IN sport, he captained his basketball squad to a string of championships, travelling the world with Edinburgh Kings and making the national team. Away from the court, Kevin Anderson was a prize-winning design student, congratulated on his work by the Queen, and he found businesses lining up to offer him work.
So when the credit crunch bit and Kevin suddenly found himself staring at redundancy, it was the first shocking blip on a flawless CV.
Suddenly thrust from a monthly salary to the nightmare of unemployment, he headed for his local Job Centre to fi
nd a dearth of jobs. Then, just as he came to terms with having to rent out his flat and move back with his parents, jobless Kevin discovered his bank expected him to pay it thousands of pounds just to switch his mortgage. It was, he recalls, the final straw...
Today, he is thousands of miles away, having just touched down in Ghana, where he is now preparing to spend a humble Christmas in a tiny village. It's the start of a three-month attachment to a place where the words "credit crunch", "interest rates" and "you're redundant" are alien phrases.
This Christmas and New Year, while the rest of us gorge to excess and then worry about paying for it, Kevin will sit with a Ghanaian family in their simple hut, three hours' drive away from the nearest internet connection, dining on whatever his hosts have been able to harvest from the parched grounds around their village.
And it is, he says, pretty much all thanks to the credit crunch.
Kevin explains: "The day I was made redundant, I went to the Job Centre at St Andrew Square wearing my suit and tie and said I was looking for a job.
"It was such a grim place. There weren't any jobs that matched what I do, but I'd have rather worked as a cleaner making £60 a week than just getting handed it for doing nothing. I'm not the kind of person who can sit around all day complaining."
He found manual work with a stonemason friend while he considered his future. "I was getting really fed up listening to everyone talking about the credit crunch. One minute it was all about losing jobs and having no money, then it was all about trying to get people to spend more. It seemed wrong."
Kevin had already planned to spend two weeks during his annual leave volunteering abroad. But redundancy and the depressing economic news made him dramatically rethink his options.
"I figured that these things don't happen for no reason and, besides, there were people who were much worse off than I was. It seemed like a good time to do something a lot of people would like to do, but never get the opportunity.
"So in a way I was both lucky and unlucky to be made redundant."
Kevin will spend the next three months in an area four days' drive from Ghana's capital Accra, teaching impoverished youngsters – who have never seen a Nintendo DS or a Wii – English, maths and, of course, how to play basketball.
The 27-year-old, of Lilyhill Terrace, Meadowbank, arranged to join international volunteer organisation United Playground on one of its Ghana projects.
He left yesterday bound for Accra, where a flying taxi is scheduled to take him to the country's eastern region and the village of Konko Zone, a clutch of basic huts with a bustling school at its heart with 15 classrooms and 20 children in each class.
Among his luggage is a selection of basketball strips from his old club, Edinburgh Kings, football strips, sports equipment and stationery donated by a string of contacts or which he bought himself.
"I'm really not sure what to expect," says Kevin. "I've only seen one picture of what looks like a fairly basic hut. I know they have a soccer pitch but no basketball court, so we're going to have to improvise with a ring so we can actually have a game!
"There's no electricity and no running water, and I've been told to expect temperatures in the 30s – so it's hardly going to be a traditional Christmas."
Back home in Edinburgh, his parents Keith and Margaret will be joined for Christmas Day by Kevin's brother, Keith, a graphic artist in London, and sister Kelly, a teacher in Cork. While they'll sit down to a feast of Chinese and Indian takeaway food, Kevin can't imagine what he'll be doing.
"I think people in Ghana do celebrate Christmas, but I don't even know if they exchange any kind of gifts.
"I suspect the day – and New Year – will just come and go like any other day."
What's certain is that he will be the only 'westerner' in the village. After a month he will move to another village – this one with running water – where he will work between two orphanages where many of the children have lost parents to Aids.
It's a long way from his office job with Comprehensive Design Architects, where he worked in a specialised role creating 3D graphics.
And it couldn't be further from the maelstrom of the basketball court, where he captained Edinburgh Kings to a Scottish League and Cup double in both of the past two seasons, as well as winning honours with Scotland.
Kevin had already decided in summer to quit basketball when he lost his job.
"Everything changed," he says. "In basketball, I'd done pretty much what I wanted. I'd been in teams that had won the Scotland and European championships and played with Scotland, but basketball had been my life since I was ten and I needed a change."
But the change he hadn't expected was losing his job. "I didn't have the money to keep paying my mortgage, so I arranged to move back to my parents' house and sell my flat," he recalls. "But with the state of the property market, I'd have made a £15,000 loss.
"I told the bank that I was going to rent the flat out because I was redundant – and I couldn't believe it when they said to change the mortgage would cost either £1000 now plus a much higher interest rate or over £5000 spread over a fixed term. Then I had to pay a letting agent – by the time I did all that, there wasn't much of the redundancy money left."
Money worries are the last thing he expects to find when he goes back to basics with the villagers of Konko Zone.
"There is the thought at the back of my mind: what will I do when I get home? Where will I get money? On the other hand, I think I'm going to come back with a completely different perspective on life," he adds.
"For a start, I'm certainly going to come back here a lot less bothered about the credit crunch . . ."
For details of United Playground projects, go to www.unitedplayground.com
LIFE'S HARDLY A BALLSO you think the credit crunch here is bad? While Britons prepare to spend a massive £10.6 billion on their festive celebrations – a trimmed down figure from their 2007 splurge – Christmas in Ghana might be a little more restrained.
While it has gold, timber and cocoa for export, it still has more than 31 per cent of its population living in poverty and an inflation rate of 26 per cent.
Unemployment runs at around 20 per cent.
The country has struggled as a result of political corruption and mismanagement. From 1966 to 1992, it laboured under military dictatorship.
In 1994-95, a series of dispute over land erupted in the north, sparking ethnic violence and resulting in the deaths of 1000 people.
The economic future looks brighter, however. Major offshore oil reserves were found last year, giving hope for a major economic boost.
The full article contains 1323 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
