Summer Internship

Summer Internship

 During my summer I can say I had mixed emotions upon my whole internship. The highs were great but then the lows made me rethink my decision if I want to carry on or just give up. The internship changed my view on how we Americans think is a luxury life and what a luxury life in a foreign country is.

What did I like? 

When it comes to foreign countries, what is there not to like. The knowledge I gained from observing people all throughout my trip is priceless. From watching the little boy who was about seven years old selling fish to the eighty-nine year old woman selling soup from her kitchen, it was obvious to me that Nigeria is the land of opportunity whether the rest of the world believes it not. Another thing I enjoyed was how welcoming and loving the people are.  It made selling the cars both easy and sad at the same time. I wanted to get the work done fast but I didn’t want to leave when the job was finished.

 What I didn’t like?

The weather had a major impact on my internship experience. During the time I was in Nigeria, it was the rainy season. Twelve months out of the year, it rains for a period of three months straight and I happened to be there at the same time the rains started.

Another thing that I didn’t like was the language barrier I experienced while working with some of the people. I need to work on learning more languages so I can not only interact with a greater variety of people, but to more effectively and efficiently make the sales. Also, the traffic in the city is horrible and made it very hard to be able to conduct business on some occasions. It was hard because you are only able to do one thing a day and the commute time was often very long.

The communication from Minnesota and Nigeria was another complication. I say this because the time zones are very different as Nigeria is six hours ahead of Minnesota which made keeping in contact difficult. Talking to friends, family, and my work had to be done late at night, often around two in the morning.

Another thing that was bothersome to me was how much money I was spending. The cost of living in Nigeria is very expensive in most areas, and quite frankly pretty ridiculous if you ask me. Every day I had to buy food and gas for the generator, just for the power to work in my home. I felt like I was putting a full tank of gas in my car every day. I even had to pay to talk to my mother and family because in order to call to the United States, I had to buy a phone card. When I left Nigeria, I got a phone call saying a local food stand missed me because he gained over three thousand-two hundred naira a day from me (which is approximately twenty U.S. dollars).