By Jose Carrillo

For the trip, we were required to purchase our plane tickets very early into the spring term. So, like a naïve traveler, I assumed that there weren’t going to be any drastic flight delays on route to Ghana and pushed the summer departure date of June 23 to the back of my mind. Flash-forward to the day I’m supposed to leave and there are already changes. Rather than a direct flight from London to Accra, I’m now being re-routed to Morocco. This led to me being stuck in Morocco for a night. Changes in flight plans are already stressful in the U.S., but being in a foreign country and not knowing the language definitely didn’t make it any easier to handle. However, there were still positives that came from this. First, transport and a hotel room were accommodated by the airline. Second, It was a great experience to ease into the language and cultural differences. The interactions I saw mostly occurred in the airport or other areas of transport (vans, taxis, e.t.c) and involved people who switched between English,
Arabic, and French (to name a few). While this may seem normal, it was one of my favorite things to witness. There was a sort of elegance to how people spoke to one another and a respect for their individual languages. Airport signs had more than one translation, servers and attendants spoke more than one language proficiently, and
almost everyone was body expressed more than their words at times. These observations began in airports but continued to the airplanes, but were even more noticeable because I was sitting in even closer proximity. A very notable observation and sensation I felt during this revolved around safety and comfortability. I undoubtedly
think this sensation came from the fact that people I was surrounded by resembled myself, and it was truly a wonderful (yet hectic) journey to Accra, Ghana.