Goodbye VSO

Five months has whizzed by, and having completed my second and final accountability survey and report I said goodbye to VSO Ghana last Friday. In terms of what I’ve been able to accomplish, I think like most people in this field of work, and certainly like the other VSOs in Ghana, I wish I could have done more. Perhaps it was the intangibility of the work that I’ve been doing: conducting surveys and writing reports about NGO accountability doesn’t exactly lend itself to immediate results. In some ways it was about the pace: in a culture that emphasizes process over results I found myself with too many slow days. Or maybe it was the nature of the work itself: accountability doesn’t scream of development urgency the way education or food security do. Yet I believe that the work I accomplished was important and hopefully in time the results will bear themselves. Again, in retrospect I’m sure things will become clearer, but on a personal level, I know the lessons I learnt from this experience will be useful for the next.

Thus with work out of the way it’s once again time to set sail for the open African road. My girlfriend Emma arrives on Wednesday (!!!!!!!!!!!), and along with Ghana we plan on visiting Burkina Faso (where???) and perhaps one other French-speaking West African country. As well as trying to fool her into partaking in weird initiation rites- and fraudulent tribal ceremonies- I’m really excited to be a part of her first experience on the African continent. So that’s that. Goodbye to VSO Ghana and hello (or bonjour) to some of what else West Africa has to offer. From the road…