Maria Eugenia Vasconez
Trent-in-Ghana Participant 2007-2008
I am from Quito, Ecuador, my name is Maria Eugenia and I was part of the IDS 2004 -2008 cohort. I did a double major on Cultural Anthropology and IDS; in my third year I was part of the Trent in Ghana program – the opportunity to go on this study abroad program was one of the reasons why I decided to study IDS at Trent.
As an international student I found the IDS major to be one of the most inclusive and open, my best friends were Canadian as well as other international students. Many international students take IDS courses and I found this very enriching for the variety of opinions and points of view were shared during seminars. From the courses themselves, I appreciate that IDS encourages students to be critical, to question what seems to be unquestionable, to explore the impossible possibilities. If you are sure about something or believe things to be black and white, IDS will enlarge your horizon. It is good to be sure about certain things in life but “development” definitely needs to be questioned. IDS taught me some certainties as well: poverty is relative, power is a relationship, family (as we conceive it) is a social creation that varies with time and place, and “development” entails freedom, peace and justice.
My third year at Trent in Ghana was an eye opener to other ways of conceiving and living life, to a different development process, culture, family organization etc.; everything was new to me and this is what taught me so much. I had the opportunity to live with a host family in Accra, attend class at Legon University, and work in Kasuliyili (northern Ghana) for my placement; these experiences helped me understand Ghanaians and their country, erasing stereotypes or generalizations that one may have of the “other”. I experienced social relations based on respect towards parents, elders and adults in general and it made me ashamed to remember how I treated my mother during my teenage years.
Have you ever questioned the existence of retirement homes? Well, for Ghanaians it is inconceivable to have them; they believe their duty as children is to care for one´s parents when they can no longer care for themselves. Once a woman said to me: “don´t you think it is weird how they say that countries like the USA are “developed” and they have gun shootings at their schools and cinemas, children talking back to their parents or worst, retirement homes where elders are not even being visited…at least we don´t have those things here in Ghana.” Helping me rethink thoughts, actions and opinions is what IDS and Trent in Ghana did for me and I am grateful for it.
After graduating from Trent I was able to travel in Canada - I went all the way to the Arctic with a job and out west on a road trip afterwards! Eventually I returned to Ecuador in October 2008, just to travel some more, I went to Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia; having done that I felt ready to get settled so I found a job working with refugees, it was a one year project carried on by the Ministry of International Affairs in Ecuador and the UNHCR, my duty was to interview migrants from Colombia in order to give them the refugee status (there was a high commission for this last step). When the contract finished I found another job with an Iberoamerican NGO for Cultural and Natural Heritage; I was a project and investigations assistant for a year and after this my son Ezequiel was born. At the moment I live in Quito and teach French in a university; this gives me enough time to be with my family.