Back From Ullo: Joe Kim

Joe Kim is a sophomore in industrial engineering, as well as one of our 2 vice presidents of engineering. In our clubs he works with Project DoC. While he was in Ullo, he was on of the Health and Safety officers, and he also worked on the clinic assessment. This means he held a lot of meetings, visited health centers in Ullo, and visited and assessed sites. Meeting all the people in Ullo, specifically the kids, was Joe’s favorite part of the trip. He said talking to the kids was how he learned the most about Ullo, and that playing games with them was always super fun. His least favorite part of the trip was a dish called tuo zaafi. It’s an odd food with a thick goopy texture that is eaten with goat and okra. The mixture of textures was not appealing to Joe. Joe was expecting Ghana to be like a different world, with them sleeping on the ground with no blankets, hot nights with mosquitos everywhere, mediocre food, and other things along similar lines. Luckily, that wasn’t the experience at all. They slept on beds during cool nights, there were next to no mosquitos, the food was almost all amazing, and they had electricity and water, just not running water. If given the chance, Joe would love to return to Ullo. Something Joe took away from this trip is how well some things work out. For those who don’t know, Joe almost wasn’t able to go on the trip because of an issue on his passport. But due to the series of events that followed, he was able to meet up with the travel team, and he was able to go on the trip. Going from thinking he would be stuck in the States for break to being able to go to Ullo and help the people of the community was an amazing experience for Joe, and an experience I’m sure both him and the community in Ullo is grateful for.