Year of travel

I spent the morning reading and preparing a paper for China.

Than I checked my e-mail and read that I have been invited to spend 8 weeks in Ghana this summer. I've been staring at the wall for the last few minutes in a mixture of excitement and anxiety. I'm feeling a little flooded.

This opportunity is something that I have been thinking about since my first year of graduate school. I heard Dr. Karen Carr give a lecture on her work as a psychologist for missionaries and humanitarian aid workers living in West Africa. She and her team specialize in crisis response and are on call to travel of any of seventeen West African countries. Traumatic events such as evacuations, civil wars, kidnappings, carjackings, armed robbery, rape, theft, assaults, and severe medical illness are becoming an increasingly common experience for many workers in Africa. They also provide training seminars in interpersonal skills, consultation, and referrals.
For more info, go to www.mmct.org

Meeting Karen was exciting for me because she is an example of someone who practices an unconventional psychology. She does not work in an office, but goes directly to hurting people. She must adjust her psychological training to fit an non-Western context since she works with people from all over the world.

I love the idea of being an "emergency room" psychologist. The idea of meeting people where they are, in their moments of most acute need. This kind of work demands flexibility, energy, and courage to go into unknown situations.

The chance to do this in an international setting is amazing, both for my development as an international psychologist, and for me personally. I am overjoyed at the thought of returning to Ghana and once again feeling the huge African sun on my head, and walking with red-dust covered feet.

Rob is planning to join me for as long as he can get away. It is up in the air, but that has been our plan from the beginning.

This trip is different in that it is the first trip for which I will have to raise money (the cost of the China trip is entirely covered by my school). It will cost about $6000 for me, plus the cost of Rob going. I am not sure when I am going to have time to raise money. I hope some of you out there is blog world will consider whether you are able to donate to the trip.