Why Ghana?

Michaela Bethune

Ever since this summer when I made the decision of where I plan to study abroad, I've been repeatedly asked the question, why Ghana? And although at this point I immediately launch into my rehearsed spiel describing logistically how the program makes sense with what I want to study and how I want to go somewhere I never will go again, internally I know that there is something more to my decision than just this monologue I've repeated approximately 48 times. 

I have never been a decisive person. Any insignificant choice I am forced to make always proves to be a struggle for me, and is followed by continuous over-analysis on whether or not I made the correct decision. Then I consider if the alternative would have been better, and regret my choice, although I know there is no way to know which experience would have been more beneficial. This indecisiveness drives me, and presumably all those around me who have to listen to my constant streams of consciousness, absolutely crazy, but I haven't been able to outgrow this annoying characteristic.

Except for now. Although at times I get nervous and scared when I realize I will be in a completely foreign environment, camping out in tents for four months behind strangers' huts, and conducting independent research on a topic I still haven't determined, this fear and insecurity has never led me to regret my decision to study abroad next semester in Ghana. If anything, it is this uncertainty and cluelessness of what I'm getting myself into that drives my desire to go and my excitement. The feeling in my gut when I suddenly have moments of clarity that I am actually going to be living in Africa, rolling up solo, and my heart skips a beat...it's those moments that make me realize there was no other option. It makes perfect sense to me why I should be studying abroad there, that I need to have this feeling of straight up, unadulterated life, where I'm not getting wrapped up in things that don't actually matter to me, where I'm not oddly competitive about things I'm not even sure that I care about, where I'm not trying to play a game I don't even know how I got involved in. I need to be where I can be living exactly in the moment, if only due to the fact that I don't have another choice, since I have no idea what is going to happen next, and I am beyond excited to not have everything planned out, and just live. I need to be in a new environment where I'm constantly challenged to adapt and learn quickly in order to get by, because its instances like those where I'm forced out of a monotonous, semi-sleepwalking routine, and realize that I am, in fact, living.

And if this explanation doesn't make sense to anyone else, I can give them my rehearsed spiel, because at this point, all that matters is that it makes sense to me.