BootsnAll Travel Community

Hey everyone,

This is my first post, but from everything I've read, this seems to be a really useful and encouraging message board. So I should probably give a little bit of an introduction... My name is Ben and I'm 19 years old from New Brunswick, Canada. After graduating high school in June 2006, I went on a 6 month volunteer exchange program called Canada World Youth. It was an amazing program and I'd highly recommend it for any Canadian youth 17-24! Canada World Youth works in 26 different countries around the globe, but in my case I ended up in Benin, West Africa. So my group (which composed of 9 Canadians and 9 Beninese) spent 3 months in Canada and 3 months in Benin. This was my first time really traveling (besides Canada, the USA, and a cruise I went on with my family a few years back). I fell in love with learning about new ways of living, discovering different cultures, testing my own values, and gaining new perspectives.
So this fall I went away with a few friends and my sister to Ghana. We went with Global Crossroad and really had a terrible time. We stayed only 1 week in our volunteer project which was supposed to be 8 weeks! The next week we toured the coast of Ghana, and then my friends left back to Canada. My sister and I continued on to Benin and did a 2 week loop, visiting friends, and hitting some "tourist" attractions.
So now I'm home, and planning another African experience. I'm wondering if any of you have ever participated with, or heard anything about Operation Crossroads Africa? The program takes a group of North Americans to a country in Africa to work on a development project for 6 weeks. On the 7th week the group tours the country and then heads home. It runs every summer (June-August). Sounds pretty cool. I'm ready to apply but would like to hear any feedback you guys have on the idea.
Any information you have on touring/living in/working in Malawi, Namibia, or Rwanda would be much appreciated as well. I'm still pretty torn about where exactly I'd like to visit this time around. Experience something besides West Africa though...
Thanks for your time,
Any help at all would be great!

Take care
Ben