Almost one year to the day that I first landed at Kotoka, Airport in Accra, in 2018, I was back in Ghana on another scorching January day in 2019. The previous year, I was an international student embarking on what would turn out to be a transformative study-abroad experience. But that day, I was a U.S. Peace Corps (PC) trainee.

There were a lot of preparations to be made before leaving the States for 27 months, so a good night’s sleep evaded me throughout the days leading up to my departure. After multiple sleepless nights, several flight delays to staging* in DC, a night out with my new colleagues, and an 8-hour flight to Ghana, I was on “E” when we landed in Accra.

As elated as I was to be back in Ghana, I was slightly more excited by the thought that I was mere minutes away from crashing for the rest of the day. While I was daydreaming about whatever bed I would hoard for the next 16 hours, the program staff wasted no time preparing for the first day of orientation. We probably had just about an hour of downtime before we had to reconvened in a conference hall for an onboarding session that lasted several hours.

I waged a valiant struggle with the weight on my eyelids for at least 30 minutes, but sleep emerged victorious.

Perhaps it was my snoring that alerted the staff that I was no longer following the presentations. But I remember waking up to the medical officer saying something to the effect of: “Did you have a good sleep?”

I would love to tell you all that it was only up from there, but I’ve already written and shared a piece that proved otherwise. If you’ve read “Who’s a Peace Corps Volunteer Anyways?”, you already know about the grueling, day-long sessions at pre-service training and some of my less desirable experiences as a black woman volunteer. But these experiences marked just a few of the challenges my colleagues and I faced during our stint as Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs).

My cohort dealt with some of the worst situations volunteers can experience—ranging from slightly inconvenient to downright traumatizing.

The PC train started to go off track just a few weeks into service. Shortly after settling into our designated communities, several volunteers were evacuated from their sites and reassigned due to civil conflict near their service regions. This was a major setback to many of my colleagues, who had already spent several weeks building rapport with the members of their communities.

In June 2019, we were a day or two away from our In-Service Training (IST) when we received an emergency alert to stay put. IST is a week-long training that recalls all volunteers from their communities after their first 90 days of service. It turned out that around the same time, dozens of volunteers were due to travel to this training, two Canadian volunteers (unrelated to the Peace Corps) were kidnapped in Kumasi—a city in the Ashanti region of Ghana.

This was a shocking turn of events as kidnappings are relatively rare in Ghana. If I recall correctly, this sudden rescheduling ultimately pushed back our mid-year conference. Thankfully though, the kidnapping victims were released a week after their abduction, and the perpetrators were apprehended.

In early September, I learned of the passing of my grandmother. This was an overwhelming loss that brought up a lot of complicated feelings for me. I was grief-stricken. But just a few weeks later, in October, the entire Peace Corps community in Ghana was mourning the untimely loss of a dearly loved colleague due to a devastating accident. She was just a couple weeks shy of closing out her service.

A few days before Christmas, I had malaria—you can read all about it in “Malaria Before Christmas.”

Out of respect for the community I served, I will not go into specific details of the obstacles I faced during my time there. I will say this: it was an election year, and some good efforts were thwarted for political points. Nevertheless, it was an honor to work alongside the good people of that community.

The new year felt promising. I was ready for a new chapter. But by February 2020, I was getting my nose pierced to mark my quarter-life crisis.

Of course, we all know what happened in March 2020. Peace Corps Volunteers worldwide were evacuated from their host countries and sent home due to the COVID-19 pandemic. My cohort didn’t even make it to the mid-service conference. We had been in the country for over a year, but some new trainees and volunteers had only been there for a few weeks/months.

Knowing all the preparations that go into committing to Peace Corps service, I was especially saddened for the new cohorts who had their Peace Corps dreams dashed before they had barely begun.

I will always treasure my time as a volunteer. It was a privilege that enriched my life more than I could have possibly imagined. Still, as shocked and disappointed as I was by how it ended, I must admit: a small part of me was relieved. If there was ever an optimal time to be unexpectedly evacuated from service, it really was March 2020. By that point, I had experienced so many professional setbacks and personal heartbreaks that my morale was severely compromised.

To add to the emotional toll, I was already longing to meet my baby sister, who had been born in June of the previous year.

For a while, when I reflected on the months leading up to the evacuation, I wasn’t always convinced I would have completed my service otherwise. Nowadays, I can’t help but think it ended right on time.