“If things are getting easier, maybe you're headed downhill”-
This is a Ghanaian proverb that perhaps explains the ennui I was feeling with
life since university (post-university blues? Is that a thing?). Anyway, since
my university travels which took me from Roscommon to Dublin, then on to
the US and Germany, I am back in the West of Ireland working in
procurement and life is certainly 'easier'. I have my
degrees in the bag, an income, and I speak the language like the native I am.
But as a routine is being established, I'm becoming restless and wanderlust is starting to set in.
So one day last month, as I
surveyed my orange-walled, windowless cage (a.k.a. the office) and pondered the deeper
meaning of my existence/whether to finish the tuna salad in the fridge or order
pizza for dinner, an email with the headline “Chance to intern in Ghana or India” caught
my disenchanted eye. A whirlwind of impulse decisions later and I find
myself with a position in a marketing and advertising agency and the excited
possessor of a Lufthansa airline ticket to Kotoka Airport, in Accra, the
capital city of Ghana- for the 5th of July!  |
| Visa for Ghana |
I've been told that I will be
living in “a beautiful mansion in the heart of Accra”, along with nine other
interns. My romantic imagination is envisioning a wooden structure with
hammocks facing a spectacular African vista, while outside our
neighbours Simba, Timone and Pumba will frolic past, cheerfully belting
out Hakuna Matata…While my logical head warns me that it is likely to be
more along the lines of summer 2010 in Montauk when I shared a room containing
five beds, one bathroom and a mini-fridge with eight Irish girls and a local
giant-ant swarm.
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| Future neighbours? |
I'll be sharing a room with another
girl intern- Will we get along? Will we fight over the bathroom? Will the work
be interesting? Will we get to see and experience a lot of Africa? I know very
little about what I am getting myself into- but at least now I am definitely
headed uphill again!
