It’s hard to believe but it’s now 20 years since I worked and lived in Pakistan, and it was all because I wanted to be an aid worker in Africa.

In Britain it’s common for high school students to take a GAP year: most often they work for 3 months to raise money, do 3 months or so of volunteer work in a developing country and then travel around the world for the remaining 6 months before heading off to university.

I was determined to go hardcore - I wanted to do 12 months of aid work believing only by doing so could I truly understand a culture and I wanted to do it in Africa. At the time I was swept up in the whole “Free Mandela” fervor and nothing excited me more than the idea of working in a township like Soweto or say an impoverished village in Namibia.

There was only one outfit that really offered such a chance - Project Trust - a charity based on this distant, foggy island off the west coast of Scotland - which sent volunteers all over the world for 12 months. It was a British version of the Peace Corps. I applied, then journeyed there for a 4 day selection course whose most notable moment was digging peat for hours in the pouring rain, and then I filled out my country preferences - in order they were South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe …

A few weeks later I got a letter from them (yes these were still the days of snail mail). “Congratulations,” it said, “you have been chosen to be one of Project Trust’s select volunteers in … Peshawar, Pakistan.”

When I read those final two words I think I almost vomited. Not because I had an inherent dislike of Pakistan, (in factI knew almost nothing about it), but because I had set my heart so fully on Africa. At first, I thought it must be a mistake but no, when I called Project Trust, they told me that was indeed where I was going. I protested - the whole point of applying to Project Trust was to go to Africa - and if I couldn’t go there then I wouldn’t go at all. They were unmoved, if that was my decision so be it.

But here was the problem. For the last couple of months, I’d told every friend, teacher and relative I came into contact with that I was going to be a volunteer in my GAP year and, in I suspect a somewhat smug tone, that I was going to do a full year’s work - not some ‘vanity’ version of only 3 months. How could I pull out now? Everyone would think I was a fraud.

So with deep reluctance I agreed to go … it turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made.