be the change

on my backpack that says this. a lady asked me about it on the train and i spread some of my be the change love! i got it at me to we style my internship/workstudy place of fun. so now i’m wearing even more organic fabrics than before…almost my whole wardrobe is second hand or organic! there’s the occasional new piece but i really try to keep that to a minimum.

Hey everyone!

Well, I arrived back home on Thursday around 9pm. After two days of travelling (and three hours of sleep in there somewhere) I am glad to be home.

My trip was an absolute whirlwind, I can’t even begin to describe a lot of what went on. However, I will tell you that my wonderful group of 26 (3 boys and 23 girls! holy cow) worked on 4 different schools (one school being one classroom, about 5×7m), doing everything from mixing concrete and mortar to laying bricks to digging the trench for the foundation.

We lived in a mobile camp in a small community called Salabwek. It’s in the Maasai Mara (Southwest part of Kenya) , and it took us about 8 or 9 hours to drive there from Nairobi. The camp itself was much more well-equipped than I expected, we had outhouses, camp showers, a mess tent, 4 beds per tent and a generator that provided power at night (it started to get dark around 6:30 pm) until about 9:30. We spent most of our days school-building, playing with the kids and exploring the community. However, we did go to the market once on a Saturday to see what that was like (busy busy busy!) and we went on a really cool safari and got lots of animal pictures. I fell asleep every night to the sound of crickets and frogs and woke up to sheep, goats, cows and the rooster that lived in our camp (which liked to crow around 2am everyone morning).

Most importantly, I must thank each and every one of you for supporting me. The experience I had was beyond amazing and a real eye-opener. It’s definitely one thing to learn about poverty, development and all the things that go along with those subjects in theory and to see it first hand. To see every single one of those schoolkids with yellow eyes from malnutrition and many with runny noses and dirty, grubby hands was absolutely heartbreaking, but at the same time they are all so excited to see and play with you and to learn that you can’t help but be filled with hope. I am so happy to have been able to help with my own two hands to bring education to those kids, and I thank each and every one of you wholeheartedly for helping me get there.

Like I said, I can’t even begin to describe everything, I am still processing much of my trip. However, I’ve made a short slide show which you can find at http://picasaweb.google.com/samantha.rice/Kenya/photo#s5091868643203552786. I’ve started to work on a couple of presentations about my trip and empowering youth to “be the change they wish to see in the world,” so if you go to MDHS you’ll probably hear more about my trip in and around September and October. However, I encourage questions if you have them! Please, please drop me a line if you want to know more because I am positive that some of you will not be satisfied with this basic recount of my trip.

I will end off with a giant thank you to all of you, and a reminder that you can “be the change” without doing something quite as large as I did (by the same token, I totally encourage all of you to go on a trip like mine). I’ve brought back small habits with me, like taking staggered showers and using my nalgene water bottle instead of buying bottled water, which are small acts with big results if everyone pitches in.

“If any of you happens to see an injustice, you are no longer a spectator, you are a participant. And you have an obligation to do something.” – June Callwood, journalist, activist and author (and Canadian too!)

Peace, love and open doors,

Sam

Lead by example.

Open up; build bridges, not walls.

Trust.

Be positive, be caring, be enthusiastic.

Share in love, light and laughter.

Be the change.