The Horror.

It probably won't surprise the reader to hear that being a college student in Africa is a strange experience. It is challenging to be in a place where poverty is so widespread. At every turn Ghana challenges me and shows me just how particular America is in relation to the rest of the world. After all, the Third-World poverty present here is the norm in most of the world. We in the West are lucky to say the least, and most of all college students.

It's going to be very hard for me to express what is going on in my mind right now, but here it goes. Everywhere I turn Ghana is there to remind me just how hard things are here. Everyday I am chased by food sellers, practically begging me to buy peanuts for 7 cents or water for 3 cents. Almost every day a person approaches me on the street, asking me for my contact information. They do so so they can have a friend in the United States, one who can hopefully get them a visa to get off this island called Africa. There are many other aspects that I've described in other blog posts, such as the starving children, and I see these facets all the time.

And it never stops. It doesn't care whether you're tired or homesick or don't understand a word. Like waves repeatedly crashing against a wall, slowly the college student in Africa has his or her own walls broken down. You question your very existence. For example, I am a college student studying history and anthropology. Most Columbians think I'm full of shit just for that, because I'm not pre-law, pre-med, etc. But no matter what one's major or career goals are, you come to Africa and realize just exactly how full of shit you really are. Doubtless some reading this are thinking, "Studying these things isn't bullshit, Paco. You're being too hard on yourself." Such a response is normal. I would do the same thing when I first got here too. It's natural for an individual to want to justify their existence.

But for the college student in Africa, slowly this Pavlovian response is broken down. It's broken down not by one's own consciousness. Again the tendency to defend yourself to, well, yourself is natural. The purpose of your very existence, indeed your very usefulness as a physical being in this world, is on the line. What breaks down the disconnect is the starvation, the desperation, the disillusionment, and the relentless of all of it. It takes awhile, months actually, but eventually a Westerner here in Africa is forced to confront the fact that their own unreality. I can think of the moment when I realized this. I saw a starving baby fall down and start crying, and her drunk mother just walked away ignoring her. The searing, raw realness you see here could break down the Great Wall of China. One simple college student is nothing, and I'm drawn to Colonel Kurtz famous words, "The horror! The horror." Joseph Conrad did indeed find the horror when he went to Africa over one hundred years ago. He did not find it in the African "savages," he found it in himself, and the Africans only revealed what he had been denying all his life. Here one is forced to confront their own deep demons, the darkest depths of the soul and "civilization."

There is another more contemporary character in popular culture that is emblematic of this heart of darkness, and that is Heath Ledger's portrayal of the Joker in the recent Batman movie. The fact that this psychopathic clown was so powerful and struck such raw never to so many Americans, especially young Americans, I believe points to the fact that deep down, people in America sense this inner insanity, this innate discontent. The horror is indeed real, and we repress it because we must. Like I said, our very existence seems to depend on it.

I've had this strange sensation once before, when I first left Oakland and moved to New York. I had grown up in an environment that was real as Africa is and exposed me to the horror, and then the incongruity of coming from a place like that and moving to Columbia had exposed me to the depths of psychological repression that our civilization is predicated on. Here in Africa, however, I am forced to implicate myself on a whole different level. History and anthropology is utterly meaningless here. Even my experiences in Oakland, while they always serve me well, in the end cannot protect me from the terribleness of it all.

I would not want the reader to think I am slipping into the depths of narcissism or that I am finally "losing it," so to speak. I am having a great time here, and I'm so glad I came. But I would be lying to the people reading this if I ignored this fundamental fact I've learned, that we in the West put layer after layer up to protect ourselves from the very realness that I am forced to confront here. The condition is created in America, and Africa only exposes it for what it is. What else could Africa do? So remember that, on the lower frequencies, I am also speaking for you.