When I think back to my time in Ghana, I don’t think of it in terms of an “experience” I had in a “developing” country, as some people around me would perceive it. I don’t like to refer to it as an “experience” because I feel that it negates the continuing influence that it has on my sense of myself and the world. Such an emphasis also seems to take away from the fact that there are multiple ways in which we are linked to other countries, cultures and people. Yes, I entered a very different space when I traveled to Ghana, but what struck me the most when I returned from the trip, was the ways in which I came to see how different parts of the world are deeply connected ideologically, economically, culturally and politically. Perhaps I was naive when I left, but this trip definitely opened my eyes in unimaginable ways. For example, I did my placement with a Christian organization in Bolgatanga that combines a human rights approach with a form of religious conversion to empower socially and economically marginalized widows and orphans. This is, in a way, the director’s version of feminism and through her work, many women and children are now able to make choices about how they want to live their lives. Although I am still critical of some aspects of the organization’s approach, I could have missed out on a valuable learning experience if I had not eventually suspended my own notions of oppression and justice when working with this organization. In the end, I experienced intense frustration and disillusionment alongside moments of true happiness and understanding when I was working with this organization.
People in the program had their different reasons for wanting to go to Ghana. Some were personal, some were political and most often, it was a combination of the two. For me, to this day, I am still unsure exactly what my motives were. I think in some sense, I wanted to understand “difference” and see what kinds of connections individuals could make across cultures in a setting that was completely unfamiliar to me. I didn’t want to glorify the differences between home and away because I wanted to understand people in Ghana without exoticizing the interactions I had and the things that I saw and experienced. Nonetheless, I did make many mistakes by perhaps being too culturally relative. It’s a difficult balance to achieve – to recognize the humanity in all people but also to allow yourself to assert your own values and political beliefs.
I do not want to glorify this experience as “life-changing” because it isn’t for everybody and the sources of this change may vary. In my case, however, it was life-changing and my friends do tell me that I came back a very different (and I think better) person. I am currently doing my masters degree in anthropology in Montreal at Concordia University and as we have discussions in our seminars, I find myself continuously thinking back to what I learned when I was in Ghana. My friend in the program told me that you only really begin to understand what you have been through and what you have experienced when you return to Canada. She was right!
I will be going back to Ghana in July to do research for my thesis, which will be on “Western” volunteers working with NGO’s in different parts of the country. A mixture of apprehension and excitement will accompany me this second time around, as I return on my own and with a very different understanding of how the world works.