Journal #21: the way of life

       At the climactic moment that the dragon is slain, children watching a puppet show in a Paris park in 1963 react in various dramatic, charming ways. That Alfred Eisenstaedt was able to capture such a range of emotions in a single shutter click is a miracle." -- Dawnie Walton

     These children are experiencing life. Africa is the land of sound, a place where I can go to figure out the rhythm of life: I am preparing for a journey that will teach me more in 3 months than any single experience I have ever had before. A journey which promotes understanding, reason, and light. Of course I can do these things anywhere, even in Provo or in the least exotic of places. It is all about perspective and what you want to take out of an experience and this, Asamang...Ghana...Africa... is mine. For my third methods practice I was going to interview one of the Ghanaians in my Twi class and just ask them how they would do my project but it didn't work out so I just conducted participant observation. Especially throughout this past year I have noticed myself being much more observant and thoughtful about my observations than I ever have before. I have always been a very observant person though I did not realize it until I really thought about it but it is hard for me to walk past people and not try to analyze them. I want to know what they are thinking about and why, I want to know where they came from and what events have shaped their character, I have always thought this way but I never identified it so much to my wonderings about human nature and human being as I do now. This character trait is something I have developed  naturally being an anthropologist. I think the reason this major is so right for me though is because of the way my brain has always thought. It is so interesting to read a selection for a class and then discuss it in class because every person who makes a comment thought about the same thing in such a different way. Humans are so fascinating that way. My main methods of observation come from simply being around people and learning from them while making assumptions based on the knowledge and data I have. Gender is such a general, every day part of life yet it can also be so foreign. 

     Differing gender roles vary from place to place all over the world. Something seemingly acceptable to me may not be even from someone born outside of the United States, now attending BYU. Within their experience here they might adapt and recognize how the gender roles are subconsciously defined and they may adopt them yet still might feel like a foreigner to their own gender within those newly defined roles. What are those gender roles though and how are they defined? I asked myself that question while I was working out at the gym where I did my participant observation. It was interesting to note which machines were mostly used by males vs which ones were mostly used by females, which machines were used by females when they had another female with them and which ones were avoided if they were working out alone and such. I will have to go back and observe the same things again to really see if the observations I made were valid and were reproduced but gender plays a larger role in daily life than I think we even recognize here in America. At a glance it seems like gender roles are far less defined than they used to be in the Americas because of women's emerging roles in the business world and how the stay-at-home mom and housewife is not the general stereotype anymore but gender roles are indeed just as prevalent now as they ever have been. It is just the way of life.

Journal #20: Inquiry Conference

The Inquiry Conference was very informational and I enjoyed learning about the methods and procedures others have used who performed projects similar to my own. Daniel Hansen and Katie McDiarmond both introduced different aspects which had not been brought to my attention earlier and which will be very beneficial to my own research and the success of what I take from this cultural experience. The following are my notes and the things I learned and will take into account from their presentations:

New Paradigms of Westernized Medicine and Traditional Healing

Daniel Hansen: Modern vs. Traditional Medicine in Tonga

• Health care is influenced by the modernization/westernization of Tonga
• Government health care is free, they can seek health care there whenever they would like.
• Traditional healers in Tonga are usually women who have been trained by their mothers. 
• Their treatments and procedures have been passed down from generation to generation. 
• They believe that the power to heal is Divine and comes from God.
• As such, they do not accept payment for these treatments
• Methods (limited by time. language and cultural barriers make it difficult to get a representative sample)
• Observations 
• volunteer/shadow in Hospital
• observe healers 
• Semi-structured Interviews
• professionally trained doctors and nurses (~10)
• traditional, natural healers (~10)
• average community members (~25)
• Results: 
• in general, most people preferred western medicine (First) because the doctors "always knew the right thing: and "has qualifications" and "know about more than just one sickness"
• equipment
• they thought the healers were "simply guessing"
• A healer would be visited second to receive a supplementary treatment just to cover all their bases. (if anyone went to the healer first they would still go to the hospital second)
• doctors were rarely at the hospital from 12-6. They go in the morning and take the afternoon off and then return in the evening so traditional healers were the only thing available at that time. 
• Kahi could not be treated at the hospital, you must go to a traditional healer
• Mahaki Faka Tevolo cannot be treated by western medicine. It is a spiritual sickness contracted from offending their ancestors. 
• Implications: 
• the people like traditional healers because it was a tradition in Tonga and preserving that culture was important
• transportation and doctor availability 
• Education and Outreach programs 

Katie McDiarmond: The Patient-Practitioner Relationship in Rural Communities of Ashanti, Ghana

• Seventh Day Adventist Memorial Hospital
• Expectations, Communication, Education, and What they mean for Future Outreach
• the Relationship defined: dependent of interactions between patient and practitioner
• Information-Giving
• Information-Seeking (each parties value of the others information determines success)
• Social Conversation 
• Partnership Buillding (the most influential in the interactions--goal setting, allowing patient to participate in diagnosis and treatment, also patients compliance to practitioners treatment)
• Methods:
• Interview: semi-structured- patients were more comfortable in sharing stories which gave insight into their true feelings about things 
• Observation: observe and participate in treatments at the hospital in Asamang. observe patient visits and physicians rounds in the morning (saw malaria, diabetes, gangreen)
• participant observation: able to act as the practitioner and perform certain exercises as well as being admitted for malaria and pneumonia
• Findings:
• Expectations and Satisfaction
• influenced by:
• culture
• gender
• occupation
• age
• education etc...
• their perceptions of the world change what they will expect from these visits. 
• their unique backgrounds and experiences influence this a lot
• individual background influence what people will allow
• Barriers in Communication
• diction
• grammar
• syntax
• language
• thought
• vocabulary
• Ghanaians speak a different English which made communication so difficult
• being aware of comprehension and intent of communication is essential
• The Education Gap 
• mistrust and fear
• religious interference (don't accept medical care)
• discrepancies, misunderstandings, and socioeconomic differences (journalism is not regulated so stories get out into the media that scare people and traditional healers advertise remedies that have not been tested)
• patients who are uneducated may not understand what it is that the doctors are saying and the patients did not know the words to say that would describe their syndrome which scared them thus they were scared to go to the hospital
• many of the people interviewed had never been to a hospital
• Polychronic vs. Monochronic 
• P-Time 
• no appointments, people just came and went as they would
• relationship-oriented
• you just see whoever is there
• M-Time
• task oriented
• structured
• appointments
• because of her ethnicity, they saw her as an authority in all things Westernized. Doctors felt like there were things she could teach them. 
• Ghanaians exceeded here expectations: they are doing so much and are able to do a lot with what they have. treatment she received for malaria was just as good as anything she would have received here.

Journal #19: Human Being

Maya Angelou, a very influential black woman, once said: 

"I am a human being. Nothing human can be alien to me"

I love the word 'human'. I rarely use the word 'person' in speech anymore because it is such a habit for me to refer to human beings as humans because that is what we are. In the world of anthropology we often times say that we are studying peoples and cultures which is true but the nitty gritty is that we are simply studying human beings. everything about them. about us. Thinking about this cross cultural experience, I have often found myself wondering what life is going to be like living amongst "them", "the Ghanaians" etc but who am I to think that way. Just because I am unfamiliar with the land those humans live on, the language those humans speak, the culture and society those humans embody, does not mean that they are not just like me. A human being. This thought kind of trails from my last post and I really think that as we are all seeking to find out what our existence here on earth really means, we are also just trying to figure out day by day what it means to be a human being. The quote by Maya says, 'nothing human can be alien to me', this seems like it is so far fetched because it is impossible to understand everything about every human being. Nor can we all contain the same knowledge or the world as we know it would cease to have variety and it would not go round the way that it does (in some cases that may not be a bad thing but that seems to be where Communism stems from. variety is very important in this world). There are so many things that I think I understand that I really do not. So many things that I wish to know in this world but that I may not have the opportunity to experience or find out. But that does not mean that I should be afraid of them or that I should feel like they are so foreign or 'alien' to me. There is so much to a human being that I feel like I cannot even delve deeply enough into my thoughts about us for this blog post. It could last forever. I will say this though, every single thing that I experience day by day teaches me a little bit more about human being. Whether we realize it or not we are constantly being bombarded with ideas of the way things should and shouldn't be but really, why does that matter? Why can't human beings just be who they are without the media or the next door neighbor judging their every move. At one point or another I am sure we have all felt like an alien looking in from the outside which is how I am sure I am going to feel at times when I am in Ghana but I also have the knowledge and the power to realize that I am just like those human beings who I will be associating with. It may be a different experience than that which I have been used to for my whole life but it wont really be different. My life will still be based off of the relationships I build with other human beings and how that relationship affects that one and so on. Nothing in this life that is human really is anything that I cannot handle or identify with because I am a human myself. Thank you Maya for helping me to identify that. 

Journal #18: Seeking Health care

Today I started to think about what it means to 'seek'. 

According to Websters dictionary it means:

1: to resort to : go to

2 : to go in search of : look for : to try to discover

3: to ask for : request

4: to try to acquire or gain : aim at

5: to make an attempt

Hide and Seek....

 *photos from pinterest

These all mean something different to different people, at different times. Everyone here on this earth is seeking a certain type of existence and thus, they expect certain things out of each individual experience. Each new day brings with it new expectations, new rules to follow, new outcomes to be had, new truths to be found and all these things come with discovery. One must first seek to discover though. What is it that I am seeking to find? I have the best source of truth and knowledge that I know in my life. I have happiness, I have joy and love and peace. I am currently seeking learning every day as I attend school. I know that Jesus Christ is my Savior and I seek learning through Him with every passing moment. If ever there is something 'missing' in my life, I know where to look because of my faith. 

But what about those things that do not require faith alone? What is it that is leading and guiding peoples lives, peoples every day decisions? A lot of the sources I have been looking at recently have researched the reasons for a patients health care seeking behaviors. There have been endless attempts to understand why people choose healing through certain mediums. Why they go to the clinic vs the hospital, the hospital vs the traditional healer...what exactly is it that they are seeking from these institutions? There are many more decisions than this though, it is not just about the place. It blows my mind sometimes to think about how I am trying to understand other human beings when I feel like my own  world and my own existence is so huge sometimes. How are there billions of other humans experiencing the same things that I am, feeling the same feelings, thinking the same thoughts etc, though at the same time we are not the same at all. They see me from within themselves at the same time as I see them. While the people at the hospitals with whom I interact are seeking a certain type of treatment (medically and person-ably), I am seeking to understand the interactions that they and the doctors produce while they are seeking this treatment of malaria. Thinking about it in such a round about way seems to make absolutely no sense at all. How can I even find the answers to what I am seeking for when everyone is seeking something different from seemingly the same source? Thinking about my project within this scope of ideas makes it seem so incredibly broad that it seems that no one will ever really be able to understand another human being completely. Yet, we do. Humans are fascinating and as I seek to understand more about the world around me and the people who inhabit it, I hope that I others will be able to find answers to those things they are seeking as well. 

Journal # 17: Progress

As I take a break from writing the second section of my Project Proposal I cannot help but look at all the progress I have made. Before I even knew that ethnographic research was required for my graduation requirements, I stumbled upon the Ghana Field Study. I was sitting at my computer during my summer job, bored as heck and just wishing I was off in London with my best friend. As I was sitting there day dreaming about being on study abroad and looking at the various programs Africa popped up in my view and I was immediately hooked. Not too many days before I had the feeling that I was going to start preparing for something big, something that would change my life and boy was I right. I already feel like my life has been changed because of the preparations that I have had to make this past year. My schooling, my thoughts, my dreams...everything I do points to this journey that I am on. The first time I met with Andrew I really did not know much about the program or what kind of research I would be doing or how difficult it would be to get to where I am today. Never in a million years did I think that I would be where I am now, I can recognize some words and phrases in Twi for crying out loud. That itself blows my mind. I am grateful that my project ideas have all been very similar because the first ideas I had were the foundation for the project that I have now and I feel like I have consistently been able to build off of what I learned with each new day.

      It is really neat to be able to look back even at the things I wrote in my Ethnographic Skills class and to now be able to revise and add to them for this class. Learning about cross-cultural immersion and being prepared for the culture shock even helps me to make connections between theoretical concepts I learn in my anthropology courses and combine those concepts more readily to one solid idea. It is really exciting to see how much I really have learned and grown this past year. Placing an emphasis on gender and seeking out gender relationships in my own life has been an interesting little observational study to do in the back of my mind in my day to day interactions as well. Seeing the way I interact with different people in every situation and how those interactions shape me as a human being and why I interact with certain people in certain ways while with others in different ways has been very telling of the human experience and what I am all about as an anthropologist. I am very pleased with the progress I have made so far in how I think and what I think and I know that as I continue to learn and grow I will be guided in a direction that will make this project as successful as it can be.

Journal# 16: Ophelia Syndrome

I really loved a reading we did about the Ophelia Syndrome because it got me thinking about my thoughts about my thoughts(that is not a typo). Have you ever wondered why you think the way you do or why your mind associates with certain morals and values? Who told you or taught you to think the way you do? Why do you do it? Ophelia is a character in Shakespeare's Hamlet who does not have many thoughts of her own. In this scene from Hamlet, she is seeking counsel from her father, Polonius.

Ophelia: "I do not know, my lord, what I should think," 

Polonius:   "I'll teach you. Think yourself a baby." 

Here, Ophelia expresses her concerns to her father about how she is not sure what she should think and Polonius counsels her to think herself as a baby, essentially counseling her to get rid of all she knows and just learn from him. This syndrome can be so detrimental to the thinking of a student, a child, an adult, anyone really. Especially in my field, it is important that anthropologists are able to have free thought and it is essential that we are able to analyze data and think about our thoughts in a way that is our own. That is how new theories and new ideas come about. Because people are not succumbing to the Ophelia Syndrome and simply taking every one elses word for it,  our world and our society is constantly growing and expanding. Of course there is the other side of the spectrum where theories and ideas that come from the founders of the field must be taken into account and built off of because there is no plausible way that one can think their own ideas and only their own ideas. Both sides of this idea will apply in my case. The sources and ideas that I have built my project off of are not my own, though the things that I take away from interviews and my everyday experiences are going to be built off of the ideas that have been engrained into my being through those experiences that have shaped who I am and what I believe.

Journal #15: Malarial Diagnosis

I read an article today for one of my sources about malarial diagnosis in hospitals. I do not know much about malaria itself other than a few random facts and since I am going to be doing research where the patients will all have malaria, I am going to spend the next week or two focusing on malaria as an illness or disease, social impacts of malaria if any, and Ghanaian health care. Some general information about malaria: malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease. The disease is transmitted by mosquito bites and can be reduced by preventing those bites. The World Health Organization's 2011 world malaria report accounted for 2.23% of deaths worldwide and 90% of those deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa. Signs and symptoms of malaria include fever, shivering, joint pain, vomiting, jaundice, and convulsions. The classic symptom of malaria is cyclical occurrence of sudden coldness followed by rigor and then fever and sweating lasting four to six hours. There is a very high chance of malarial infection in Ghana thus we will be taking doxycycline, an anti-biotic which we will need to start taking a few days before going to Ghana and continue taking a month after we return. Malaria is a disease/illness...whatever you want to call it which is very unpleasant to experience so I hear.

Because malaria is such a prominent disease in Africa I anticipate it being a very good lens to explore gender and doctor-patient relationships through.

The fact that there is no sure way of preventing it is a huge reason why there are so many cases of malaria throughout the world and especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Mosquito nets and antibiotics are physical preventives but if a mosquito is going to bite its going to bite and then that disease enters your blood stream. It is so simple for the disease to spread and that is why it is so severe. Using malaria as a control for observing differences among how different genders are treated by doctors in their interactions will allow for a good source of measurement when it comes time to analyze my results. Another reason why I am using malaria as a control is because there is a pretty standardized method of treatment and thus, there will not be much variation in ways of diagnosis, there will not be much variation in doctors methods of treatment because they will have been trained to treat this disease in the same way, reasons such as these will help to minimize the number of unforseen factors which could affect the administration of these treatments according to the patient's gender.