Monday, June 2, 2014

The Invitation

On May 14, 2014 (one week before my birthday), I received my official invitation to be an Agricultural Adviser in Ghana. Hooray! I will definitely need to volunteer at local farms.

Along with the invitation came numerous .pdf brochures on safety, harassment, cultural adjustment, agriculture program and PC Ghana, as well as more medical, financial and legal forms to submit.

PC is all about paperwork... I was warned about it (and I have megabytes of scanned documents I already submitted during the application and medical pre-clearance stages), but at some point it becomes annoying (yet all of this is necessary – if you miss sending a form for a PC passport, visa, shots, final medical or dental exam results, you are not sent your tickets). Good thing I’ve been dealing with tons of government paperwork while paralegaling, so it does not seem as scary anymore. I’m almost there!

My parents (who were first very supportive about the entire idea of me joining PC) became worried when they heard that I am going to Africa. My dad worked in Nigeria in the 90s, and left his job with some bad impressions of the country. But, he was fairly philosophical in his congratulatory message to me. He wrote: “Gena (him), Galya (mom), Ghana – you cannot escape your fate.” Mom was simply excited that I will be helping with cultivation of cashew trees. She wrote: “I want to gather cashew too!” She loves this stuff, my mom. I will need to get some gardening tips from her before I go, since she and grandma Natasha (her mom) are our family gardeners.

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