On Blogging

Hey there, still alive!

I apologize for the nearly two month gap on blogging. Though internet access is a little more restricted in the village, I would relate my absence to time-consuming activities. Teaching and building the filters take up pretty much all the time when the sun is still out. Of course a few hours would be left to blog, and this is where I've reached a slump - getting past and reconciling the challenges has been draining. I now do feel I should have powered through and written a few lines, but that writing would neither be informative, as I have aimed for in this blog, nor insightful, for I hadn't come to significant conclusions yet.

During this time, I re-thought what this blog has meant to me. As I said, the goal of it was to be informative about Ghana and its culture, from the perspective of a Brazilian student who has visited several other countries. It was meant to be an efficient means of communication with friends and family back at home, while registering some significant experiences. I did not think of it as a reasoning exercise, where I would learn something as I was writing. Usually I had an hour's internet time to post, and what came out were the facts and a few (hopefully witty) jokes. 

In retrospective, I am a little upset I did not put more personal analysis into the posts. Though I believe I did a good job in conveying facts and images of Ghana in an open manner, I do not think the posts are a fair reflection of what I have learned from the past eight (!) months. I wrote about excursions and general work routine - I did not write about shifting my feelings of compassion from victimized impoverished people towards individuals who battle to change their realities regardless of disadvantages. I did not write about Wisdom, a young coconut seller from Accra who, without a high school education, asked me how he should go about becoming the President of Ghana to make people aware of the social inequalities in his country. I never mentioned the frustrations in dealing with mediocre standards - sadly a common characteristic in many developing nations - facing professionals with a motto of "it's ok, it's ok".

These are honestly some of the most significant experiences I had in Ghana; definitely ones that gave me much more trouble sleeping at night than learning traditional dances, or visiting a cultural center ever did. These are the valuable lessons I will take from Ghana. Sure, I'll be carrying a huge kpanlogo on my back and some nice batik shirts, but that was part of the fun, not of the painful rebuilding of ideas and beliefs.

Blogging was not a catalyst to meaningful conclusions, though I am sure that was the purpose intended to it when Scott, one of our Program Directors, suggested it during orientation at Princeton. But I take back saying "I am a little upset I did not put personal analysis into the posts". My reflections of Ghana came from introspective thought, Sunday night phone talks with my family, and conversations with my Bridge Year friends - blogging was a parallel activity, aimed at the receptors. 

At times it is hard to pin-point what has changed in me, and the blog is a concrete where I could (in theory) observe that. But it is unfair for me to take this blog as the measure of how big of an impact Bridge Year Ghana has had in me. Searching for examples of change is even an unnatural process, since true change transforms you regardless of whether it is identified and put into words or not.

Look at that, I learned something through the writing process. The transformations are ingrained in me, just not registered here in this blog. 

For once, this post is for me, not just for you.

Much love,

Henrique