Entering the small village of San Benito, dust billows around our van crammed with volunteers, blowing into the windows and clouding the view. I had grown accustomed to the dirt, the heat, and the smells. All of these had become part of my journey, having left American luxuries far behind. My eyes grew round and not one of us in the van uttered a word as we slowly made our way through the village, over potholes, ruts and divots in the unpaved road. Village members slowly peered from windows and doors of their primitive, one room homes to see who had arrived. A woman stops sweeping her dirt floor to smile and wave. Children of all ages run towards the moving vehicle, laughing and yelling to our van as if we were long lost friends returning from an extended absence. We park and exit the van at a community center…

With a month left until college graduation, I had no idea what I was going to do after May. Like many of my peers, I could not see myself having a 9-to-5 job at this stage of my life. I wanted to travel before I got the dreaded desk job I had heard so much about. East Africa had been calling me since I started taking Swahili my freshman year at the University of Kansas. When I did not test out of a single Spanish class (after four years in high school), I decided to take Swahili, fulfilling my desire to take a less commonly taught language in college. I ended up loving my Swahili classes and studying it for five years, even minoring in it. I decided to go to Tanzania: it is one of the safer countries where Swahili is spoken. However, many of my online searches turned…

My body ached all over. Carrying twenty five kilo bags of gravel will do that to you. My clean clothes were brown and muddy. It was my first day as a volunteer with Madidi Travel’s rainforest reserve Serere. Five weeks of conservation work without electricity or hot water in the Bolivian Amazon was to follow. I was filled with both excitement and apprehension. Having never done prior conservation work, I may have been forgiven for having naively inaccurate preconceptions of what it entails. What I imagined drew largely from what I had seen on television, where selfless nature lovers cradled wounded animals and gently fed them milk from a little bottle, or staked out endangered animals to tranquilize, tag and later monitor via GPS tracking. Really heroic stuff. I now know that the other ninety percent of conservation work that was not often publicized was all hard labor and if…

I wake up early to the sounds of prayer drifting from the nearby Church and Mosque, the low chants and songs intermingle into a kind of religious harmony. I know that soon, the chorus of birds will start singing. This was the thing that first struck me about living in Africa, the beautiful sounds of everyday life, no longer hidden under the incessant rumble of traffic. The prayers give way to the birds, then to the sounds of town life as my neighbors wake up, listening to African music as they get ready for work and talking in loud voices, over the sound of the Zem’s (motorbike taxi’s) hurtling along the twisted path, and of street sellers bartering with housewives. I know as the day draws on, my head will be filled with voices, children chattering and laughing at the school where I volunteer, my neighbors', friends' and host family's…

A School is Built The Liberian civil war that erupted in the late 1980’s continued for fifteen years. It led to the mass exodus of Liberians, who sought safety in neighboring countries. Ghana opened its doors to Liberia’s displaced communities, and the Buduburam refugee settlement, 40 km west of Accra, became home for 42,000 people. As fighting continued in Liberia and spread to Sierra Leone, it soon became apparent that people would not be returning anytime soon. Although UNHCR auspices provided immediate shelter and food and immediate health care, education and schooling was not guaranteed. Liberians did not have the same access to school, health care or even bank accounts as Ghanaians did, and so those with refugee status were stuck in a kind of no man’s land; unable to return home and unable to enjoy the same rights as free people. Without education and social development in the interim, what hope did…