IC 2007 in Turkey (August/September 2007)

Finally my AIESEC dream came true! I took part on IC 2007 in Turkey as a delegate. I`ve been waiting to be able to attend this conference for 4 years – since I`ve joined AIESEC.
I struggled to collect all the money (loaaads of money – especially considering my African salary) and after loads of troubles with Ghanaians getting visas to Turkey, finally – almost in the middle of the conference, we left Ghana on our (longer than we thought) journey to Turkey.

Since we`ve traveled with Kenya Airways, we flew to Kenya first (hooray! Another African country in my passport – paid 15 dollars for Transit visas, Ghanaians had it for free..) and we stayed there for one day (later on I found out from our Kenyan CEEDer that the hotel was famous for the social workers doing their job there, ehm..). I would say that Kenyan nature looks much more like the one we know from Discovery Channel than the one in Ghana. The most surprising thing was, that in Kenya it was cold! Seriously! We were freezing most of the time. And Ghanaians were so much looking forward to see the giraffes for the first time in their lives.. Unfortunately we haven`t seen any. Oh and one more interesting thing: in that small part of the city I`ve been to, I have found 3 Bata shops (shoe shop originally from Czechoslovakia)– 1 of them directly in the hotel premises. Almost felt like hooome ;)

On the next day, we have arrived to the airport expecting to fly to Turkey. The problem occurred when we were told that we don`t fit into the plane, consequently received some dollars as a “Sorry” from the airways and were redirected to fly through Dubai (cool!) to Turkey, but which unfortunately meant also one extra day of delay from the conference..
Dubai was really interesting (well, I`d better say the airport and duty frees were really interesting..) and the Arabic language reminded me strongly on my time in Tunisia last year. Ultimately, we`ve finally arrived to Istanbul. Tired we rushed directly to the sessions in order not to miss any more of the conference.

The best about the whole congress I can summarize into two things: inspiration & friends (meeting old & new). It was really nice to get to know other Africans from our GN and of course meeting my Slovak friends again :) - who btw brought me loads of our home food, drinks and a package from my mum :).

Concerning the turkish organizing committee, my expectations were very low (because of the bad experience from the previous conference EuroLDS two years ago hosted by Turkey, too), yet this years` CC was unfortunately even worse. I know it`s unfair to say it like this – very generally, because some individuals in the team were really extraordinary, yet this is the fact. No more comments on this issue.

It was interesting to see all the GN boards, AI people and most of all, meeting the other MC TMs from all around the world..

I`m still getting used to represent totally different country and GN, after I`ve spent 4 years as @ Slovakia and CEE GN and now here I am – Ghanaian MC and member of Africa GN.

From the sessions the most powerful were the ones with alumni with all their memories and messages to current generation.

Generation of Achievers!