November and December is the holiday season. Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s, all a time when we reflect with our family and friends about the all that we have witnessed and endured throughout the year. We express gratitude for surviving our hardships and solidarity in our mistakes. Last year, I celebrated Thanksgiving at one of […]
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“What do you miss most about home?” I remember asking that question to a friend who had been living in Haiti for half a decade while visiting them. Sitting on their front porch and looking out at the beautiful mountain landscape around us, they sighed, “I don’t know, maybe driving?” It didn’t seem like a […]
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The hot sun blared down with a merciless pulse of unwavering heat. Sixty-seven learners sat in their cramped rows that had morphed into a disorganized blob of desks. There were no lights above and a glare from the barred window shown on the chalkboard. The glare made it so that 75% of my 67 learners […]
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So many emotions were running through me. I was on a happy high. We just finished our last day of training and earlier that day, we completed a Walmart run to grab last minute odds and ends before our trips aboard and of course my $17 purchase didn’t seem like it would be enough. We […]
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Standing there in a group of Booker Washington Institute (BWI) FFA leaders and alumni, I looked off in the distance in the direction of our FFA students who were laughing, yelling, and running around while playing ultimate frisbee on the football field. It was after our FFA End of the Year Program and the sun […]
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“Welcome! Welcome to Liberia!” This is a greeting that I heard many times during my five-day stay in Liberia to visit my son, Nathan, and his wife Anna. This was inevitably followed by a Liberian handshake; which involves a normal handshake, followed by a thumb grip, and ending with our two hands clasping with fingers […]
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I was sitting in the soil science lab grading papers when one of my Liberian colleagues struck up a conversation with me. It started out with him noticing that I was once again wearing a lappa outfit (lappa is the African fabric) and him teasing me and saying how much of a Liberian I have […]
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You all know poverty. You’ve seen it on TV; you’ve seen it in your region’s city center; you’ve seen it in rural areas; or maybe you’re living in it. The majority of the world’s population live in poverty–3 billion people live on less than $1.25 per day. Even I, growing up in an affluent and […]
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I’m a big fan of Humans of New York. Stories are incredible things. Brandon Stanton is one of those people who can create deep human connection with complete strangers. His ability to dig down to that structural piece of humanity that we try to bury so deep within ourselves is amazing. Sharing that is so […]
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To anyone looking on, the day had been a series of utter failures….one hit after the other…the FFA meeting had only 2 members show up, the FFA movie night had to be cancelled, and the FFA officer induction ceremony (which I was really looking forward to) scheduled for the next day was forced to be […]
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