The quest to travel

I am a Ghanaian. I had been living in Ghana all my life. In my teen years, I developed a passion for travel. As a kid our parents would always have us embark us on a road trip to one part of the country or the other. I just loved sitting at the back seat ,chatting my little sister and parents because being on the road meant no plates to wash, no sweeping of the compound. Whenever we were travelling, my parents father would  buy anything I requested. All had to say was "Daddy I am hungry". He would then park the car at the nearest hawking food stop and  we would get anything we wanted.

Now growing up, I had always wondered what travelling and living abroad would be like. It didn't help matters that my high school mates who travelled abroad for Holidays always came back different, either their skin color had changed  , or their sense of dressing had changed, or they had forgotten how to speak the local dialect(In a matter of months), even their spoken English sounded different. In fact people treated you differently when you came back from abroad. I just wanted to know what  in abroad made people change that way, and I couldn't wait to experience for myself.
The passion longing to travel abroad got worse in my University days, as it seems anyone who was able to go had suddenly acquired a new social status. Every new semester started with gossip about who had gone to what country. In fact I know some girls who wouldn't date you if you did'nt  travel abroad for holidays.
I started telling my Dad that I wanted to travel, and we finally started making preparations for my Visa interview. In my heart I knew I was going to get the visa, and I was already planning how I would go shopping and take pictures to put on Facebook.
All my dreams were crashed when I was told "Sorry, we cannot issue you a visa at this time". I was so disappointed that I couldn't get to be a 'borgress'( female abroad returnee).Life went on anyway.
Thinking about all that from a different perspective, I can't understand why Africans have the quest to travel abroad. I know economic factors play a huge role as most people travell for greener pastures or so they say. However, my main focus is, why do we Africans(including me) see Abroad as some sort of mini heaven? Now having lived here for sometime, I have realized that be it America, England, South Africa or wherever, every place has its positive and negative sides. There are some things I used to enjoy living in Ghana that I can never have here, and in the same way there are some opportunities that comes with living here that I cant experience in Ghana. Wherever you are, embrace it, and know that there can never be another place like that