Thank You.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the beginning. I just past the one year in country mark. In reality it has only been 365 days (give or take) but the emotional, spiritual, and personal growth far surpass anything I ever thought possible in a year (and some days a lifetime).

This past year has been full of:

Frustrations, scares, heartbreak, excitement, wonder, fulfillment, rewards, disappointment, upsets, tear-jerking moments and events, pain, sadness, depressing, learning, a once in a lifetime experiences, thrills….just to name a few

This time last year I was learning how to bathe out of a bucket, wash my clothes by hand. How to deal with being constantly started at, and talked about and picked on. How to be alone and how to make new friends (both within Peace Corps and with Ghanaian). How to shop in a market and haggle over the cost of a tomato. How to wear the same thing for days on end and pack for a week away using only my purse. And it was only the beginning…

I have experienced some of the greatest highs and lows of my life. The highs are so sweet they seem unreal; the stuff only dreams are made of. Knowing that you were the reason 2 children didn’t permanently lose their hearing or giving a child the opportunity to go to school for the first time. But the lows….they are as close to a hell on earth as I have ever gotten. Whether its watching your personal life fall apart and being powerless to stop it or seeing a community disregard a drowned little boy. Sometimes I wake up in the morning scared to leave my house because I don’t know what kind of day it will turn into.

So much as changed.

I have learned to become self-sufficient in the strongest sense of the word. I live alone, in a remote village, in Ghana. I don’t speak the language, I am the only white person and I make $150 a month. I have found strength, confidence, determination and stubbornness within myself that I didn’t know I had and that makes me proud.

I have mentioned this before, but this is the first time in my life where I have had the time discover the things about myself that are both positive and negative. Sometimes having so much time is a good thing and sometimes not so much…

Don’t regret my decision to come here for a second. I am proud of myself and it’s because I did this on my own. I have changed more than I can ever begin to try and put into words. Not to mention the changed that I don’t even recognize as existing yet.

I’ve had opportunities that I never thought I would get. See things I thought I could only dream about. Done the most meaningful work of my life.

I guess I am trying to say thank you to everybody. The fact that you are reading this means that you are supporting me. Your letters, care packages, answering those phone calls from me just wanting to hear a familiar voice (with little or nothing to actually say) and quick little words of encouragement are the things that I think about on my worst days. They remind me that even on my hardest days I am here for so many reasons. Some I can articulate...some I can't. Giving up, leaving, quitting…is not an option. I will not give up. So thank you for everyone who has given me the strength to be able to say that... and mean it. 

"The ones who love you will never leave you because even if there are a hundred reasons to give up, the will find one reason to hold on."-annon