August 3, 2012- Day 29

There are a few things I wanted to mention before my trip is over.

-Plastic bags are called poulitans. 
-When people want you to come they either say “bra” which means come and then do an up/down waving motion beckoning you to them, or they make the sound “Ssssss.”  

Before coming home I wanted to make some lists.

Things I miss most about home:

-being with the people I love

-hot showers

-having clean hair

-food, so much food, especially sweets

-wearing skinny jeans and tight clothing

-late summer nights

-not being the only white person that everyone stares at and pays attention to.  I miss blending in

-being able to sleep in because I’m not woken up by barking dogs, loud music, or shouting women or screaming children

-just my life in general. everything is on hold, so much is going on back home and I’m not there for it. I want to just get back to being me and hanging out with friends and family and do stuff that I want.

Things I will miss when I go back home:

-walking along the ocean on my way to work, with giant palm trees, huge waves, and fishing boats

-seeing beautiful African children who are so cute and loving and adorable everywhere.  There are so many kids everywhere here which I love.

-sitting outside at night listening to really good African music and watching everyone socialize

-the pineapples here (they taste like candy)

-lack of stress because this isn’t my reality that I live in so I don’t have to deal with anything

-everything costing so little

-women singing all the time here
-bright and colorful fabrics

There are some things that when I first got here I missed a lot about home.  But after a week or so I forgot about them and now don’t care.  Examples include the way it smells here, like sewers and fish, and the amount of dirtiness and garbage everywhere.  I still recognize these things but they don’t feel foreign anymore.  I’m sure the fresh air and cleanliness of America will shock me.  There are a lot of things that when I got here I was shocked about like the poverty and the small shacks that people live in and the naked children with swollen bellybuttons.  These things are still tragic but after you see them every day you become desensitized and don’t feel upset every time you see it.  It’s really interesting to observe the transition in myself.  I know there are things that I should miss but they don’t really phase me.  I didn’t even start missing most things on my list until the past few days when I started to think about going home.  I learned to deal with it.  It’s really cool to me how we force ourselves to adapt.  We don’t fight change for very long because there is no reason to.  I put myself in this situation and knew that if I didn’t adapt as soon as possible that it would be so much more difficult and painful to be away from home.  I started out having a panic attack here and then snapped out of it the very next morning because I knew that if I allowed myself to continue to panic any longer that I wouldn’t mentally survive.  I think humans are really cool for that aspect of adaptability that we have.  I’m proud of myself for being able to do that because it often seems that at home I let my emotions get out of control and it messes things up for me. The more you let yourself lose control, the more out of control things become.  But when it was really important to take care of myself, I did that and everything turned out to be amazing and here I am at the end of my journey feeling happy and functioning better than normal.  I just think its amazing how when faced with a challenge at first it seems so difficult and you have no idea how to deal with it, but somehow you just figure things out.  I was so nervous about taking taxis here because you have to find taxis and go to stations and hail cabs on the side of the road using various hand signals for different locations all while communicating with people who barely speak English and often try to rip you off.  But after the first time, it’s as if somewhere inside of myself I already knew how to do this.  I didn’t have to teach myself, I just picked it up.  A lot of my learning here felt that way.  Not necessarily like a challenge, just natural.  It felt natural to adapt to something scary. I felt unusually calm for most of this journey.  

Knowing the progress that my mind has made since coming here is really incredible.  Seeing my difference in opinion from day 1 of this journal to day 29 is such a cool thing.  I have learned so much in Africa about myself and about the world.  And I’ve learned that I love cultures just as much as I knew I did.  It really reassured me that Anthropology is exactly what I want to do.  I love cultures.  It also made me realize how little I know about American culture and made me wonder what the cool little intricacies of our culture are and if we even have any.  There are so many cool things that are done here, so many symbols and specific acts that are hard to observe in our culture because to us it is just the way that we live life, not something that you can explain or define as culture.  Coming to Ghana makes me want to read my Anthropology textbooks more thoroughly and do my own outside reading on so many countries.  I love it.  

One thing I am scared about is any future traveling.  I feel like it’s really weird to be away from home for so long, for the most part disconnected with your whole life.  Yes, I can adapt and get used to it and take care of myself, but home is the happiest place on earth.  I love the people I know and the places that I live and the things I have surrounded myself with.  I don’t really want to be away from all of it for very long.  However, traveling does make you appreciate home and does make you appreciate the life you have.  I feel so fortunate to be alive and living the life that I am living.  That’s why I would recommend an opportunity like this to everyone, especially people my age who don’t know where they fit into the world and who have a problem finding happiness and peace inside of themselves.  Leave your world behind and discover the rest of the world because in doing so you’ll find out how good your life is.  It’s good to take yourself out of your comfort zone, away from people who love you, away from the ease of daily life in the United States.  This will teach you to not take any of that for granted.  You will come home a much happier person, relieved to return to the life you left behind, and even happier to be a part of that life.