I feel changed? Different?
And I struggle with myself. Am I one of those Americans? I don't feel like I am, but can I possibly be anything but that American? I feel like I've got an exemption pass. That I've earned my place here. I've asked all the questions and I've cried and I've kept myself awake at night riddled with guilt. I feel like I've had breakthrough. Perhaps in this space, I'm light-skinned. Because I've also seen the opposite.
Crashing parties is West Africa has become one of my favorite activities. Between shots of local gin, and the hundreds of libations made to the gods (and to the elders), my liquor-soaked eyes observe smiling faces and joyful dances. Women proudly prepare mounds and mounds of food, asking you to help and teaching you generations-old lessons on pounding yams, and everyone happily shares. Small children hold onto your thumb and giggle when you repeat words in your terrible Twi and Yoruba. This couldn't possibly be Hell.
And of course all of this rationalization serves one purpose: to make me feel better about what I’m doing. To make me feel more comfortable in my expensive jeans and pearl earrings.
As I'm packing, I'm remaining positive. I'm looking forward to another few weeks in this place I've come to consider a second home. I'm packing the gifts I'll bring to the people I've come to consider family. The children I've watched grow-up. The women I've become sisters with. But the guilt never subsides for long. It creeps back in with a mighty fist, demanding answers. Questions that I’m not sure I know just yet how to answer.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Crazy
Sometimes I think that I’ve gone crazy.
There was a time in college when a dear friend of mine did just that. She was having some kind of mental break and living in a land that made no sense to the rest of us. Among her delusions was the idea that she had indeed discovered the center of the universe. On our college campus. In the woods. She would spend hours talking to us about the things she’d discovered, almost yelling at us that it was right in front of our eyes and we didn’t see it; we didn’t understand it. I remember feeling lots of feelings about the whole situation, but mostly having this frightening idea that we might all be wrong. That perhaps she had discovered something out there in those woods and we’re the crazy ones for not listening to her more thoughtfully. I mean, aren’t some of the greatest thinkers of our time totally ape-shit nuts? Maybe all the people out there having psychotic breaks were onto something—perhaps they’re the ones that are right and we’re the ones that are wrong.
When they get back to a “normal” place (where is that place, anyway?), I always wonder do they feel different? Is it like meeting your spirit animal while you’re high on hallucinogenics? Or like traveling to the after-life during a surgery and coming back to life? Are you changed? Do you have some deeper insight into the world? Or are you so stoned on anti-psychotics that you can’t be allowed to feel changed?
Sometimes when I meet someone really crazy, I realize that experience in college never left me; I never shook that feeling and I try (if possible) to listen with a slightly more careful ear. Who knows, they might be saying something very truthful in their babble. Although here in Baltimore, sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between real crazy and crack crazy.
And on those days (like today) where I, too, feel crazy, I wonder how close I am to being really crazy. Sometimes I wonder if I teeter a little too close to the edge. I know sometimes when words fly out of my mouth uncontrollably and I think to myself, “WHO SAID THAT? ME? NO!” Or when a string of irrational thoughts enter my head (usually involving men) and I think, “I don’t have thoughts like this! Out, out damned spot!” But they happen, regardless. Without warning or warrant.
I wish someone would have told me how schizophrenic my twenties would be. Each year I wind down closer to the end of this disastrous decade, wiser, stronger, and with better stories to tell, but feeling undoubtedly more crazy. I guess it wouldn’t have mattered if someone had told me—and they probably did and I just blew them off like everyone else—because that is part of the beauty of your twenties. YOU DON’T GIVE A FLYING FART. When someone tells you something at age 19, you think, “Yeah right, man! You don’t know anything! I’M SPECIAL! I’M DIFFERENT!” The truth, at age 27, and despite being quite “special” and “different”, I’m not that special at all. And I’m not that different. Sadly, I’m a bit like everyone else.
But the real crazy thing is this wacky numbers game that people like to play in their twenties. By age 25, I’d like to have…x, y, and z. And if z never comes around, I’ll go with a or b. And if a & b end in a bloody disaster, we’ll switch over to j, k, & l. By 23, I should accomplish: insert accomplishments here. And of course it seems natural that most of these “things” have to do with getting married and buying houses and graduating from college. Or if you’re from a small southern town like I am, having babies, too. Or if you started that in high school, having your third baby. Or maybe your fourth.
And the thing that leaves me curious (crazy) about it is that in 2010, women now have healthy babies in their 40s. More people are getting married in their mid-thirties than ever (and those marriages aren’t ending in divorce…). The average homeowner is 37.8 (I’m going to start measuring my age in decimals, too). Hell, most people are still financially supported by their parents until 26 these days. So why, pray tell, do I still feel this enormous pressure to accomplish such acts in the next three years? Why do I still feel like there is a looming psychotic break in my future as I get closer and closer to thirty, despite the fact that I can’t wait to turn 30 and be done with this miserable decade?
Perhaps it’s the woo of the wedding porn and the mommy blogs. Sometimes I get so involved in other people’s children and pregnancies that I dream of finding myself totally knocked up. Like straight-up single white female pregnant from a bad after-school special. Only to realize what an insane (crazy) idea that is and that really while my roommate is very supportive of my dog, I’m not sure she’d be thrilled with a screaming infant. Or, better yet, me as an emotional, psychotic wench for 9 months without a husband or boyfriend to berate with my endless request for pickles and krispy kreme donuts. Plus I can barely pay my bills as it is—a baby? Really? INTRAWEBS! You’ve betrayed me!
And the weddings are also great fun. I love weddings. I mean the industry makes me kind of nauseated but the good porn—the Etsy and all the great hipster wedding blogs and the DIY weddings. It’s enough to make a girl want to post an ad on Craigslist for a husband. And I’ve been to so many weddings at this point (and been in them, too), that I feel I’ve become a bit of an expert. I think, when I get married, I’ll have x, y, and z. Which is really like going to the mall when you’re on your last $45 the week before pay day and trying on Christian Louboutins. You can’t exactly buy the shoes without the money (hell, without the trust fund). Nor can you plan the wedding when you haven’t had a successful relationship in years. So maybe I’ll just go into the wedding planning business. Or maybe I will post that ad on craigslist.
And the race for careers and degrees is also b-a-n-a-n-a-s. I’ve been working on a master’s degree for years now, chipping away slowly, three credits at a time, so that I can what? Advance my career? I even switched programs because I was in a program where people read the book Who Moved My Cheese? and found it inspirational. I had to withdraw. Now I'm in a program that I like, sometimes, but I question pretty much every week how these people graduated from college. Sometimes high school.
But I get degree envy. I turn mad green and begin a self-depricating parade of all the things I could have done different. I look at the uber-focused friends of mine with law degrees and PhDs and think, if I hadn’t spent age 22-27 goofing off and “following my heart”, I, too, could have one of those shiny degrees to hang on a wall. And big fancy letters behind my name. Although the goofing off from 22-27 has been pretty rad, and I’m not sure my heart would have allowed anything but what happened to have happened. Even within my profession, I’ve got an awesome resume and great references and incredible experience—but sometimes it feels like I’ve accomplished nothing at all because I haven’t gotten that degree. I don’t have that shiny thing on the wall and the only thing that comes after my name is usually: Lindsay Johnson, Asshole.
These “things”, these numbers, these expectations are enough to make you crazy in your twenties. And even with great role models who consistently tell you, "Don't follow a path! Or check off boxes on a list! Live your life!", you still feel crazy. Like the center of the universe is in the woods kind of crazy.
Not to mention the fact that you’re a raving lunatic as you try to figure out who you really are in the world—without the crutch of high school, college, and family. You’re usually so broke you can barely afford to do anything but sit at home and think about how broke you are. But this time at home, eating ramen & saltines, gives you plenty of time to discover the real you. And to start thinking about all the things you want to accomplish before you’re 30. And to discover the show "wife swap" (which can really make you crazy).
And when you get past 27, unmarried, without kids and without letters behind your name, the list of things you thought you'd have accomplished by 30 can start to make you crazy. And despite your best logic, and the fact that most days you truly are content with your life and lack of "accomplishments", it can start to make you feel really crazy. Like cat-lady crazy. And even though you went to a liberated former-women's college and feel that it was pounded into your head that you, as a woman, would never be judged on your merit in society by your ability to cook a roast, iron a shirt, and birth a baby, there's this nagging hormonal thing that seems to happen regardless of all that bookishness and nerdery. Sometimes you just wanna make a roast and birth a baby, damnit. And maybe read a book while you wait?
So, tick-tock, goes the clock. But I refuse to let it make me crazy. Or maybe it's already made me crazy. And despite how badly I'd love for my womb to be filled with the spawn of someone wildly inappropriate (and probably twice my age), I'll continue to mother the one beast I'm proud to put in my list of "twenty-something accomplishments". And I'll try to keep my wedding plans at bay (because nothing's crazier than a single girl with a binder full of wedding ideas). And I'll keep going to class, taking another 3-6 credits every semester until the letters are at the end of my name. And I'll try to talk myself out of being crazy about getting older. But that does involve talking to myself...
And hell, maybe I am actually crazy, and you guys have just been sparing me from the truth all these years. But HEY! At least I'm self-aware, right? And I have this blog. And a dog that smiles when she sleeps (which is crazy).
And those are accomplishments, right? X, Y, and Z, I'd say.
There was a time in college when a dear friend of mine did just that. She was having some kind of mental break and living in a land that made no sense to the rest of us. Among her delusions was the idea that she had indeed discovered the center of the universe. On our college campus. In the woods. She would spend hours talking to us about the things she’d discovered, almost yelling at us that it was right in front of our eyes and we didn’t see it; we didn’t understand it. I remember feeling lots of feelings about the whole situation, but mostly having this frightening idea that we might all be wrong. That perhaps she had discovered something out there in those woods and we’re the crazy ones for not listening to her more thoughtfully. I mean, aren’t some of the greatest thinkers of our time totally ape-shit nuts? Maybe all the people out there having psychotic breaks were onto something—perhaps they’re the ones that are right and we’re the ones that are wrong.
When they get back to a “normal” place (where is that place, anyway?), I always wonder do they feel different? Is it like meeting your spirit animal while you’re high on hallucinogenics? Or like traveling to the after-life during a surgery and coming back to life? Are you changed? Do you have some deeper insight into the world? Or are you so stoned on anti-psychotics that you can’t be allowed to feel changed?
Sometimes when I meet someone really crazy, I realize that experience in college never left me; I never shook that feeling and I try (if possible) to listen with a slightly more careful ear. Who knows, they might be saying something very truthful in their babble. Although here in Baltimore, sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between real crazy and crack crazy.
And on those days (like today) where I, too, feel crazy, I wonder how close I am to being really crazy. Sometimes I wonder if I teeter a little too close to the edge. I know sometimes when words fly out of my mouth uncontrollably and I think to myself, “WHO SAID THAT? ME? NO!” Or when a string of irrational thoughts enter my head (usually involving men) and I think, “I don’t have thoughts like this! Out, out damned spot!” But they happen, regardless. Without warning or warrant.
I wish someone would have told me how schizophrenic my twenties would be. Each year I wind down closer to the end of this disastrous decade, wiser, stronger, and with better stories to tell, but feeling undoubtedly more crazy. I guess it wouldn’t have mattered if someone had told me—and they probably did and I just blew them off like everyone else—because that is part of the beauty of your twenties. YOU DON’T GIVE A FLYING FART. When someone tells you something at age 19, you think, “Yeah right, man! You don’t know anything! I’M SPECIAL! I’M DIFFERENT!” The truth, at age 27, and despite being quite “special” and “different”, I’m not that special at all. And I’m not that different. Sadly, I’m a bit like everyone else.
But the real crazy thing is this wacky numbers game that people like to play in their twenties. By age 25, I’d like to have…x, y, and z. And if z never comes around, I’ll go with a or b. And if a & b end in a bloody disaster, we’ll switch over to j, k, & l. By 23, I should accomplish: insert accomplishments here. And of course it seems natural that most of these “things” have to do with getting married and buying houses and graduating from college. Or if you’re from a small southern town like I am, having babies, too. Or if you started that in high school, having your third baby. Or maybe your fourth.
And the thing that leaves me curious (crazy) about it is that in 2010, women now have healthy babies in their 40s. More people are getting married in their mid-thirties than ever (and those marriages aren’t ending in divorce…). The average homeowner is 37.8 (I’m going to start measuring my age in decimals, too). Hell, most people are still financially supported by their parents until 26 these days. So why, pray tell, do I still feel this enormous pressure to accomplish such acts in the next three years? Why do I still feel like there is a looming psychotic break in my future as I get closer and closer to thirty, despite the fact that I can’t wait to turn 30 and be done with this miserable decade?
Perhaps it’s the woo of the wedding porn and the mommy blogs. Sometimes I get so involved in other people’s children and pregnancies that I dream of finding myself totally knocked up. Like straight-up single white female pregnant from a bad after-school special. Only to realize what an insane (crazy) idea that is and that really while my roommate is very supportive of my dog, I’m not sure she’d be thrilled with a screaming infant. Or, better yet, me as an emotional, psychotic wench for 9 months without a husband or boyfriend to berate with my endless request for pickles and krispy kreme donuts. Plus I can barely pay my bills as it is—a baby? Really? INTRAWEBS! You’ve betrayed me!
And the weddings are also great fun. I love weddings. I mean the industry makes me kind of nauseated but the good porn—the Etsy and all the great hipster wedding blogs and the DIY weddings. It’s enough to make a girl want to post an ad on Craigslist for a husband. And I’ve been to so many weddings at this point (and been in them, too), that I feel I’ve become a bit of an expert. I think, when I get married, I’ll have x, y, and z. Which is really like going to the mall when you’re on your last $45 the week before pay day and trying on Christian Louboutins. You can’t exactly buy the shoes without the money (hell, without the trust fund). Nor can you plan the wedding when you haven’t had a successful relationship in years. So maybe I’ll just go into the wedding planning business. Or maybe I will post that ad on craigslist.
And the race for careers and degrees is also b-a-n-a-n-a-s. I’ve been working on a master’s degree for years now, chipping away slowly, three credits at a time, so that I can what? Advance my career? I even switched programs because I was in a program where people read the book Who Moved My Cheese? and found it inspirational. I had to withdraw. Now I'm in a program that I like, sometimes, but I question pretty much every week how these people graduated from college. Sometimes high school.
But I get degree envy. I turn mad green and begin a self-depricating parade of all the things I could have done different. I look at the uber-focused friends of mine with law degrees and PhDs and think, if I hadn’t spent age 22-27 goofing off and “following my heart”, I, too, could have one of those shiny degrees to hang on a wall. And big fancy letters behind my name. Although the goofing off from 22-27 has been pretty rad, and I’m not sure my heart would have allowed anything but what happened to have happened. Even within my profession, I’ve got an awesome resume and great references and incredible experience—but sometimes it feels like I’ve accomplished nothing at all because I haven’t gotten that degree. I don’t have that shiny thing on the wall and the only thing that comes after my name is usually: Lindsay Johnson, Asshole.
These “things”, these numbers, these expectations are enough to make you crazy in your twenties. And even with great role models who consistently tell you, "Don't follow a path! Or check off boxes on a list! Live your life!", you still feel crazy. Like the center of the universe is in the woods kind of crazy.
Not to mention the fact that you’re a raving lunatic as you try to figure out who you really are in the world—without the crutch of high school, college, and family. You’re usually so broke you can barely afford to do anything but sit at home and think about how broke you are. But this time at home, eating ramen & saltines, gives you plenty of time to discover the real you. And to start thinking about all the things you want to accomplish before you’re 30. And to discover the show "wife swap" (which can really make you crazy).
And when you get past 27, unmarried, without kids and without letters behind your name, the list of things you thought you'd have accomplished by 30 can start to make you crazy. And despite your best logic, and the fact that most days you truly are content with your life and lack of "accomplishments", it can start to make you feel really crazy. Like cat-lady crazy. And even though you went to a liberated former-women's college and feel that it was pounded into your head that you, as a woman, would never be judged on your merit in society by your ability to cook a roast, iron a shirt, and birth a baby, there's this nagging hormonal thing that seems to happen regardless of all that bookishness and nerdery. Sometimes you just wanna make a roast and birth a baby, damnit. And maybe read a book while you wait?
So, tick-tock, goes the clock. But I refuse to let it make me crazy. Or maybe it's already made me crazy. And despite how badly I'd love for my womb to be filled with the spawn of someone wildly inappropriate (and probably twice my age), I'll continue to mother the one beast I'm proud to put in my list of "twenty-something accomplishments". And I'll try to keep my wedding plans at bay (because nothing's crazier than a single girl with a binder full of wedding ideas). And I'll keep going to class, taking another 3-6 credits every semester until the letters are at the end of my name. And I'll try to talk myself out of being crazy about getting older. But that does involve talking to myself...
And hell, maybe I am actually crazy, and you guys have just been sparing me from the truth all these years. But HEY! At least I'm self-aware, right? And I have this blog. And a dog that smiles when she sleeps (which is crazy).
And those are accomplishments, right? X, Y, and Z, I'd say.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Like nothing I'd known before, until I knew it better
People ask me now, 'What was Africa like?' I tell them that the place I came to know is laughing yet troubled, strong yet crippled, and dancing. Africa was like nothing I had known before, until I knew it better. But to really explain it, I have to start from the beginning. -Sarah Erdman
In flipping my calendar this morning to the bright and shiny month of July, several things happened.
One: I relished in the fact that June was over. Normally I don’t feel this way about June—such a sweet, warm, school-ending month. But this June was an exception; a terrible month of car accidents, driving rental cars, and bad feelings in the pit of my stomach over stupid things like money and material possessions.
Two: I sighed that my one week of vacation had come and gone so quickly and that although I am tan, and relaxed, it never seems to be enough time to do all the things I think about when I’m drafting those “things I’ll do on vacation” mental lists.
Three: I glanced down at the bright purple note on July 28th that I depart from Dulles Airport at 11 pm for Accra, Ghana. My fifth (FIFTH) trip to West Africa since 2002.
Four: I crapped my pants because I haven’t even started thinking about my 10 day site visit to the motherland. Or the malaria pills I’ll need. Or located my yellow fever vaccination card.
(Sidenote: However, I do use my annual trip to West Africa as a year-round excuse to buy cool, light-weight, earthy/artsy looking clothing, insisting, "…this will be just PERFECT for Benin!” and then promptly losing said clothing to the great abyss that is my closet and dirty laundry pile and going to Target three days before my trip and cursing why Target doesn’t sell short skirts and tank tops during December.)
For those of you who don’t know me, perhaps you’ll find this fascination of mine with West Africa charming. Or perhaps even kitsch. You’ll probably assume I’m way cooler than I really am and that I’m so well-traveled and probably really smart. You’d, for the most part, be pretty wrong on all fronts. You probably also think I’m the luckiest girl on the planet that I get to travel so much for work—and well, I can’t argue you on that one. Working in higher education has its perks. This is definitely one of them.
For those of you who do know me, however, you’ve probably already stopped reading because you just can’t stand to hear me talk about it anymore. And that’s okay. I understand. I’d hate me too. But I can’t help but talk about it. And think about it. And find ways to weave it into stories. I’m starting to understand how the fundamental religion-nuts feel.
I remember in middle school, so sick and tired of being asked had I been “saved” and did I go to church—saying, yes, I was baptized as a baby and, yes, I go to the Presbyterian church on Main Street, and being met with “well have you considered OUR church?”—I finally cracked and blew up. WHY THE HELL IS IT SO IMPORTANT THAT I BE SAVED IF I PRAY AND TALK TO GOD AND GO TO SUNDAY SCHOOL ALL ON MY OWN!? I was met with a response: “I just want to make sure you make it to heaven, that’s all. It’s like I know how to get free passes to DisneyWorld and I want to make sure you get ‘em too.” Jesus. I’m starting to perhaps make connections on why I hate DisneyWorld, too.
I’m like this with West Africa: “Have you been? Wanna hear a story? You should go…maybe your trip to Europe wasn’t enough…ever considered West Africa?”
And since blogs are entirely self-indulgent, this is my time to do just that. And even though they’re pretty much like diaries that are read by anyone with an intrawebs browser, something about my blog feels cozy. Like if you’re taking the time to read this stuff every few weeks, you might actually like me. Or enjoy my ranting and raving about the world. Or think I have something intelligent to say. Or you’re just someone who accidentally stumbled across it and is now obsessed (this is my secret hope that you’re all strangers out there building a cult following of me. In reality, I know it’s just you guys).
I decided to start blogging last fall because I was sad. My grandmother was dying and I was filled with sleepless angst. I’d sit in my living room at three in the morning wondering how I’d make it through my 8 hour work day (9, let’s be honest) and my grad class, and still manage to be the bubbly, happy Lindsay that my friends and colleagues know me to be. I started writing. Tons of it. Ever since I learned how to write sentences this has been my coping mechanism. When shit hits the fan, I start writing about the shit. And the fan. And the people who get hit with the shit from the fan.
When my parents divorced. I wrote.
When my siblings got married. I wrote.
When I graduated high school. I wrote.
When I had my heart broken. I wrote.
When I lost myself. I wrote.
When I found myself. I wrote.
When I lost myself, again. I wrote.
You get the picture. So I thought I’d give this “sharing it” thing a go, as I’m pretty sure my friends were tired of waking up to word documents in their inboxes with headlines like “couldn’t sleep…read this and tell me what you think.”
So when I studied abroad for the first time in Ghana, I wrote. I wrote things that were appallingly self-righteous and myopic; things that now, frankly, embarrass me to read (even in my head, where things are safe). But I was doing what we all do as humans—I was shifting from one place to another. From a smaller circle to a bigger one; one with bigger ideas, harder realities, and steeper consequences. We learn. We grow. We change. Amen, hallelujah.
Some part of me has always desired to become a famous writer. I have a fantasy that someone will discover me—think I’m brilliant—and offer me a lot of money to sit at small café tables and write what I think about the world. That I’ll be given travel allowances and take off for weeks at a time with a laptop in my leather satchel (you know, the one I'll buy when I can afford it?) and a big fat expense account. What a dream—to be someone who gets paid to be a person with things to say; someone who others look to for advice and support. Someone who can churn out words that carry meaning and weight and power in the most challenging of moments. Someone who can sense silent words, too.
But this fantasy also carries a fear—a fear about what this kind of writing can do to you. Does it lose its cathartic value when it’s being demanded by an editor or a greater public? Would I ever really want to ruin what I've got here for myself? I’m thinking about all the times I’ve used my insomnia to process the things I see and hear into short stories or pieces of poetry; all the times I’ve taken my deepest fears and insecurities into a leather-bound journal and written sentences that make no sense and follow no rules of grammar but translate everything I need to say into letters and words and spaces on paper so that I can feel better about tomorrow.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure the journals and journals of angst-ridden writing, processing my own adolescent and post-adolescent struggles with racism and classism and “finding myself” are quite worth the read. It’s mostly a lot of garbled words struggling to describe this feeling I’ve had for most of my life—this desire to do more, learn more, and understand. To embed myself in really hard places and think my way out of them. Crying and cursing all the way out.
And this thing with West Africa was in me from day one (I feel sure of it). It’s not that I just woke up one day, watched the Lion King, and decided to become obsessed with Africa. No. In typical Lindsay fashion, it was a much more long-winded, complicated story. With a lot more dips and bends and uncanny coincidences. I didn’t dream of going on safari as a child or hold onto some colonized vision of traveling to an uncultured, uneducated land and teaching the masses of my great knowledge and heritage. No. It was more a whisper. A thread that seems to have woven itself into parts of my life that I’m just now beginning to recognize. A rhythm in my day-to-day that I can’t ignore.
An opportunity to go for the first time and three weeks of walking around with my mouth hanging wide open. And seven years of processing and going back again and again and learning more and growing. And finding deeper roots.
And it isn’t really Africa itself, so much as how life is enacted there. The way people live. The culture. Which I suppose is inescapably connected to “being African”. But from my limited scope, it’s about music. And struggle. And community. And pain. And beauty. How communities celebrate together and mourn together. How people find ways to sustain despite access to critical resources like clean water and nutritious food. How people can learn about things like astronomy and mathematics and biology from working fields and harvesting crops and raising livestock. How family means everything and how much corruption can damage a person’s sense of themselves. How powerful wealth is and just how dangerous power can be. How little we know about the rest of the world. How intolerant we’ve all become to darkness and anything “other”. And what this all means to me. In my heart. In my life here in Baltimore. In my work with urban youth. In my work with college students who are just beginning to lose themselves and find themselves again.
Mostly I think it’s been about how me going to Africa doesn’t mean anything to the universe at all. This journey is mostly about me and me learning how to strike the balance between “this is what I can do” and “that’s bigger than I am”. Learning to bite my tongue as much I love using it. Learning how to just watch and observe before offering suggestions for change. Learning how to be uncomfortable. Learning how to be faithful, honest, and humble. Or perhaps just learning how to do those things better than I did before.
Feeling heat in places you didn’t think you could feel it. The sound of drums reverberating up your spine and around your heart, coupled with the exquisite preservation of tradition lingering in formal ceremonies. The hair on your arms standing up straight because you’ve never seen something so beautiful—something so simple and so pure. Witnessing poverty in a staggeringly real way but in a way that doesn’t leave you feeling empty like it does here in Baltimore. Feeling scared and unsure, stripped of all my usual defenses. The adventure of it all. The realness.
In flipping that calendar, I’m allowing my brain to go places I don’t normally allow it to go on a workday. And even though I’m working while I’m traveling, I can’t help but take it somewhere deeper, somewhere more powerful. Seven years ago I woke something up inside of me and I can’t get her to sit down and shut up. Something inside of me that make me feel anxious and excited and scared and thrilled all at the same time. Something that I can’t seem to quit.
I started this entry with a quote that I love because I was feeling reminiscent, but I realize now that maybe I only love it because I get what she means. I’ve felt it. I read this book by Sarah Erdman in between my first two visits to West Africa. She spent a year in Mali with the Peace Corps, came back and wrote a book about it. Her book, along with several others in the same genre, have been enormously useful in helping me frame what I think about what I’ve seen and felt and experienced. She’s no New York Times bestseller, but she wrote this book as she was going from a smaller circle to a larger one; as she was growing and processing and starting to understand better who she really was in the wake of feeling all these things you feel when you spend a lot of time in what the big fancy sociologists call a “collective society”.
She summarized all the things I’ve been trying to say for years about my time in West Africa in just a few succinct sentences.
People ask me now, 'What was Africa like?' I tell them that the place I came to know is laughing yet troubled, strong yet crippled, and dancing. Africa was like nothing I had known before, until I knew it better. But to really explain it, I have to start from the beginning.
I’d make one quick change to this statement. I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to explain it. And I'm not sure anyone else really cares as much as we do. And I’m pretty sure that’s okay.
In flipping my calendar this morning to the bright and shiny month of July, several things happened.
One: I relished in the fact that June was over. Normally I don’t feel this way about June—such a sweet, warm, school-ending month. But this June was an exception; a terrible month of car accidents, driving rental cars, and bad feelings in the pit of my stomach over stupid things like money and material possessions.
Two: I sighed that my one week of vacation had come and gone so quickly and that although I am tan, and relaxed, it never seems to be enough time to do all the things I think about when I’m drafting those “things I’ll do on vacation” mental lists.
Three: I glanced down at the bright purple note on July 28th that I depart from Dulles Airport at 11 pm for Accra, Ghana. My fifth (FIFTH) trip to West Africa since 2002.
Four: I crapped my pants because I haven’t even started thinking about my 10 day site visit to the motherland. Or the malaria pills I’ll need. Or located my yellow fever vaccination card.
(Sidenote: However, I do use my annual trip to West Africa as a year-round excuse to buy cool, light-weight, earthy/artsy looking clothing, insisting, "…this will be just PERFECT for Benin!” and then promptly losing said clothing to the great abyss that is my closet and dirty laundry pile and going to Target three days before my trip and cursing why Target doesn’t sell short skirts and tank tops during December.)
For those of you who don’t know me, perhaps you’ll find this fascination of mine with West Africa charming. Or perhaps even kitsch. You’ll probably assume I’m way cooler than I really am and that I’m so well-traveled and probably really smart. You’d, for the most part, be pretty wrong on all fronts. You probably also think I’m the luckiest girl on the planet that I get to travel so much for work—and well, I can’t argue you on that one. Working in higher education has its perks. This is definitely one of them.
For those of you who do know me, however, you’ve probably already stopped reading because you just can’t stand to hear me talk about it anymore. And that’s okay. I understand. I’d hate me too. But I can’t help but talk about it. And think about it. And find ways to weave it into stories. I’m starting to understand how the fundamental religion-nuts feel.
I remember in middle school, so sick and tired of being asked had I been “saved” and did I go to church—saying, yes, I was baptized as a baby and, yes, I go to the Presbyterian church on Main Street, and being met with “well have you considered OUR church?”—I finally cracked and blew up. WHY THE HELL IS IT SO IMPORTANT THAT I BE SAVED IF I PRAY AND TALK TO GOD AND GO TO SUNDAY SCHOOL ALL ON MY OWN!? I was met with a response: “I just want to make sure you make it to heaven, that’s all. It’s like I know how to get free passes to DisneyWorld and I want to make sure you get ‘em too.” Jesus. I’m starting to perhaps make connections on why I hate DisneyWorld, too.
I’m like this with West Africa: “Have you been? Wanna hear a story? You should go…maybe your trip to Europe wasn’t enough…ever considered West Africa?”
And since blogs are entirely self-indulgent, this is my time to do just that. And even though they’re pretty much like diaries that are read by anyone with an intrawebs browser, something about my blog feels cozy. Like if you’re taking the time to read this stuff every few weeks, you might actually like me. Or enjoy my ranting and raving about the world. Or think I have something intelligent to say. Or you’re just someone who accidentally stumbled across it and is now obsessed (this is my secret hope that you’re all strangers out there building a cult following of me. In reality, I know it’s just you guys).
I decided to start blogging last fall because I was sad. My grandmother was dying and I was filled with sleepless angst. I’d sit in my living room at three in the morning wondering how I’d make it through my 8 hour work day (9, let’s be honest) and my grad class, and still manage to be the bubbly, happy Lindsay that my friends and colleagues know me to be. I started writing. Tons of it. Ever since I learned how to write sentences this has been my coping mechanism. When shit hits the fan, I start writing about the shit. And the fan. And the people who get hit with the shit from the fan.
When my parents divorced. I wrote.
When my siblings got married. I wrote.
When I graduated high school. I wrote.
When I had my heart broken. I wrote.
When I lost myself. I wrote.
When I found myself. I wrote.
When I lost myself, again. I wrote.
You get the picture. So I thought I’d give this “sharing it” thing a go, as I’m pretty sure my friends were tired of waking up to word documents in their inboxes with headlines like “couldn’t sleep…read this and tell me what you think.”
So when I studied abroad for the first time in Ghana, I wrote. I wrote things that were appallingly self-righteous and myopic; things that now, frankly, embarrass me to read (even in my head, where things are safe). But I was doing what we all do as humans—I was shifting from one place to another. From a smaller circle to a bigger one; one with bigger ideas, harder realities, and steeper consequences. We learn. We grow. We change. Amen, hallelujah.
Some part of me has always desired to become a famous writer. I have a fantasy that someone will discover me—think I’m brilliant—and offer me a lot of money to sit at small café tables and write what I think about the world. That I’ll be given travel allowances and take off for weeks at a time with a laptop in my leather satchel (you know, the one I'll buy when I can afford it?) and a big fat expense account. What a dream—to be someone who gets paid to be a person with things to say; someone who others look to for advice and support. Someone who can churn out words that carry meaning and weight and power in the most challenging of moments. Someone who can sense silent words, too.
But this fantasy also carries a fear—a fear about what this kind of writing can do to you. Does it lose its cathartic value when it’s being demanded by an editor or a greater public? Would I ever really want to ruin what I've got here for myself? I’m thinking about all the times I’ve used my insomnia to process the things I see and hear into short stories or pieces of poetry; all the times I’ve taken my deepest fears and insecurities into a leather-bound journal and written sentences that make no sense and follow no rules of grammar but translate everything I need to say into letters and words and spaces on paper so that I can feel better about tomorrow.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure the journals and journals of angst-ridden writing, processing my own adolescent and post-adolescent struggles with racism and classism and “finding myself” are quite worth the read. It’s mostly a lot of garbled words struggling to describe this feeling I’ve had for most of my life—this desire to do more, learn more, and understand. To embed myself in really hard places and think my way out of them. Crying and cursing all the way out.
And this thing with West Africa was in me from day one (I feel sure of it). It’s not that I just woke up one day, watched the Lion King, and decided to become obsessed with Africa. No. In typical Lindsay fashion, it was a much more long-winded, complicated story. With a lot more dips and bends and uncanny coincidences. I didn’t dream of going on safari as a child or hold onto some colonized vision of traveling to an uncultured, uneducated land and teaching the masses of my great knowledge and heritage. No. It was more a whisper. A thread that seems to have woven itself into parts of my life that I’m just now beginning to recognize. A rhythm in my day-to-day that I can’t ignore.
An opportunity to go for the first time and three weeks of walking around with my mouth hanging wide open. And seven years of processing and going back again and again and learning more and growing. And finding deeper roots.
And it isn’t really Africa itself, so much as how life is enacted there. The way people live. The culture. Which I suppose is inescapably connected to “being African”. But from my limited scope, it’s about music. And struggle. And community. And pain. And beauty. How communities celebrate together and mourn together. How people find ways to sustain despite access to critical resources like clean water and nutritious food. How people can learn about things like astronomy and mathematics and biology from working fields and harvesting crops and raising livestock. How family means everything and how much corruption can damage a person’s sense of themselves. How powerful wealth is and just how dangerous power can be. How little we know about the rest of the world. How intolerant we’ve all become to darkness and anything “other”. And what this all means to me. In my heart. In my life here in Baltimore. In my work with urban youth. In my work with college students who are just beginning to lose themselves and find themselves again.
Mostly I think it’s been about how me going to Africa doesn’t mean anything to the universe at all. This journey is mostly about me and me learning how to strike the balance between “this is what I can do” and “that’s bigger than I am”. Learning to bite my tongue as much I love using it. Learning how to just watch and observe before offering suggestions for change. Learning how to be uncomfortable. Learning how to be faithful, honest, and humble. Or perhaps just learning how to do those things better than I did before.
Feeling heat in places you didn’t think you could feel it. The sound of drums reverberating up your spine and around your heart, coupled with the exquisite preservation of tradition lingering in formal ceremonies. The hair on your arms standing up straight because you’ve never seen something so beautiful—something so simple and so pure. Witnessing poverty in a staggeringly real way but in a way that doesn’t leave you feeling empty like it does here in Baltimore. Feeling scared and unsure, stripped of all my usual defenses. The adventure of it all. The realness.
In flipping that calendar, I’m allowing my brain to go places I don’t normally allow it to go on a workday. And even though I’m working while I’m traveling, I can’t help but take it somewhere deeper, somewhere more powerful. Seven years ago I woke something up inside of me and I can’t get her to sit down and shut up. Something inside of me that make me feel anxious and excited and scared and thrilled all at the same time. Something that I can’t seem to quit.
I started this entry with a quote that I love because I was feeling reminiscent, but I realize now that maybe I only love it because I get what she means. I’ve felt it. I read this book by Sarah Erdman in between my first two visits to West Africa. She spent a year in Mali with the Peace Corps, came back and wrote a book about it. Her book, along with several others in the same genre, have been enormously useful in helping me frame what I think about what I’ve seen and felt and experienced. She’s no New York Times bestseller, but she wrote this book as she was going from a smaller circle to a larger one; as she was growing and processing and starting to understand better who she really was in the wake of feeling all these things you feel when you spend a lot of time in what the big fancy sociologists call a “collective society”.
She summarized all the things I’ve been trying to say for years about my time in West Africa in just a few succinct sentences.
People ask me now, 'What was Africa like?' I tell them that the place I came to know is laughing yet troubled, strong yet crippled, and dancing. Africa was like nothing I had known before, until I knew it better. But to really explain it, I have to start from the beginning.
I’d make one quick change to this statement. I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to explain it. And I'm not sure anyone else really cares as much as we do. And I’m pretty sure that’s okay.
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