Experiencing Ghana

October 14th, 2012

I’ve officially been in Ghana for one month.

I spent the last week traveling the Central Region and the Western Region of Ghana by pickup truck, visiting senior high schools and credit unions. Travelling the back roads of Ghana by pick-up is nothing like traveling back roads in Nova Scotia. The back roads in Ghana are more like the test track that they show 4x4 trucks running on advertisements for Ford. It’s something of a “Man vs. Nature” endurance test.

Ernest and I arrived in Takoradi (Western Region) with our driver Sammy after our vigorous drive through the breathtakingly beautiful countryside. We spent the night in a nice little motel outside of the town core.

The next morning we travelled into town to talk to the management at the local credit union about joining us for a Youth Savings Club recruitment session at one of the local high schools. Standing in front of thousands of students, in a speakers’ panel consisting of the credit union manager and the head mistress of the school was more than a little intimidating. I told the students about my own personal savings and how I worked through high school in order to pay for my university tuition. During university, I also worked in order to supplement the tuition as much as possible. I left the auditorium with a sense of pride that I could possibly impact a handful of students to think about the possibility of saving for post-secondary education or for possibly starting their own business.

During the afternoon, Ernest and I travelled from Takoradi to the neighboring town of Adiembra. In Adiembra, Ernest and I ran an intensive entrepreneurship training session. The session involved teaching the kids about the principles of marketing, explaining the differences between the business structures that companies use (Sole-Proprietorship, Partnership, Corporation and Co-operative), and a few other things that I hope will inspire them to start thinking about owning their own business after they’ve finished school. After the session was over, the students demanded that there be a photo session. All the students gathered around and encouraged me to stand in the center of the group for the photo. After the group shot was taken about fifteen of the students lined up to each take an individual picture with me. During this process I was proposed to by approximately three teenage girls. The girls would come up to me, pose for a picture and then say, “White man, I will marry you,” and then laugh and walk away joking with their friends.

After a solid week of traveling from town to town (Bompeh, Komenda, Etc.) over roads that were designed for adventurous off-roaders, we finally arrived back in Accra. After four days of going to schools, telling the kids about the value of owning their own business and the pride you can find in entrepreneurship, I arrived back at my apartment.

-Joel