An Inconvienient Truth

Thursday July 22nd 2010

“Ben, look up at the sky! It’s an incredibly clear night; you can see so many stars.” I say, half in awe, half excited by the buffet of stars before my eyes. My counterpart Benedictus and I walk down a pothole-filled path outside of town, blackened by recent nightfall in the absence of street lights. As often occurs in unsuspecting moments such as this one, I’m struck by the natural beauty around me. “Oh really?” Ben replies, in his usual tone: a mix of playful humour and innocence. “I wouldn’t even have noticed.”

I’m constantly surprised by how little attention Ghanaians pay to the beauty of their country. Easy for me to say though, as I’ve been lucky enough to see various different countries of the world, and thus have multiple reference points. Many Ghanaians I’ve met have little to no travel experience within their country, let alone internationally. But, these things aside, I’ve seen that Ghanaians put little thought into the environmental consequences resulting from their actions and habits, and subsequently don’t prioritize environmental upkeep and protection.

If Ghanaians really knew what a jewel they had, would they be less likely to throw plastic bags of trash out of trotro windows? Would it be less common for me to walk home from work smelling the sickly sweet smell of burning plastic? Would community members push harder for environmentally conscious behaviour changes?

When I first came to Ghana I was shocked and, quite frankly, appalled by two things: lack of environmental regulations, and the apathetic attitudes and behaviours often exerted by Ghanaians towards their natural habitat. I distinctly remember whizzing through Accra in a taxi, nauseated by the thick layer of exhaust fumes seemingly floating over the road, and thinking to myself: “This can’t be real. A country where millions of citizens rely on the environment for the success of their agriculture projects, and this is how we’re treating the environment!?”

Where do these unsafe, environmentally compromising vehicles come from? Why are they allowed here? I’m certainly no expert, but I do know that they come from rich ‘developed’ countries via exportation. Exportation is a complex industry unto itself– one that I can’t claim to understand now, but that I’m eager to learn more about.

I picture car exportation this way– it’s sort of like if you were to buy a sweater you love and decided to wear it every single day for a year. At year’s end, your sweater has seen better days and you’re tired of wearing it. So what do you do? You give it to your younger brother, who is small enough that the sweater will fit, albeit probably not well. He also isn’t likely to complain about how nasty your sweater is, having been worn for 365 days. He’s probably just going to put it on and go play in a sandbox, happy to be covered from the elements. Meanwhile, you’re quite relieved to have gotten rid of your dirty old sweater, and are likely already on your way to go replace it with a newer, cleaner, more stylish version. To me, rich countries dumping used cars in Africa is kind of like you giving your soiled clothes to a younger sibling. And so it goes, Ghana ends up with a plethora of junky cars spitting out thick, black smoke across its countryside.

This year Ghana’s farmers have been incredibly frustrated with the changes they are seeing in the weather patterns, and how it is negatively impacting their yields. These two extremes, one of thoughtless destruction and one of heavy reliance, currently co-exist in Ghana. But, I have to ask myself how much longer they can afford to sweep these pressing environmental issues under the rug.

Ghanaians are proud people who love Ghana, that’s certainly true. But, much to my dismay and heartbreak, protecting their environment doesn’t factor in to that. I can’t help but wonder how different things would be if it did.

Thanks for reading,

Erin

Slow Glass

Saturday July 17th 2010

I’ve been silent for a while. There have been a few reasons behind that, and I think it’s about time I try to explain why. I want to open up about the less romantic, less pretty, less digestible side of my overseas experience so that you have a more accurate representation of what I’m going through. But first, I’ll start with a visual representation where the past two weeks have taken me.



The first reason behind my online absence has been purely logistical. The past few weeks have seen me spend more hours in busses than ever before in my life. If memory and my calculations serve me correctly, I’m closing in on my 50th bus hour in just over two weeks. Now, I’m not actually complaining about this– I’ve spent many quality hours with EWBers lately because of these bus trips. But, travelling frequently has resulted in me not having had much personal time to think and write for my blog.

The second reason behind my silence is more complicated, and took me a lot longer to figure out. I’ve found myself in an emotional and mental funk recently, and it has affected my ability to feel like I can connect with my in-Canada audience. Up until this point, I’ve made a point of communicating back my big realizations and success stories. I’ve felt less comfortable talking about the murky transition space, with both high and low moments, which occupies the path between each clean, crisp story. I’ve realized that I haven’t been giving my audience enough credit, and that I’m ready to be a little more vulnerable with my writing when I feel like communicating about the harder aspects of being overseas.

I didn’t recognize it right away, but recently I’ve been actively looking for hope. The problem was, I was looking for a big piece of it. I was inadvertently making things harder on myself by feeling like I had to find a big, cathartic external source of hope to re-clarify my motivations for being here. The longer I searched, the closer I felt to two very big, very scary D words: disengagement and disillusionment. I was still going about my life as I normally would, but I felt a bubbling sense of urgency inside me that really bothered me, but I couldn’t nail down why.

After giving myself the time and space to seriously reflect on what has been triggering my sense of confusion, I’ve made progress towards bridging the emotional gap between where I’ve been recently, and where I see myself being the happiest, most productive, and most engaged. As is normally the way with periods of searching and reflection, I’ve learnt a lot about what I need in my life to feel balanced, and what type of tensions result in my feeling out of whack. The realizations I’ve come to know are quite valuable to me, but the path towards reaching them has been a messy, long, and tiring one. It has resulted in me missing opportunities recently— both with connecting back to Canada and with connecting to people in Ghana– and for that I’m really sorry.

Anyway, all of this just to say that I’m mentally back in the blogging game, and hope to continue posting consistently from here on out.

Thanks for reading,

Erin

One Fish, Two Fish

Friday June 18th 2010

This post is dedicated, with much love and admiration, to the 2010 Ghana JFs.

As we approach the half-way mark on our placements, time becomes an increasingly stressful entity. Thoughts of defining our success, quantifying our impact, and evaluating our usefulness start infiltrating our brain space at an alarmingly frequent rate. It’s a natural reaction to the thought of returning home, communicating our experience to chapter members, and beginning the third and final stage of the JF program.

In a recent conversation with another JF, I made the following analogy. At the time it caused us both to laugh and shake our heads, but after reflecting on the conversation more seriously I decided I wanted to share it with everyone.

It went something like this: sometimes I find myself feeling like a fisherman, sitting in a boat in the middle of a river. I’m fully equipped (or so I think) to catch fish– I’ve got a rod, ample bait, and a plan to execute.

As time passes, I notice fish don’t seem to be nibbling. I start getting worried. I remind myself that I spent time and energy trekking to this river, and my journey won’t have been successful if I leave without a fish. I question where all of the fish I was sure I’d find could be hiding. I wonder if, and when, they’ll ever appear.

As more time passes, I think to myself that perhaps I’m not a very good fisherman, or that perhaps by mistake I’ve brought the wrong bait, or maybe I’ve journeyed to the river at the wrong time. This continues ad nauseum until, finally, I get a bite. Maybe it’s just a nibble, and I don’t pull anything into the boat. Or, maybe I’m lucky and I’ve actually caught something. Regardless of the outcome, it’s a reminder that even when nothing was biting, there were still fish in the river.

Fishing takes time, and you largely can’t predict where the fish swim. The environment is variable, and there isn’t a direct channel that, when followed, guarantees catching a multitude of fish. However, allowing yourself to stress over the time elapsed on your journey doesn’t increase the frequency of catching fish, and in fact just invites self-doubt and unnecessary hesitation.

For various reasons, we place pressure on ourselves to be successful JFs. Defining success is quite personal, and can be done using any number of factors: how effective we are at work, how rapidly we can learn from our environments, how deeply we connect with, learn from, and begin to understand rural livelihoods, etc.

We don’t know exactly what success looks like, and often we can’t find exactly the right metric to define it, but we are aware of the general direction in which we want to travel to define our success. Because of this, there are habits we naturally adopt to increase the probability that the micro movements of our everyday lives cumulatively generate the macro directional trend we use to define success.

I’ve composed the following list based on the many JFs I’ve observed who continually demonstrate habits that make them, figuratively speaking, good development fisherman.

7 Habits of Highly Effective JFs

1. The tenacity to stay positive and stick to your goals despite setbacks.
2. An unwavering commitment to put your best self forward everyday.
3. The humility to admit your shortcomings and the willingness to learn from your failures.
4. A sense of ownership over your personal learning and recognition that you are responsible for maximizing opportunities that you are presented with.
5. The courage to stand up and speak out for what you believe in.
6. A passion for learning from people, and the empathy to try to understand life from their perspective.
7. A steadfast respect for diversity, especially when dealing with behaviours you don’t understand or don’t personally agree with.

And so my friends, if you feel like a fisherman sitting in your boat waiting for fish, I hope this serves as a reminder of what you’re good at. Maybe, at the end of the day, it’s less about defining success by the number of metaphorical fish you’ve caught, and more about celebrating the habits that got you there.

Thanks for reading,

Erin

Attitude is Everything

Saturday May 29th 2010

There are many things here beyond my control. From the government, to the weather, to race and gender biases, there are big challenges that seem to continually rear their heads in my daily life. With so many factors constantly at play, staying positive can feel like a full-time job.

It takes mental effort and diligence to stay positive, through every interaction, exclusive of no one– from the taxi driver asking to marry you, to the farmer looking for a loan, to the kids in the schoolyard screaming for your attention. It’s easy for me to begrudge the fact that life in Ghana presents a whole slew of challenges that I’m not used to. It’s easy to fall down the slippery slope of feeling useless, frustrated, and incapable of creating change when problems appear to be so Herculean.

I’ve caught myself falling pry to this; feeling exhausted from trying to make sense of it all, feeling like I don’t understand why things aren’t working, and feeling like an alien in a place I don’t belong. Ultimately though, I’ve come to realize that this isn’t a productive attitude to hold on to. When I feel overwhelmed with so much out of my control, I remember that while it’s true that many of the challenges I’m facing are not problems I can conceivably solve on my own, there’s one big factor within my grasp that has enormous influence on my experience.

Sometimes I need to slow down, smell the flowers, and remind myself that attitude is everything.

As my Nana would say, there are no shortcuts in life to any place worth going. With this in mind, I try to remind myself that staying positive, diligently working through frustrations, and being as open as possible in my communication is, while not the easiest path to stay true to, ultimately a very worthwhile one to pursue. Switching my attitude to a more positive one– one in which I’m willing to have conversations around cultural differences, complexity in development, and personal values– is not only more fruitful for everyone involved, but leaves me feeling more accomplished at the end of the day.

With this approach, I hope to whittle away at other people’s preconceptions of who I am and what I value. But perhaps more importantly, I’m giving other people the opportunity to break away from the unconscious stereotypes I’m holding them to in my mind. Plus, at the end of the day it’s easier for me to sleep at night knowing that I’m tired from trying to productively work through frustrations, and not because I let emotional roadblocks get the best of me.

Thanks for reading,

Erin