wast of time and money if you search for a serious internship

My time in Ghana was and still is a total disaster. This project is too expensive for the service they gave to the volunteers.

I was brought to my host family and left: nobody was explaining to me, which things (which kind of food, drinking stuff toilet paper, soap and things for cleaning…) you will get and which you have to buy by yourself; where and in which occasions you have to ask for this stuff; where you can get washing water etc. It was the same at my first day in the office I was just parked there: “Wait till the head of the office comes to pick you up” – That was 6 hours later and nobody was taking notice of me till that time. And after the short induction I had all the time problems in the office: nobody gave me work, I had to run around and search for it; nobody asked if I need help; nobody had explained how the computer systems were working, where I can get food, where do I have to go to take the firm car etc.

Some of the descriptions of the projects here in Accra are too much gloss-over. The same goes for the host families, too. Nowhere is written, that you regularly don’t have power for 10-12 hours; our longest blackout was 35 hours and the intervals between the blackouts shortened from once a week to every second day! Then you have problem with the washing water in a few host families: sometimes you will never have running water in the washbasin and the toilet, not at all a shower. You have to wash with water from a tank and a small bucket. But there is a big difference in host families and you can’t decide in which family you will go. Here the two extreme examples: in one host family they have great rooms, running water, electricity nearly all the time, Wifi and a cleaning lady. But the house is far away, you need a lot of time to go to work. In another host family you have to bag for everything – toilet paper, drinking water, jam, peanut butter etc. every time you run out. Nobody will ask if you have enough or bring it by him-/herself. One time the volunteers had no water for 3 days in that host family because they did not want to pay more for a man who brings the water earlier, so that the volunteers bought small water bags at the market to flush the toilet and to wash. Sometimes there is running water for a few hours on Saturdays but not longer – then the volunteers can fill up the tank themselves. So in the end there are very different conditions in the different host families. And what they don’t tell you: you have to pay by yourself to go to work if you are too far away to walk to your placement. I think If volunteers pay such a fucking high amount of money to go work for free (!) somewhere, they must be treated like kings and queens, provided all with the same standard: good balanced food and different beverages, constant running water and electricity, reasonable rooms and the transport to the work placement!!!

And if you have problems the first thing they told you: you must be patient and understanding. It is a different culture here. Things need time and you have to adjust to live here. So please be patient and try to solve the problems by yourself. The Projects Abroad staff will help you, if you feel sick or if you are in big arguments at placement or in the host family but not if you feel unhappy or something like that. Then you have to be quite and calm and patient and try to solve the problems yourself. Only if you bother them every day with emails and messages there will be a reaction and a try to assist. But most of the time it seems to be half-hearted.

TO SUM UP: If you want to gain some overexpensive experiences in a foreign country without so much trouble in organizing and little working hours a week then Project Abroad is the right decision. If you want to gain experiences for your curriculum vitae and you a searching for a serious internship with a lot of work and appropriate results as well as a western-country standard accommodation for the lots of money you spend for the project you should try to organize the trip by yourself or search for a higher qualified volunteering/internship organization.