Exhale

There is a surreal feeling to holding your 53-page bounded thesis and realizing you really did it.

It hasn't quite hit yet. One week left. That certainly hasn't hit yet.

Probably because I still have a presentation to do for the University of Ghana faculty, so I guess I'm not quite done yet. And I'm still recovering from that 17-hour drive back to Accra in flooded unpaved roads.

The last week was just insane trying to finish. How  I managed to write that whole thing in 4 days is beyond me. I'm not a qualitative-research kind of gal, I miss my life back home when "results" consist of clicking a few things on SPSS, printing some tables and voila, and not 30-something pages of blabbering.

But I did it, I even put in that "personal voice" my academic director insisted on. It was easier than I thought, once I organized hundreds of pages of field notes. The entire last month was an extraordinary experience, and I know that the report could never give justice to it all, but it was really something to write. Here's the link if you want to read the Full Report.

I did take a break from all the writing on Friday, realizing it was my last Friday in Tamale, and probably my last opportunity to go to a mosque service in my lifetime. I borrowed a beautiful prayer dress, performed ablution, and went to the local mosque, by myself.

Wonderful experience (minus the children....there were children this time). And I learned that keeping all those layers on take serious skill with all the bowing and the moving. I kept stepping on the dress, the veil kept falling off, but hey I did alright.

I have a few more reflections to write this week, there's a lot rolling through my head, but for now I'll take a moment to exhale.