So, this past week has been very interesting. I got a chance to interview a Ghanaian for a methods practice, and tomorrow, I will be practicing participant observation (in case you were wondering, I'm going to the gym... so I can work out, and observe the people there). I thought that would be a fun place to go observe people.
From my interview, I realized that practicing will be sooooo important. But also, I realized how important it is to know exactly what you want to know. Because I had a general idea of what answers I wanted from.... we'll call her 'G'..... I was able to ask the right questions. This is such an important part of interviewing. After the interview was over however, I realized there were still so many things I wanted to know and ask her about. This is why I'm grateful that I'll be able to establish relationships with people in Wiamoase in order to ask them anytime, any question that I have.
The second most important thing I learned from the interview was that I need to get more narratives.... I should've had G simply talk more about dancing, give me examples, etc. Why would this be important? Well, number one, by her giving me examples I will have a better understanding of what kind of dances they do, in what settings do they do them in.... and by having her talk about dancing-- that is when her ideology will come out. By listening, some of the things she said stuck out to me and I remember thinking "oh! that is very interesting!" or "oh! did you hear that? she said ____ which means ______". I need to learn to listen more, and ask questions less.
Now to shift gears, above I posted a video of traditional Asante dancing. This dance I guess is called the ADOWA. I thought it would be good to get a sampling of what the dances look like that I'll be watching. Watching this dance, however, made me realize that I don't know any of the dances in Ghana, nor any of the traditional Asante dances. So, my next step in developing my project??? LEARN MORE ABOUT THE ACTUAL DANCES!!!!!!! (I'll let you know how it goes).
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