Alas, after giving it an honest go, dropping off resumes, cover letters, and soliciting HR manager digits throughout the international school set around town, it seems that at this last minute there isn’t work or work that I’m qualified for. (At one point I even tried to sell myself for a job as a drama teacher at a shi-shi diplomats’ kids high school, but I think looking at my background they could probably see that being able to talk about Bahktin and the theatre-esque isn’t precisely the same thing as as teaching some over-privileged kids how to express their inner Henry Higgins). So, I go back to NYC tomorrow, which, a week or so since my last post, is more appealing, since I’ve been fluish for the last five or so days and the food situation is starting to become a problem. Basically, the food here can be tasty, but it’s generally limited to about five super starches (banku, fufu, rice, jollof rice, rice balls) and about three or four largely palm oil based “soups,” most of which are reasonably tasty but all incredibly, even absurdly heavy. Ghanaians do not eat vegetables, other than cocoyam leaf, which is served stewed in, of course, large amounts of palm oil. I’ve found myself eating a lot of plain rice and oatmeal, which are fine, but I don’t feel all that healthy and physically my energy is low. I find the meat kind of gross, and already for close to a decade I really only eat meat extremely sparingly - generally once a month at dim sum and once every other month for bacon - so the lack of alternate protein sources has left me just weakened. For some, the food is fine here, some British in particular it seems, given that their own diets are a bit more starch and fat based than my unabashedly yuppie cosmopolitan one. Foreign food, international food, is limited to Ghana-fied Chinese, similar though with more oil, and for big, big spenders (by local standards), the South African chain Pizza Inn, which sells a kind of nasty, hyper artificial one step below microwavable personal pan soggy thing that is still about $ 8 US. In short, foul. I have to be honest that I’m not sure I could do long term research in Ghana, largely because of the food. I’m used to a largely vegetable based diet, with the large variety made possible by living in places like Portland, New York, and Tokyo. Anyways, to grip about what I’m eating in a place where many people struggle just to eat is a bit unseemly, so I’ll stop here on that tip, but suffice to say I feel like my body needs a lot of greens for a good long time. In terms of other things. It’s been a pretty interesting trip. This might be unpolitic to mention again, but I found the conference pretty dull and uninspiring, at points so blah that I really questioned whether the role of the humanities was rightfully being called into question again, perhaps fatally this time. Reasons? In short, smug moral self-contentment again and again, this belief that without figures, plans, or actual policy proposals somehow humanists know better because they know those two magical words: human rights. We can’t look to China for development! No! Why? Human rights? We can’t say that certain Western states have more effective governance? Why? Slavery! And so on. Anyways, I hate to hear myself start to sound like a shrill neo-con, but when you live and engage with people who crap in filthy outhouses, who struggle for basic goods, like reliable running water and consistent nutritious food, all this backward looking talk about the “colonial encounter” or ideological critiques of micro-finance seem really part of an internal dialogue in and amongst certain “humanistic” institutions, Western Academia etc. Anyhow, I will say that I feel my generation of emerging scholars is on the whole more practical, often less idealistic, despite the stray former Seattle street raider. But enough with that. I feel like I’m repeating myself, engaging in a bid of ideology critique that, if read in one light, undermines the point I’m trying to back, blusteringly but still. In terms of more practical things, I’ll admit that travelling in Asia, whether Japan or SE Asia, I find more pleasurable. There is a more established tourist circuit, hotel clerks aren’t always trying to scam a buck or two off you, things are well lit, there is a variety of food, and it can just be more fun. That said, Ghanaians are often really nice, and unlike other places, they often seem genuinely interested in meeting a talking to you. I gotta log off now, but I’ll leave it by saying that I think I’ll look back much more fondly at this second trip to Ghana after I get my stomach back together in NYC and after I start to feel back to physical health. There is much that is great here, but it’s hard to enjoy a place if you feel crappy. On to the job search and a few papers to finish up. Applying to Anthro (I’d love to check out Ethiopia or Eritrea to see if work there may be reasonabl). Ok, thank god I have a Xanax and a half left for the flight tomorrow, saved them for damn near a month.
Last Day in Accra
