Courtney in Gushei, Ghana: Debrief

After finishing up our work, the volunteers in Ghana all met up in Tamale for an in-country debrief with the long-term volunteers. Then we headed down to Accra where I managed to spend a day at the beach with some friends before flying back to Toronto. After finally making it to Toronto we spent 3 days at the National office discussing the work we accomplished overseas, bringing our experiences back to Canada, and spending some quality time with each other before being released and re-adjusting back into our old lives.

I am glad we had time together to reflect on our experiences this summer. I have learned a tremendous amount, but I still have many questions on development work and can not give any concrete answers. When I tell people about my trip, I think I will describe it more as an internship than a volunteer placement. I feel very fortunate to have had this opportunity to live and work in a new environment. I have definitely taken more out of this than I have given. When I tell people about Ghana, I don’t want them to visualize people who are completely helpless and need someone to come in and rescue them. I want to open people’s minds up to a different way of life.

When you look at all the statistics and numbers, Ghana is much worse off than Canada and the U.S. But when you look at the poverty and challenges that each of us are facing on the ground, it is not so black and white. I don’t think I would ever go to a poor neighborhood in the US or a native reserve in Canada to do “development work”; it is not safe and the communities probably wouldn’t be too welcoming. I am having a difficult time defining poverty, and I don’t think I will ever be able to. I am not prepared to “explain” development work or poverty to anyone. My goal in communicating my experience back home is to get people to think about these issues and come up with their own ideas and questions and strive to explore them further.

I have grown very close with the other volunteers in Ghana. We all came to the realization that we are going through this together early on and created a strong support network for each other. As I listened to everyone stories and experiences from their placements, I felt extremely lucky that I am a part of this group.

Group photo of all the Ghana volunteers - midway through our placements when we met up we bought enough fabric so that we could each get a shirt made.