Company: BUNAC
Job: Volunteer
Country: Ghana

Twenty year-old Nottingham University undergraduate, Sarah Cross flew to Accra in mid-June to begin a summer placement on the Volunteer Ghana programme. Sarah will be submitting regular diary entries for the BUNAC website during her time in Africa.

I find time filled with repetition, similar faces and places, resembles more a prison than an existence. Sometimes it's like you're sitting around waiting for your life to begin and it is because of this restless mania that I find myself heading to Accra, Ghana.

The flight sees me knocking back last-minute nerves with whisky and meeting other volunteers in whose company any second thoughts quickly dissipate and which I am imbued with a well-founded optimism as to the many peoples lives I will have chance to pass in and through over the next four months.

A whole new world The first thing that hits me about Ghana is a temperature too hot for taming and the incessant noise through which I loose my memory of silence. I find myself being woken at six in the morning to a drumbeat and shouting so fiercely joyful I become almost ashamed of my reserved background and it seems there is always an animal, a voice, a stereo or a multiplicity of sounds to fill each and every second.

The vibrancy of Accra and the laidback lifestyle at times can make England seem as cold and grey as the graveyard and street-sellers, strangers in the city and different faces subsume me into a halcyon life of the unexpected character and unforeseen event.

Perhaps it is because of the newness I feel like this, but regardless of the reason I find my life amounting to much more than it did before. The first few days pass by in a daze, yet the reality that I am living in Africa begins to sink in on a bus taken out of the capital and to more rural surroundings and my family residence.

The houses become dilapidated and decrepit and the word ‘road’ is not befitting to the bumpy tracks that the cars drive on. Yet the sun-beaten red-dirt, shack-like architecture and immense greenery of the tropical surroundings holds in its own way a transcendental beauty into which modernity and materialistic woes would surely corrupt and ruin.

Introduction to my family brings the expected unease, yet such feelings are transient as I sit there charmed by children possessed by liveliness on whose faces there is always a smile at play and adults whose eyes are filled with kindness that would extinguish the belief of any misanthropist. Back to basics I find the early mornings, cold bucket showers, lack of alcohol and electricity at times a welcome break from a hedonistic lifestyle.

However, I am aware the poverty that is novelty to me is a permanent lifestyle for others. I know what is a refreshing de-valuation of material possession and philosophical re-evaluation is a constant monetary destitution even smiles cannot hide. It is almost a parallel universe and sometimes there are moments of realisation, such as families living into houses broken to the foundations, where the ground falls away from your feet and you come undone.

Sometimes the situation can hit you with extreme speed and all I have hitherto known about Ghana on paper seems laced with naivety and ignorance. Living here I can really realise how difficult and complex development is and whilst I wish I could rush time along the fact that hopes, dreams and faith in the future are not obsolete concepts is the highest inspiration I have ever been privileged to receive.

Just looking into the eyes of my host mother and father, who run separate NGOs and centres, when they speak of plans for the future, help and support for the disabled, the sick, the young and the diseased is humbling and there are moments when all I aspire to in life is to have some of the compassion I see in them.

Having been here a few weeks, I find pangs of home-sickness fleeting if not non-existent. Being here really throws you through a multitude of emotions; yet what slays me also makes me and I am glad I am not clinging to a life of familiarity. I have become intoxicated by my thoughts that pass by with every moment and change with each sight, sound or a gesture.

There are times when I feel an ultimate happiness, like in the midst of a tropical thunderstorm, or the sights I chance upon travelling at weekends, or when watching a sunset over a dusty graveyard and still at times I feel frustrated, lonely and contemplative, but I am always glad I have placed myself in this situation which deranges my senses. I really wouldn't have it any other way.

For more information about BUNAC placements or to apply visit: www.bunac.org

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