Moving to Africa after a lifetime in the UK was never going to be easy.  Elvina Quaison shares some of her experiences as she settles into her new life in Ghana.

It’s My Anniversary

It has happened! The first year of my new life in Ghana has come and gone and I am still here. I have heard that the first year of marriage is the real challenge; after the first year you get into your stride...or not. I would say my relationship with Ghana has been something similar to the experience of newlyweds.

I am committed to Ghana and we have exchanged legal documents (I have my Ghanaian citizenship) and I then moved in. Initially it was all excitement at the newness and running along beach fronts together (literally), all very romantic and then the honeymoon period came to an end...you knew it would.

A good deal of planning had gone into the decision to move to Ghana and into my vision of how my new life in the sun would be; I don’t want you to think I went in with blinkers on. I had experience of Ghana, living there after university, though that was 12 years ago. I had been back and forth subsequently for three or four weeks at a time on holiday and then, finally, the year before I took the plunge, my job had me back and forth almost every couple of months. So I had the experience of working and doing some degree of business in Ghana beforehand.

I can tell you now, it is not the same! Living and working in Ghana is a completely different experience to the coming and going that many of us do before making the move. For those of you who remember the sitcom A Different World, the theme song ‘It’s a different world from where you’re coming from’ is not just apt, but should be your personal theme song and a reminder once you get here, to help you get through!

I think, for me, the main thing has been the constant life lessons I have experienced since being here and that is the challenge. The older you get, the less flexible and adaptable we become and that is what can make the move and transition so hard for people.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard and said ‘but it doesn’t make sense - why don’t they do it this way’ because ‘this way’ makes sense to the Diasporean who has lived abroad for a long time or their whole life and so ‘this way’ seems the best way.

This sense is often described as ‘common sense’ but let me tell you to Stop. Right. There. If nothing else, take this piece of advice so you don’t cause yourself health issues when you make that move or start interacting in-depth with your chosen African country.

Common sense is not common; it is contextually, culturally and geographically tied and so I advise that you try very hard to put your common sense on the back seat and get an understanding of the sense in your new destination.

It has been a challenging year for too many reasons to state here, but it has also been a phenomenal year where I have learned, grown and stretched myself beyond my own imagination. That is what Ghana has done for me, and many others, and can do for the person who decides to make the move with the right attitude. What is the key to this attitude? For this, I will go to the advice a priest gave at a recent wedding I attended.  It’s called CUT:

Compromise
Understanding
Tenacity

A move to Ghana, much like a life changing decision/move anywhere, can be an amazing experience of self-discovery, growth and opportunity, but you have to accept it is more than likely that it will be full of challenges, frustrations, uncertainties and annoyances. That being the case, if asked again at this time of my anniversary, will you continue to live, love and grow in Ghana, my answer will have to be ‘I do’.