Elie Mukuna, Honours Bachelor of Social Sciences in International Development and Globalization, 4th year
Internship country: Ghana
Canadian NGO: AFS
Local NGO: McKingtorch Africa
Being in Ghana so far has been one of the most interesting experiences of my life. At the moment I landed at Kotoka International Airport in Accra, it took me a couple of minutes to realize that I had finally made it to Ghana. So far, the experience has been like a rollercoaster, with many ups and downs. Still, it has taught me how much resilience and patience I have, especially when navigating cultural differences in a range of contexts. If you have ever been in Ghana or another African country, you will probably know how much slower things can be. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, it requires a period of adaptation.
Every single country works differently, and as someone who aspires to work in international development, international affairs, and diplomacy, learning how to adapt to cultural differences is a major asset. Entering this experience with an open mind helped me navigate my new life in Ghana. At first, everything felt new and exciting. Although I did not experience much culture shock, having grown up in Pretoria (South Africa) and Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of the Congo), Ghana actually felt a bit like home. We have a lot in common, especially when it comes to food. The ingredients are the same, but the cooking method is different. Just as Ghana and Congo share the same raw ingredients (plantains, palm
oil, groundnuts, etc.) but produce entirely different dishes through different cooking methods, many countries can share the same formal structures (e.g., constitutions, parliaments, central banks, courts, etc.) yet produce fundamentally different outcomes based on how those structures are operated, interpreted, and embedded in local culture.
This is why arriving with a fixed mental blueprint of how things ‘should’ work is one of the greatest obstacles in international work. It is a common assumption among many practitioners in the field that transplanting knowledge, methodologies, and institutions from one country to another will produce similar results. For example, the “Washington Consensus” approach in the 1980s and 90s pushed the same economic “ingredients” (privatization, deregulation, free markets) onto vastly different countries, often with mixed or poor results, precisely because the local “cooking methods” (political culture, social trust, historical context, governance norms) were entirely different. As no good dish is ever rushed, navigating cultural differences requires patience: the willingness to sit in confusion, to resist the urge to default to what is familiar, and to trust that understanding will come with time. Patience is an essential virtue not only in international development work but in life. Understanding a new cooking method does not happen overnight. The ingredients may look familiar, but if you are not open-minded enough to learn the cooking method, you will always be surprised by what ends up on your plate.
One moment that truly tested my open-mindedness, adaptability, and patience was at work. We had a meeting scheduled for 3:00 pm, and it started at 4:30 pm. At first, I felt genuinely frustrated. I value punctuality and respect other people's time, so sitting and waiting an hour and a half with no explanation was difficult to accept. But then something shifted. I looked around and noticed that nobody seemed bothered. There was no tension in the room, no hushed complaints, just a quiet, unhurried acceptance that things would begin when they began. That was my introduction to the “Ghanian time,” and it was a humbling one. I realized that my frustration was not with something that was going wrong; it was a reaction to something different, and there is a significant difference between the two. Once I had accepted that I could not change the culture around me, only my response to it, the frustration dissolved. That afternoon taught me more about adaptability than any course or textbook could.