A Day in the Life of a Global Health Intern

The start to most days here in Ghana is exercise. Shelby and I will wake up usually around 6:30am and run for a half hour. This has proven helpful on many occasions to explore whatever area we are in. Culturally, people do not exercise. Especially women. Ghanaian lifestyle is already very active and it’s just not something you would see on the streets, so to have two white girls running around in the morning is a funny sight for lots of people.
The van comes by at 7:30 every morning to head to work (though this is Ghana so it’s usually late). We drive anywhere between 20 minutes and 2 hours to reach our outreach site. 9 times out of 10 we set up our clinic in a church of some type; whether it be Presbyterian, Catholic, or Pentecostal. Patients come, register, have their eyes tested for visual acuity, see the doctor, and then purchase either eye glasses or medicine or whatever the doctor recommend. As volunteers, our group takes over the registration, visual acuity, and eyeglass/medicine dispensing aspect of the clinic. Those in charge of registering also On average we see about 120 people, but that varies greatly on the community in which we are in. For example, one day we saw 16 people but another day we saw 230.
Clinic stations for Unite For Sight volunteers:
1. Registration

2. Visual Acuity

3. Dispensing

It depends on how many people show up at the outreaches to what time we end work. Sometimes well be back at the hotel at 3:00pm, others it won’t be until 8:00 or 9:00pm. No matter what time we end the first thing on our agenda is to find food. In Kumasi, there are street vendors all over and so we walk only 10 minutes down the road to “chop” (how Ghanaians say eat). We try to be as adventurous as possible (because youre only in Ghana once) and eat only traditional food. Mainly Shelby and I share a plate of fried rice (because its not spicy) and 2 pieces of fried chicken.
Fufu-- a traditional dish here

The rest of the day is spent exploring, finding fruit stand ladies to eat mangos with and chat. Or playing football with the kids that live on our street. We try to be inside by the time it’s dark to avoid anything sketchy. Not that it’s extremely unsafe, it’s just better to be safe than sorry. With the few of us in the hotel, we spend the nights playing cards and other games, washing laundry by hand (which takes forever), and talking.
It’s off to bed around 10:00pm and then the day begins anew the next morning. Everyday has a slight variations and new surprises. I wouldn’t trade any day here for anything/being anywhere else.


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