Translating Ghana

I am finding that I have the urge to blog about all of my experiences in Ghana, but that something is holding me back.

I am worried that somehow my descriptions of Ghana might misrepresent the amazing place that Ghana is. Ghana is very very different from America and I worry that my western description through my western eyes, with my western language may not be able to give justice to the amazing place that Ghana is.

I was thinking it is a bit like an orange we ate in Ghana. It was called an orange, and in most ways it looked like an orange. But Angelisa took one of the first bites and said it tasted different than an orange. I love oranges, they are one of my favorite fruits. This fruit was unlike an orange and any effort to describe its likeness to an orange would only leave you to see it as inferior to an orange you might be familiar with. It was not inferior in any way, it was different. It had its own pros and cons, but I lack familiarity with this kind of fruit, so saying it was a bit more tough and stringy than our orange, and describing it as less juicy and having a light flavor... well it just makes it sound less appealing than a familiar orange from the local supermarket.

So what if I describe Ghana, and somehow I make the wrong comparisons, what if my writing fails to detail the beauty and the people? What if my girls read my words years from now and feel that I failed to honor the country that gave them life?

How can I capture the essence of a place so different from what I have seen before. I lack a vocabulary that would allow me to accurately describe much of what I saw. I would be limited to comparisons to all that is American and familiar to me.

To make things more complex, many Ghanaians that I met wanted to come back to America with me. They told us how much the would love to come to American and how happy they were to make friends with Americans. They talked of our government and our President and wanted to know if we were proud to be Americans. How will I describe this when I write. - I think of my desire to visit Turkey and how I want to learn of their culture and understand their way of life. It doesn't not make me love America any less, but I long to know of Turkey.

I will continue to think on my Ghana experiences. I will look for ways to describe the beauty and the people. A developing country with so many opportunities to grow, yet such a lack of resources.

Soon I hope to have moved my thoughts into words.