My passport just arrived at my parents house in California and (counts) five weeks from now I'll be on a plane to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. What in the world....?
There's a lot of hindrances that I have to overcome to guarantee that I'll be boarding that plane [last minute immunizations, check-ups, cv/resume concoction]
but I suppose I've jumped a lot of them (or something has carried me over) to get me this far. Four months ago, I was convinced I'd be going to Cairo, Egypt for my semester abroad. This may sound bizarre, but five years ago, at a missions conference, someone reached out for my shoulder and prayed for the people I'd affect in Africa. He walked away like a phantom; I never saw his face, so I could never thank him for [scarily] confirming the foreign thoughts I had been fanticizing about for a long time. How come he didn't mention any of the other 17 countries and 4 continents discussed? How did he know? That year and for the first two years of college, no one was coming up to me with job or missions opportunities to the place, so I changed my major and worked on directing my own path. I was going to get myself there through social science. The Uganda program through CCCU just didn't appeal to me, but Egypt was exotic. Lots of people, spicy foods, arabic, and shisha. There were pyramids.
Hey, it's in still in Africa. The voice should have been more specific.
But, if you're well familiar with geography, anthropology, and political science, Egypt is in North Africa or considered apart of the Middle East, which is completely different from the rest of Africa underneath the Sahara Desert. I guess the voice meant below. I was waitlisted for the amazing Egypt program and I conviently moped around for a month and a half over my bad luck. WAITLISTED! Arrrrrggggh, was I not good enough?! But the voice was not silent for long. I was scanning Food For the Hungry's website for future job opportunities/internships, when I saw the link. GoED Africa.
"You've read about poverty and development in textbooks. You've seen pictures of war and hunger on the news. Confused by the complexity of the issues? Wondering how you can make a difference? To understand poverty, you first must own it. Transformational development starts with you. Go ED. is a unique study abroad program that will change the way you think about your world."
Um, excuse me? Its focus and goal: community development and peacebuilding. I'm sorry, can you repeat that amazing thing one more time? The deadlines were past so I inquired if this could be an option for Spring since it didn't look like I was going anywhere for Fall (ahem, ruining my whole academic plan) and the hub emailed Brent Reimer back immediately. "If she's still interested, we'll consider her application for this fall." And they accepted me, after all deadlines were past, and it was one week before school ended. The program was 3x better than the one I'd applied for, would put me in the field I wanted to study, and give me practicum experience to help me know what I'm doing. Africa. I had been trying to get there my own way, and the voice insisted on doing it hers.
The semester plan:
Week 1-4 (Uganda)
INCL 340: African Traditional Religion (ATR),
ENG 206: Post Colonial African Literature
Week 5-7 (Rwanda)
INCL 345: Issues in Peacebuilding: Genocide and Diversity,
SOC 381: Social Context for Development
Week 8-11 (EthiopiaKenyaRwandaUganda)
Supervised Field Practicum in Development Work
Week 12-14 (Uganda)
INCL 340: African Traditional Religion (ATR),
ECON 240: Development Economics,
ENG 206: Post Colonial African Literature
plus some Swahili 101; and so I created this blog to document my time and all the moments where my preconceptions about poverty, aid, and Africa get kicked in the face. Ni kweli means "it is true" in Kiswahili and I hope to convey what is to you and to myself--all that comes along with this crazy trip: the truth about life and humanitarianism a world away. What am I getting myself into?
Ni Kweli what I say.
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