Study abroad. It's amazing.

One of the things that I love most about Champlain is its character- it seems to constantly offer an opportunity for adventure. I remember as a first-year student swan diving into the river, playing epic games of Ultimate Frisbee in the quad and climbing apple trees to bake delicious apple pies.

Champlain also houses the TIP office (Trent International Program), and through them- and the International Development department- I was able to enter my most recent adventure: a year abroad studying in Ghana, West Africa!!

Trent-in-Ghana (TIG) is a unique program because it allows you to create your own experience- completely. After 3 months of living at a homestay in a major city and going to school, I was sent off to find my own placement, anywhere in the country, with any organization, and my own living conditions; in a foreign country, culture and environment. That's almost as intimidating as trying to navigate your way through the jungle of university life in first-year !

I ended up doing a joint placement studying youth migration. In Ghana, there's a big problem with youth moving form northern rural areas into the slums to work petty jobs as head-porters or scrap dealers. They call it "Kayayei". This work is pretty dangerous, especially in the slum I spent the most time at, 'Soddom and Gamorrah' because there is a problem with e-waste (electronic waste).

You can learn more about that here: http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/ghana804/video/video_index.html

So I was living in town and going down into the slums every day, I was also hanging out with some nuns in the missionary of charity house (Mother Teresa's) close by. It was a pretty cool experience getting to just be around, get to know and do life with people living in poverty. I didn't have an agenda, I was interning at 3 different organizations at the time, so I just lived there and learned a ton. It was pretty humbling.

I then went up north and spent some time at a youth center for street kids in Tamale (a northern city in Ghana). I was living in a single concrete room with no bathroom or kitchen, nothing but a bed and a little block shower- and loved it. I've done some work at youth centers in Canada and I found both the differences, and similarities, striking. At this center, the kids were so eager to learn! I'm used to young people hating school, hating life, hating their families, hating themselves.. but at this place, the kids would come straight after school and stay til the sun set- learning. I never seen this attitude in high school. This was so encouraging to me.

But this is the thing that I've seen to be the same between the two, and I think that it's cool when we can make these cross-cultural observations: Poverty is challenging. The poverty we have in the west is very different than in the south- I often found myself wondering which one was more desperate. While one eats up the body the other eats the heart and soul (Or both.. depending) But I have seen that when a person lifted up, built up, offered up a spark of hope, the joy that comes out of that is life-time lasting. I've seen kids from both countries come from the most dire circumstances and live with the greatest joy. Its pretty cool.

Sometimes when I study IDS it gets depressing. The development industry seems to be tied up in the global corporate monster and it seems like there is no hope, no genuine good anymore. But when I've looked into the eyes of these kids- the ones that come from desperate poverty eager to learn and the ones that come from a place of hate to a place of joy- I see God, and I am reminded that there is hope.

So Study Abroad! Its challenging on almost every level- but pretty amazing too :)