Small small
...that's how Ghanaians will say "a little bit", as in "I'm learning Twi, small small." (Twi is the language spoken by the largest ethnic group in the country. But, it's also how relevant this journal seems in the face of the insanity in New Orleans right now. I'll just try to finish converting my old journal entries into 1s and 0s so I won't have to think about it.
15 August 2005 :: 11:50 PM
So, my ambitions of autobiographical minutia journalism aren't working as well as planned...I'm not writing nearly as much as I'd expected. In my desire to be thorough and coherent, I think I'm sacrificing expressing anything. So, back to the clumsy lists of blurbs and gripes that usually make up my journals...
-I'm trying to read Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, and I'm starting to wonder if I should be reading anything at this point. I'm so overwhelmed, absorbed, and/or tired out by my day that I can't muster the strength to do battle with a serious book. Books need attention, or else they just roll right over you and try to convince you of all sorts of lies before you know what's happening. When Henry Miller sends in his legions of semen-and-confetti-covered Panzer tanks, I don't stand a chance. I turn passive and weak, and I'm burned.
-Speaking of which, Lake Volta fried my speakers tonight. Ghana gets almost all of its electricity from the Volta dam, which holds back the world's largest man-made lake and generates quite a shitload of energy. Interestingly, though, the power is all 220 volts; interestingly, American appliances require 110 volts. I'm without music.
-That guy, Joe, the Ghanaian electrician -- he's definitely all right. It would take a lot to convince me otherwise at this point. I think he may be the most compatible person I've met here so far, American or Ghanaian.
17 August 2005 :: noon :: JBQ
The most incredible thing about America, in my book, is that THINGS FUCKING WORK. ATMs, phones, computers...it's amazing. Here, almost everything that requires coordination and/or technology routinely fails, which is why although I've spent the last two days wandering around campus and trying to go to classes, I'm still not sure if I'm really registered for anything. It's also completely up in the air whether or not any of the classes will happen at any given time.
Yesterday, Jessica and Laura -- two sardonic yet seemingly three-dimensional and intelligent girls in ISEP with me -- dragged me to this drumming class even though everyone knew it probably wouldn't be in session. Indeed it wasnt, although the instructor did show up to discuss the times with us. However, we did find another American student there at the music department, demanding information from the instructor (who seemed to be treating him with an extraordinary amount of patience). I hated that boy. He was a tall, ponytailed, music major "from the Bay Area" who was becoming irate because he couldn't get a straight answer about course credit for his goddamn xylophone class. Whenever the professor tried to explain himself to the kid, he'd stare at the Ghanaian with his big, dumb, West Coast mouth hanging ajar as if he just couldn't belive the nerve of these in competant little black people stepping on his wispy, trimmed goatee and tromping on his tanned, UC skin. It wasn't what he was asking that was obnoxious so much as his demeanor. How dare I be subject to the chaos of this country, he seemed to be saying; stop what you're doing, listen to me and fix MY problems. "Raised on a wet nurse," my friend Nick says of the guy.
But the thing is, of course, that dude's attitude annoyed me largely because I'm doing the same thing. I'm frustrated. I'm trying to stem the swells of resentment and bitterness from warping my perspective of Ghana, but it seems like a losing battle at the moment. And it's not the campus's chronic inefficiencies, or the incompetence, or even the malfunctioning water and phone systems that are fueling the rancor -- it's the perpetual feeling that everyone here is laughing at me and conspiring to play me for as much of a fool as possible. When the passport photo guy tricks me into buying twice as many photos as I thought we'd agreed upon...when the women at the market speak a long stream of Twi at me, then laugh and laugh at my incomprehension, then say a couple of lines of perfectly clear English and then delve back into Twi and mocking laughter...I shouldn't get upset, but I hate always feeling like I'm either being a miserly asshole or an absolute moron, gullible beyond belief.
Oddly enough, I remember feeling much the same way during a very different time in my life, when I was the short, weird, comical little Asian boy in the middle of a crowd of deer hunting, football playing, white Ozark 9th graders (although to be honest, I was an outsider less because of race and more because I come from a generally bizarre psychological background). The interesting thing is that here most people just assume I'm another white person, oboruni, and thus a definite outsider. The whole thing came full circle, though, this Monday in the Madina market. I was slipping along through the hordes of shoppers and vendors (there's a very porous boundary between who's selling and who's buying things in the market) when a large man pushing a cart piled with sandals and sundry home items suddenly stopped and shouted out, "Hey! Hey, CHING CHONG CHANG!" He grinned enormously and laughed and stuck out his hand to me. I was amused and bewildered and mildly appalled all at once; as I shook his hand, he introduced himself as Ebo and asked if I'd like to be his friend, where I stay, etc. After a brief and generic conversation, he picked up his cart, laughed again good-naturedly, and roared out, "Hey! CHINAman, yeah! HA HA! CHING CHONG CHANG!", seemingly to the crowd as a whole. But, that incident didn't bother me. What bothers me is feeling like a dipshit, which even the most mundane of interactions usually accomplishes...
Not to carry the analogy too far, but there's another similarity between the two scenarios of social exclusion -- both here and at Ozark, I also always knew that I still possessed a secret and deadly edge over the people making me feel like shit. And here the analogy breaks down entirely, because my edge in Ozark was the fact that my ACT scores assured me a college trajectory into an environment where I didn't feel excluded, whereas my edge in Ghana is my KLM flight back to Little Rock in four months and my fucking money. And that edge, my friends, is SIGNIFICANTLY more of a weapon...ha. Ugh. No, I'm treated as a different species here because I am -- culturally, psychologically, economically. So, that's why I have to recognize this frustration for what it is: partly being in a new world, partly guilt at my own spoiled expectations of comfort, partly those expectations themselves, partly the same old fact that people everywhere in the world are confusing and scary and ambiguous...
19 August 2005 :: 9:00 PM :: International Student Hostel
What the hell? So suddenly, I'm all about hanging out with the Americans all the time. I had been convincing myself that as soon as the ISEP group orientation was over, I'd shun them all and dive headfirst into all the Ghana I could handle. But no, I'm cliquing off, same as always...and suddenly I'm raring to go hit the clubs. Do you know what I was just thinking?
It's good for me to spend more money. If I spend my money liberally that CREATES JOBS! Yes, I could give it to charity...yes, I could devote it to some cause I believe in...yes, I enjoy ridiculous opulence compared to this whole country...but the best way for me to make Ghana a better place is to CONSUME MORE.
fuck me.
Yeah, it's true that that gets money circulating in the economy, and yes, that's good. But what kills me is that that's exactly the argument always used to justify American overconsumption: consumption creates jobs, makes economic shit happen. But here's the thing -- the fact still remains that if you're spending ten times the wealth that the average person spends, you're living just a little bit frivolously. Of course, frivolity is relative. I think that a camera is a perfectly reasonable thing to buy, but I think unnecessary cosmetic surgery is a stupid way to spend your money. Botox Jane, however, may think that her collagen implants are totally valid, but still frowns in dismay at Joe Walton's decision to hire a troupe of Broadway performers to act out scenes from his childhood for weeks on end. And for an average West African, my purchase of a camera is a display of wealth that can only be called repulsive...
15 August 2005 :: 11:50 PM
So, my ambitions of autobiographical minutia journalism aren't working as well as planned...I'm not writing nearly as much as I'd expected. In my desire to be thorough and coherent, I think I'm sacrificing expressing anything. So, back to the clumsy lists of blurbs and gripes that usually make up my journals...
-I'm trying to read Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, and I'm starting to wonder if I should be reading anything at this point. I'm so overwhelmed, absorbed, and/or tired out by my day that I can't muster the strength to do battle with a serious book. Books need attention, or else they just roll right over you and try to convince you of all sorts of lies before you know what's happening. When Henry Miller sends in his legions of semen-and-confetti-covered Panzer tanks, I don't stand a chance. I turn passive and weak, and I'm burned.
-Speaking of which, Lake Volta fried my speakers tonight. Ghana gets almost all of its electricity from the Volta dam, which holds back the world's largest man-made lake and generates quite a shitload of energy. Interestingly, though, the power is all 220 volts; interestingly, American appliances require 110 volts. I'm without music.
-That guy, Joe, the Ghanaian electrician -- he's definitely all right. It would take a lot to convince me otherwise at this point. I think he may be the most compatible person I've met here so far, American or Ghanaian.
17 August 2005 :: noon :: JBQ
The most incredible thing about America, in my book, is that THINGS FUCKING WORK. ATMs, phones, computers...it's amazing. Here, almost everything that requires coordination and/or technology routinely fails, which is why although I've spent the last two days wandering around campus and trying to go to classes, I'm still not sure if I'm really registered for anything. It's also completely up in the air whether or not any of the classes will happen at any given time.
Yesterday, Jessica and Laura -- two sardonic yet seemingly three-dimensional and intelligent girls in ISEP with me -- dragged me to this drumming class even though everyone knew it probably wouldn't be in session. Indeed it wasnt, although the instructor did show up to discuss the times with us. However, we did find another American student there at the music department, demanding information from the instructor (who seemed to be treating him with an extraordinary amount of patience). I hated that boy. He was a tall, ponytailed, music major "from the Bay Area" who was becoming irate because he couldn't get a straight answer about course credit for his goddamn xylophone class. Whenever the professor tried to explain himself to the kid, he'd stare at the Ghanaian with his big, dumb, West Coast mouth hanging ajar as if he just couldn't belive the nerve of these in competant little black people stepping on his wispy, trimmed goatee and tromping on his tanned, UC skin. It wasn't what he was asking that was obnoxious so much as his demeanor. How dare I be subject to the chaos of this country, he seemed to be saying; stop what you're doing, listen to me and fix MY problems. "Raised on a wet nurse," my friend Nick says of the guy.
But the thing is, of course, that dude's attitude annoyed me largely because I'm doing the same thing. I'm frustrated. I'm trying to stem the swells of resentment and bitterness from warping my perspective of Ghana, but it seems like a losing battle at the moment. And it's not the campus's chronic inefficiencies, or the incompetence, or even the malfunctioning water and phone systems that are fueling the rancor -- it's the perpetual feeling that everyone here is laughing at me and conspiring to play me for as much of a fool as possible. When the passport photo guy tricks me into buying twice as many photos as I thought we'd agreed upon...when the women at the market speak a long stream of Twi at me, then laugh and laugh at my incomprehension, then say a couple of lines of perfectly clear English and then delve back into Twi and mocking laughter...I shouldn't get upset, but I hate always feeling like I'm either being a miserly asshole or an absolute moron, gullible beyond belief.
Oddly enough, I remember feeling much the same way during a very different time in my life, when I was the short, weird, comical little Asian boy in the middle of a crowd of deer hunting, football playing, white Ozark 9th graders (although to be honest, I was an outsider less because of race and more because I come from a generally bizarre psychological background). The interesting thing is that here most people just assume I'm another white person, oboruni, and thus a definite outsider. The whole thing came full circle, though, this Monday in the Madina market. I was slipping along through the hordes of shoppers and vendors (there's a very porous boundary between who's selling and who's buying things in the market) when a large man pushing a cart piled with sandals and sundry home items suddenly stopped and shouted out, "Hey! Hey, CHING CHONG CHANG!" He grinned enormously and laughed and stuck out his hand to me. I was amused and bewildered and mildly appalled all at once; as I shook his hand, he introduced himself as Ebo and asked if I'd like to be his friend, where I stay, etc. After a brief and generic conversation, he picked up his cart, laughed again good-naturedly, and roared out, "Hey! CHINAman, yeah! HA HA! CHING CHONG CHANG!", seemingly to the crowd as a whole. But, that incident didn't bother me. What bothers me is feeling like a dipshit, which even the most mundane of interactions usually accomplishes...
Not to carry the analogy too far, but there's another similarity between the two scenarios of social exclusion -- both here and at Ozark, I also always knew that I still possessed a secret and deadly edge over the people making me feel like shit. And here the analogy breaks down entirely, because my edge in Ozark was the fact that my ACT scores assured me a college trajectory into an environment where I didn't feel excluded, whereas my edge in Ghana is my KLM flight back to Little Rock in four months and my fucking money. And that edge, my friends, is SIGNIFICANTLY more of a weapon...ha. Ugh. No, I'm treated as a different species here because I am -- culturally, psychologically, economically. So, that's why I have to recognize this frustration for what it is: partly being in a new world, partly guilt at my own spoiled expectations of comfort, partly those expectations themselves, partly the same old fact that people everywhere in the world are confusing and scary and ambiguous...
19 August 2005 :: 9:00 PM :: International Student Hostel
What the hell? So suddenly, I'm all about hanging out with the Americans all the time. I had been convincing myself that as soon as the ISEP group orientation was over, I'd shun them all and dive headfirst into all the Ghana I could handle. But no, I'm cliquing off, same as always...and suddenly I'm raring to go hit the clubs. Do you know what I was just thinking?
It's good for me to spend more money. If I spend my money liberally that CREATES JOBS! Yes, I could give it to charity...yes, I could devote it to some cause I believe in...yes, I enjoy ridiculous opulence compared to this whole country...but the best way for me to make Ghana a better place is to CONSUME MORE.
fuck me.
Yeah, it's true that that gets money circulating in the economy, and yes, that's good. But what kills me is that that's exactly the argument always used to justify American overconsumption: consumption creates jobs, makes economic shit happen. But here's the thing -- the fact still remains that if you're spending ten times the wealth that the average person spends, you're living just a little bit frivolously. Of course, frivolity is relative. I think that a camera is a perfectly reasonable thing to buy, but I think unnecessary cosmetic surgery is a stupid way to spend your money. Botox Jane, however, may think that her collagen implants are totally valid, but still frowns in dismay at Joe Walton's decision to hire a troupe of Broadway performers to act out scenes from his childhood for weeks on end. And for an average West African, my purchase of a camera is a display of wealth that can only be called repulsive...