On my internship, and the hardships I have faced to secure it.

The Road From OrphanAid to...

In June a woman from NYU who organizes all of the internship programs contacted me via email. She wanted to let all of us studying abroad in Ghana know that there are internship possibilities in Accra with various NGO’s and civil societies. She asked that if we were interested we should send her a résumé and fill out a form detailing which sort of organization we would like to intern with.

When I arrived in Ghana I was dismayed to find that there was no internship already lined up for me. In fact, the professor who runs the internship seminar was out of the country and placements would be made when classes started. Of course, this being Ghana, things had to get a little more complicated. Our class was bigger than the professor had expected, many of the organizations listed in the original email from the NYU lady no longer offered internships or had disappointed students in the past. I was furious. I was looking forward to stepping off the plane and having some little man run up to me with a paper in his hand and present it to me saying “Here is your internship, you begin immediately”. That just shows how little I knew about the way things work here in Ghana, or rather, the way things don’t work.

I decided that I wanted to work with an organization that focuses on the rights and welfare of children. My professor recommended OrphanAid Africa, though she could tell me little about it. She said she would get in touch with her contact at the organization and secure me a spot. But again, things were a little more complicated. The organization has no functioning landlines, as there is very little electricity on site, so my professor’s only means of contacting the organization was by calling the president and founder’s cell phone. Unfortunately, the president/founder was out of the country and unable to receive phone calls, so we were faced with a dead end.

Feeling glum and depressed about my internship prospects, I turned up at class the next week and announced that I had made no progress and begged my professor for help. Her eyes lit up and she said, “Well, I think I know where it is, so why don’t we just crash? Do you have class Wednesday morning? We can drive out and bully them into acknowledging you”. I have realized since than that “crashing” is actually the best way to get things done in Ghana.

We drove out that Wednesday, my professor, another student interested in the internship and I. We seemed to be driving for hours, and then we were lost and then someone wanted to buy boiled corn form a roadside vendor and then we drove too far. The journey was arduous to say the least, but eventually we spotted a sign, turned off the main road onto a dirt track and rattled and bumped our way through thick red dirt until we got to the buildings.

As soon as we stepped from the car we were surrounded by children pulling our arms and calling us “Mama”, which is used as a term of respect and familiarity for older women in Ghana. Used to being referred to as “sister” by Ghanaians, a laughed at the new nickname. We found out that Lisa, the president/founder of the organization had returned from her trip, but was in Accra or on the farm or something. Suffice to say she was not around. We were shown the facilities by one of the administrators and as we walked around the compound he explained to us how OrphanAid Africa works.

The organization is extremely grassroots. It began as primarily an orphanage that sought to give Ghanaian orphans better institutionalized care than in government run orphanages. However, Lisa soon realized that a large percentage of children in Ghanaian orphanages are not orphans, their families are simply too destitute to care for them. The organization began to focus on de-institutionalization, emphasizing that the best place for a child to grow up is with his or her family, not in a group home with other abandoned and abused children.

The OrphanAid site is now comprised of the administrative offices, volunteer quarters, a schoolhouse and the “Home”, which houses a little over 20 children. Some of the children are HIV+ or have special needs (i.e. autism, downs syndrome etc.) and others are simply being cared for by the organization while their families are traced or until they can be adopted or sent into some form of foster care.
The site is connected to the village of Ayenya, population 500. 300 of those are children. OrphanAid works with the community to provide education for the village children, healthcare, sanitation development and workshops in practical skills and trades for the women. In many way OrphanAid and Ayenya have become one in the same thing.

I was offered the internship and after a brief meeting with Lisa in Accra, was assigned a project based on OrphanAid’s farm. I have to take raw material on the farm – its cost, its purpose, logistics etc. – and write up a report to be sent to potential donors. My fellow intern and I trekked out to the site yesterday to meet with Lisa again and do some research. It was raining and we had to take a combination of taxis and “tro-tros” to get there. As soon as I arrived I regretted ha

ving worn flip-flops and my feet began sinking into the red mud. We met with Lisa and spent time discussing community based issues with some of the men and women from the village. They emphasized their need for goat pens, which I quickly understood as I picked my way from mounds of goat feces.

We made our way up the dirt track towards the main road, waving goodbye to the smiling children who had emerged to watch us leave. To our horror, when we reached the road there was not a taxi or a tro-tro in site. We decided to begin walking to the next village. We soon realized we would never make it. The recent downpour had left puddles along the side of the road, the air was thick and suffocatingly humid and the sun was beginning to beat down. I was lugging my laptop along in my shoulder bag and I hadn’t eaten all day – kind of a problem considering I am hypoglycemic. I also needed to pee and had to squat in a mango grove, praying that the farmer wouldn't appear behind me. So when a man slowed down and asked us if we needed a lift, all I needed to convince me that he wasn’t a serial killer was the bible sitting in the passenger seat. We were saved.

Needless to say I do not look forward to the weekly journey to OrphanAid, but at least I look forward to getting there! There is so much work to be done and I have been given responsibilities that I would never have at an internship in the states. Much as that scares me sometimes, it also makes me feel needed and important – two things everybody likes to feel.