The possible consequences of an office sweepstake (are that you end up living there a bit)

I’m sure you’re familiar with the process. Some major football competition comes around and someone in the office (who is typically disinterested in football for the rest of the year) whips out a little bowl with lots of tiny folded pieces of paper, asks you for £2, and offers you the chance to win big. Well, not that big, but normally enough to cover a round at the pub.

What’s the harm? Worst case you spend £2 engaging yourself in the action. You support another team, you have a small vested interest in some of the games that you wouldn’t have noticed, and you can join in the chat around the water-cooler. (Three things that actually happen at water-coolers: 1. getting a glass of water, 2. waiting behind the person getting the glass of wishing you’d timed your trip better. 3. No chats).

Well my friend, if that is all that can happen, play the sweepstake, play away. But beware.

In 2006 I was working in an office as a summer temp between my first and second year of University. If you have a memory, or are capable of doing maths, you will know there was a World Cup in that year. It was held in Germany in fact. Good stuff.

I wanted to have something to chat about with the predominantly male team. Partly because it makes the days go faster, partly because the work was a bit dull and entirely because I thought one of them was very cute. So, innocently, I paid my £2 and put my hand in the hat.

People talk about incidental, seemingly small decisions, noting how they can affect your life. “If you’d taken the stairs rather than the lift you would have bumped into John and he would have invited you to a party where you met your future husband.” That sort of thing. But it’s often hard to locate those exact moments.

For me, in this instance, it is not. That moment when I put my hand in that envelope, and closed my fingers around a small scrap of paper changed my life. I like the random element to it to. Like in some way I was electing to leave my future to chance. But I say this with the poetic notions of hindsight, at the time I was probably just trying not to pick Iran.

The paper proclaimed that I would be supporting ‘Ghana’. I think this was probably pre-sporcle, and my knowledge of exactly where everything is in the world was incomplete, but I had a rough idea that this was a country in West Africa.

Over the course of the world cup I was actually fired from the temp job (that’s another tale for another time). However, my keen sense of loyalty kept me supporting the Ghanaian national team. I was enthused by their story and the passion of their fans. This was their first World Cup, an ordinary African team with no hopes of winning, just happy to be playing football. I found it refreshing. Every goal was a bonus, every win an inspiration.

I started to ‘we’ like a proper fan. ‘We scored’, ‘we have to play Brazil’, ‘we have some strong young players’. I didn’t play any part in the scoring, or the preparation to play Brazil, obviously, but that’s the strange linguistic convention sporting fans engage in. It’s very odd when you think about it. You wouldn’t hear a Coldplay fan saying ‘we sold out Wembley’ or a Harry Potter fan saying ‘we’re opening a Theme Park’. With sports you’re somehow involved though.

Sharing in the glory of my adopted team, I was pleased we qualified from the group stages. And my behaviour had been noted by a close group of friends who duly and appropriately ripped it out of me for talking about Ghana as a ‘we’. ‘You’re not Ghanaian Helen!’

The joke stuck around longer than the Ghanaians, and even the World Cup, and Ghana was on my radar. On my birthday a friend bought me a travel guide to Ghana, and a Ghanaian flag.

I have that ‘I want to go to there’ disease where knowing about a country isn’t enough. I’d say it isn’t anything in fact. I don’t want to read too much about it or look at pretty pictures. I don’t want to watch a documentary where someone else gets to explore it. I want to go to there. I want to see it around me, and notice what I notice, and think what I think.*

Put two and two together. I like going places, Ghana is on my radar. I like going places, Ghana is on my radar. I like going places… I went to Ghana.

I selected a volunteering project for the summer of 2007. Staying in “Kumasi, no, wait, Accra… hmmm, no, you’ll be in Kumasi. Ah, actually, Koforidua” with a “young family… no, a big family… no, a small family” I helped in an orphanage and got used to how to make infirm plans, African style.

I came to ask myself whether this was a volunteering agency, or a dating service. I was 23 and my fellow traveller was 19. She was placed in a house with many children, including a 20 year old son. My family consisted solely of Emilia, the mother, and Mark, the 23 year old son.

Mark and I dated for a year and half. I visited Ghana three times, staying for about two and a half months the last time I went. I can’t say the relationship was all good, or all bad. It was what it was, a relationship that didn’t work out. But it’s an experience I’m glad I had. In some ways it probably ticked the boxes of all the clichés of a white girl dating an African, and in some ways it was no different from other relationships I’ve had with people in this country.

Ghana itself is an interesting place. Sometimes I hated the heat, especially at night when I stuck to the sheets. The mosquitoes weren’t very friendly, or were too friendly depending on how you see it, and they gave me some malaria, which is unpleasant. I spent my days dreaming of cheeses, there seem to be no animals which produce milk. It’s certainly not used in any Ghanaian cuisine or found in any Ghanaian shops, and the prevalence of chilli didn’t agree with my digestive tract.

On the other hand the country is beautiful. In terms of the colours you see in the cities, the landscapes, the simple architecture in the North, the sprawling greenery and National Parks, the elephants in lakes, the tumbling waterfalls. In terms of the people who wave at you as you pass and ask you how your day is going, while respectfully keeping out of your business, it was never a place where I felt hassled. In terms of the relaxed atmosphere, of ‘African time’, of lazy days in the sun.

It was a whole different world, and I can say one thing for certain, I don’t think I ever would have been in that world if it wasn’t for that tiny folded piece of paper.

So you don’t know where that hand in a hat will lead you.

That said, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re not completely insane, and that in fact it won’t lead you anywhere but a world where you have £2 less to your name. As for me, I'm safe. For Euro 2012 I delved into my destiny and picked out 'England'.

*I’d like to temper that paragraph with a massive ‘within reason’. And obviously wouldn’t go somewhere without knowing a lot about it. I’m mainly not an idiot. Although this post suggests otherwise.