Reflections From Last Semester....By Lisa Carmack
Being here has challenged parts of me that I didn’t know existed and helped my humanity and understanding of the world flourish. I hope to remain a student in this way as long as I live. I look West across the Atlantic from my perch in Ghana where it all seems so clear. Where I am still a person of privilege. Where as I follow my Nigerian-American friend to do her errands in parts of the Accra that few foreigners go, she puts on a persona of being local, using the accent given to her by her mother to speak to the cab driver. As children run to me, I smile and say hi while she passes into a shop unnoticed. I feel a discomfort that settles in the pit of my stomach. I heard a radio show years ago about a white woman who joined the Peace Corps, settling into life at an African village. I don’t remember where. She had looked at herself in the mirror after a while and found her face bland and without character. She detailed her acclimation process, as she found...