Home-stay in
Ghana
When we arrived in Ghana a friend of mine had a distant relative a few years older than us who agreed to take us in for a few days. He drove all the way out to port to pick us up and then showed us around his town. We visited a nice mall, had lunch in a fast food restaurant and then drove back to his home. He lived in a cement home with A decent size kitchen living room and bedroom but no running water. Whenever we wanted to use the bathroom we had to use a bucket and pour water either down the drain of the toilet or
pour water on to ourselves to shower. During the day while he was at work we experienced several power outages a day which caused the AC turn off, leaving us to find a way to fight the heat. While this may have seemed like a lower standard of living compared to what I'm used to it appeared that this distant relative of my friend is very well-off. He had a full-time job where he was required to wear dress slacks, a button-down shirt and a tie. He had a car, his own home with a big screen TV. This experience called into question my understanding of what living comfortably looks like and what it means to have acquired success. Through the days, we spent with him and when we visited his extended family we were able to talk about where they see the future of their country going. They discussed the progress that they think their country is made and things that were inhibiting that progress. We spoke about how difficult it was to get a visa to America from Ghana & what that meant for most Ghanaians. We compared just about every aspect of our societies.