A while back my mom asked what interviewing is like. The answer is that it’s a lot harder than it seems like it should be. Anticipating how people are going to interpret your questions, and trying to rephrase them appropriately is tough. Rephrasing is surprisingly difficult in everyday conversation in general, because (British trained) Twi speakers use different kinds of phrases than Canadians. For example, today I was trying to say “he goes to school with me” in Twi, and when the person finally understood what I meant, they rephrased it as “he is your classmate” in English. It makes perfect sense, but it isn’t the phrase that jumps to mind.
From my interviews I had a question that was really painfully phrased about what conditions do people find are important to be in place in order for marriage counseling to be effective. That’s painful even for an English speaker. It took me a couple of interviews to come up with the streamlined and comprehensible “what circumstances make counseling a couple difficult?” The thing is, I was originally wondering if such and such or another circumstance might come up, and I phrased the question trying to ask that indirectly. Those kinds of questions are almost always disasters, but the trick is to figure out which broad and sensible questions will elicit the kinds of examples you are looking for, while allowing examples that you haven’t thought of already to emerge.
Anyway, it is getting easier, an so I have hopes that all will work out and I’ll have a dissertation to write at the end of this :)
Filed under: Anthropology
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59 days ago
Today walking by a book stand my eye was arrested by a book called “Canadian Criminal Law.” I was momentarily perplexed by the words “every child” that were simultaneously trying to enter my brain. I stopped and scanned the book, to be confronted by the sticker of a multi-pronged book drive called “A book for Every Child”.
I’ve seen the donation boxes for this drive in my school, they collect old books that we don’t want to send to children in Africa. I don’t know if the fact that it’s in a book stand—for sale—means that it was rejected by the drive, but it does strike me that there is very little use that your average child in Ghana has for a first year text book on Canadian criminal law. Who donated this book, and what good did they think it would do? Did it make them feel good to “help” some child in Africa? It’ a little mindboggling to me.
Filed under: Africa
74 days ago
I’m starting to learn my way around Kumasi, which is to say that I am learning routes more than logics. Kumasi is hilly, and the roads twist and wind due to both social and environmental factors. Over the past few weeks I have realized that there are 4 ways to leave my school: left then right; left then left; right then right, and right then left. And I have realized that to get me home, different cab drivers have taken each of these options. Further more, if you go right then left, you get to a traffic circle from which you can take three of the four feeder roads to get to my house. Yes, that’s right, all roads lead to me.
Filed under: Daily-Living Ghana
75 days ago
The thing about internet cafes is there often is, let’s say, limited privacy. Today while waiting for my computer to reboot, I couldn’t help poking my nosy anthro nose over to see what the guy with the great big fake gold and diamond ring was doing. He was typing in a really big font! All about sending the pics and being serious about a relationship.
Well, so far that could be anything, but then he signed it Mavis. Then I saw him talking in a chat window to someone with an old white guy for a user picture. The old guy was saying something about being a serious guy, and wanting pics now, and also that he doesn’t give out his home phone to people he doesn’t know. ‘Mavis’ assured him that the pics were on the way, then flipped back to the email screen where I was treated to the picture he was sending. My inner monologue fell off its chair laughing. It was a glam shot of a black model, clearly professional, and in my opinion not the kind of pic that Mavisalone_trust would have of herself if she were actually looking for a relationship on the internet. If the guy fell for that, then I’m tempted to say he deserves what he gets. Except, of course, if he doesn’t.
Filed under: Daily-Living
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