Meda ase pa Ghana

Sitting down to write my final thoughts on this year has proven tough, probably due to the fact that I’m watching the World Cup for about seven hours a day.

Here’s a brief but necessary back-story. We went over to Shawnigan on Friday for a birthday party for my sister, which was good. We came back here on Saturday, after watching Ghana beat the Czechs in an amazing game. I was going nuts and would have given anything to have been in Kumasi. And that brings us to now, as the past few days have been relaxed to say the least. Yesterday was my birthday, so I hope all of you who didn’t email me or call or sky-write ‘Happy Birthday Tony’ feel really guilty.

On to the matter at hand. I am happy to be home, but I miss Ghana a lot. This past year was an incredible experience that I wouldn’t trade for anything. It was also very difficult and totally different (duh) from anything I’ve ever done. I spent a lot of time looking forward to going home, but I never actually wanted to go home, at least not early, if that makes any sense.

It was a lonely experience at times, as cultural and language barriers meant that I didn’t forge too many really good connections with people, apart from Dr. Addae. My friends there were all great, but I can’t compare them to my friends here. It’s not that they were worse or better—just different. It is also harder to make lasting connections when you know you’re going to be living a million miles apart pretty soon.

That is the negative. The positives totally outweigh them. I learned as much in 9 months as I had in a lifetime, particularly about small business, adapting to a challenging environment, and myself. Those are things that will help me immeasurably down the road.

Look, I really can’t put all of this into words, or at least not onto paper. This year is something that I am still figuring out and that will continue for a while. It comes out better in conversation so you’ll all just have to call me if you’re interested. Sorry.

I’ve got a job lined up with the Mississauga News in Toronto doing sales work. I want to learn how to sell properly, as I believe this is a skill essential to success in business. I’ll probably move to Toronto in early July. As for Tony’s Adventures in Ghana, I’m not too sure what to do with it. Paul asked me to keep it going because “books are really long” but I don’t know if I want to keep doing it. I won’t delete it but there is the chance that it will be yet another piece of roadkill on the information superhighway.

Thank you all for reading this, thank you all for your emails, thank you all for everything. Knowing that I had so many great people back home really helped in some of the tougher times. Thank you Dr. Addae for being such a great host and boss. And finally, thank you Ghana. I know I’ll make it back at some point.

But for now, I’m going to enjoy the World Cup. Forza Italia (and Ghana Black Stars)!