Struggling with white privilege or lack of independence?

I never seem to know whether people are being very kind and welcoming and sometimes going out of there way to assist me, or I’m being privileged because I’m white/a westerner. I think both cases apply to different situations but I can’t quite decipher the two. But if someone from another country was my neighbor and was clueless due to the new environment, then I’d go out of my way to help them on their feet. On the other hand, I can tell that in some situations I get the same treatment as a prominent older male Ghanaian. Maybe I’m worrying too much about “white privilege”, I’ve only been here in Paga for about two weeks and I’ll eventually figure out the difference between feeling dependent and being privileged. But I’m still uncomfortable with people always do things for me and would like to be more independent. However, when I do ‘go-it-alone’ I usually mess up and people even say ‘why didn’t you ask one of us?’ I guess I’m so used to being capable of taking care of myself it’s a difficult shift to having to depend on people for many things, even food and water.

For example, the other day I was walking about and decided to look at how much a used bike costs. I ended picking one up but it wasn’t very good, and a couple days later a guy at my compound who I’ve started to talk with said I was cheated (ripped off). He came with me to try to get my money back, and after he argued for about a half hour, we left because the guy didn’t have the money so I’m pretty much stuck with the bike. On the walk back he said that I should have asked him to help me find a bike, or asked one of them at the compound. I know he helped me out because he’s a good guy who doesn’t want to see people get cheated regardless if you’re foreign or local, and I’m lucky the guy who sold me the bike was an older man (50’s) because he said he probably would have knocked him out otherwise.

This instance got me thinking, and I thought that I had better learn something from this affair. Since no one can change the past, I believe that we can change the future by focusing on the present. With that in mind, the lesson I gathered from this instance is: ask for help when you need it! Something I struggle with regardless of what continent I’m on. I also think that I’ll do what I can to fix up the bike, which means going back to the place where I bought it, probably getting laughed at (which is becoming the norm) and facing the fact that I was naive and paid too much for a used bike. Oh well, I’ll just have to add it to the uncomfortable list and suck it up, I’ve got it easy.

After the bike incident I felt pretty down and out, and fell into a negative mood feeling stupid for having been ripped off and causing some drama. Luckily today is a holiday here, African Union Day, so there were some people around the compound to help me out of my rut (probably unknowingly). Sophia - my senior sister, she says, since she’s 3 years older than me – had the day off from her job at the bank and she thankfully showed and helped me hand wash my clothes. Not easy; for me at least. She washes clothes better than a machine. My unfit hands and arms were no match to Sophia’s, but at least I learned and tried so that next time I hopefully won’t need her help (for one thing at least).

Sunday clothes washing, with no help this time! I'm learning small small.