My First Experience Abroad: Attending a Hackathon in Singapore | Kouamou Djimi Christy Ange Ines

I first received the mail from the organizer of the hackathon, who is a gap year student and works at Hack Club. At that time, I was still anxiously working on my university applications. It was very difficult, so I decided to put the hackathon aside and work on it after finishing my RD applications. The requirement to be eligible for the hackathon was 70 hours of work. I had never made a game before, and I had never been interested in game development. I didn’t even study Computer Science in school because I was not interested in it.

I started working on the game around January 10th, 2025, and the deadline was January 27th. At first, I spent only about three hours per day on the game because I was busy with other tasks and applications. Around January 15th, after finishing my RD applications, I started spending more than 12 hours per day on the game. It was a tough time. I had to watch tutorials, try different things, and figure out how to make the game. I also asked one of my friends at the Open Dreams Center, Arthur, who is very good at game development, for help. We met at the center and sometimes at my house to work on the game. Four days before the deadline, I still had about 35 hours of work left, but I worked very hard and managed to finish all the remaining hours. On January 26th, 2026, I submitted the game.

At 10 am on January 27th, I received my official invitation for the event. Later, around 2 p.m., I received the flight ticket email. The flight was scheduled early at 2:35 a.m., so I had to leave for the airport by 11 p.m. Everything felt like a dream. I printed my invitation, flight ticket, packed my stuff, and at 11 pm my father accompanied me to the airport

At the airport, I had a tough time with the police officers but finally made it past the control. My first flight was seven hours to Istanbul, followed by a five-hour layover, then an 11-hour flight to Singapore. It was exhausting, but I was very happy. At the Singapore airport, I had some trouble finding the organizers because the airport is very big. I had to use things like a sky train, which I had never heard of before😹

From the airport, we went to the hotel with other participants. Most participants had arrived earlier that day. The first night, I had a room alone. I stayed awake until 5:30 a.m., just admiring the place. I even went outside and walked on the road with my socks. Everything was extremely clean and safe. The next day, we received Singaporean dollars for a small activity, then returned to the hotel. Later, we went to the main event place. The venue looked like a big house, but it was actually in a hotel that had a swimming pool on the roof.

During the hackathon, we could work in teams or alone. I worked with a boy from India, and we successfully finished and submitted our game on the said date and time. The experience was very nice. I had never traveled abroad before, and I had never done game development before. I learned a lot. I met new people and made friends. There were participants from many countries and nationalities: America, China, India, Germany, Vietnam, Moldova, Egypt, and others. I was the only black African.

The event ended at 1 p.m. on 2nd February 2026, and we left for Cameroon the following day.

I learned that it is good to take action in life, even in a domain that you have never worked on before. If you take action, work hard, and try your best, you can achieve things that may seem impossible at first.

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