Back in the US!

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You know, it's funny. A few days after I first arrived in Ghana, I already felt as though I had been there for years. Now, after being back in the USA for only about a week, it feels as though I never left.

About a week after Zach, Timo, Jess, and Candice decided to leave Ghana prematurely due to malaria, robbery, violence, or a combination of the three, I decided that the time had come for me to return to Western civilization as well. At the time, I felt ready to come home. I had acquired all the footage that I needed and had visited all of the spots on my list of places to go (except for Mole, which I was NOT going to travel to alone...). But now, after being home for only a week, I'm already itching to go back. The hot showers, paved roads, and iced mochas (...I had my first one at the Barnes and Noble in Tampa 😊...) might make me feel at home, but there's something about the culture here that still seems somewhat foreign. In Ghana, people who had next-to-nothing still acted as though they didn't have a worry in the world. In Detroit, on the other hand, the first thing I saw when I walked off the airplane was a woman screaming "SHIT!" as she rushed down the terminal to catch her flight. "Is it that big of a deal if you miss your flight," I wanted to tell her, "at least you have the means to buy a plane ticket!" It seems as though there's something about our culture -- and Western civilization in general, I suppose -- that breeds anxiety, stress, and insecurity. We seem to worry so much about maintaining our possessions and advancing our social status that we lose site of the supposed 'end' of all these means -- happiness. So, to end my last blog, here's a favorite quote of mine that, now more than ever, captures my perspective on the world and humanity in general:

Man has separated his unit from the whole, he has accustomed his soul to not believing in people's help, in people or in mankind, and now only trembles lest his money and his acquired privileges perish. Everywhere now the human mind has begun laughably not to understand that a man's true security lies not in his own solitary effort, but in the general wholeness of humanity

- Dostoevsky

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Photos

Jamers and I in SF!!
no wonder people often think that we're dating :)

my house in accra
small but cozy

the infamous porch
...lots of debaucherous activity occurred on this porch, which our dog 'mutt-face' can definitely attest to

my room
...apparently, 'sea-green' is the new 'pink' in ghana