THE ACCOUNTANT'S JOURNEY

When I was in primary school (Bereton Montessori School) we had a career day and we all gathered in the school hall.

Our school hall was big or at least it was in my eyes as a kid, we had a high platform as the stage with a back room where I remember standing a couple of times right before we are called upon to dance or debate or present a song.

On the walls of the hall hung these beautiful paintings, some abstract and some more detailed or realistic (don't know the art term).

One painting I remember vividly was that of a boy carrying two baskets on either side held by a pole he hung over his shoulder. He had his back to the viewer as he climbed up a winding road with Bamboo trees on either side.

I loved that painting, it reminded me of our trips to the village every Christmas at the time. The winding dusty roads of the East with people shouting greetings and the excitement to see cousins and people you hadn't seen in a year. The wide assortment of playgrounds that spanned from my father's compound to the next to the road, to a central point on the road that we call Ama where family compounds can be seen on the left and the right and Infront and behind...

The boy in the painting had on shorts and I remember wanting to go into that painting and enjoy the nature it portrayed, to be away from my neatly ironed pinafore and pinned up hanky. That painting got me through many boring assemblies.

On one of such occasions I snapped out of my day dream to listen to Mr Raji.

Mr Raji was a Ghanaian teacher or so I thought, we had a couple of them in the school back then.

He was asking what we wanted to be when we grew up.

At the time, my immediate elder sister had said on several occasions that she wanted to be an astronaut. A lofty idea for a young Igbo girl who hadn't seen the insides of a plane yet.

So I said well we can't have two astronauts in the family can we?

And I started thinking for the first time about what I wanted to be.

I wanted to create beautiful paintings like the one with the boy and I had a talent for art as deduced from my scribblings and art projects of paper-mache and colouring books.

But Painting didn't seem like a real career to me and I wanted to sound smart so I said Banker when he got to me.

And I puffed out my chest in confidence as he nodded.

Fast forward to SS1 in secondary school

We had another career day, this time a beautiful well dressed lady came to talk about her career as an accountant and the many opportunities that presents itself in the job market for an accountant.

Well there and then I decided I wanted to be an accountant.

But nothing prepared me for the vastness of the accounting profession and how much value an accountant brings to the workspace.

Though the journey to this profession was winding like the road in that painting it has led me into a beautiful space, an Ama which I'm sure many of us in similar professions have experienced.

With this long introduction in submit to you the @accountant's connect page , a community of accountants of different forms in different levels in different industries.

Where we will stay updated with industry trends, the similarities or peculiarities of accounting in our various industries and share our ideas and experiences working as Accountants.