I awoke at 6:40 to the sound of the rooster crowing and decided to stay under the mosquito net and watch the golden light of Kenya become brighter as I took in the voices of morning around me... In addition to the roosters... Cows, birds, dogs, children singing Swahili, dishes in the kitchen. After sharing breakfast at the dining room table with another American girl visiting, I spent some time with the two youngest children of the house, William and Junior. When Uncle Steve (my driver) arrived we set out for our touring day. The drive to all the places was one of my favorite parts... a woman cooking and selling fish on the side of the road, another woman with a huge bunch of sticks on her back, a baboon, a herd of Masai cows, a road blocked off with just a few small rocks instead of big flashing signs. Everyone was out and about doing their thing. My thing today was acclimating myself and we started at the elephant orphanage. Many of the mothers had been poached. Next stop was the giraffe center where I had my giraffe kiss! We also visited the bead factory to see the process of making the clay beads that are now shipped all over the world. Then we spent time the Karen Blixen Museum to see where the author Out of Africa lived. After lunch and shopping at a Wal-Martesque store we came home. The power was out and all the foreigners were inside chatting. I chose to go to the courtyard and chat with Steve, the children of the neighborhood, and hang out with mama and her puppies. So far the far most interesting thing I have done is conversing with my new Kenyan friends. I have started to keep a journal of the wise things they have been telling me. Probably one of the most interesting conversations today was regarding traditional initiation ceremonies for boys and girls at the age of 12 (usually). Another interesting fact is that about 80% of Kenya is Christian and only 15% Muslim. Schools get out from November until the first of the new year and also they get the whole month of April for Easter. Although Santa is at the malls here in Kenya at Christmas it is not a focus at Christmas. There are so many beautiful things about the people here and the way they live. It seems there is more of a priority on relationships than with the things one has. There is so much to say... and the best way to say it is we are all human and share the same spirit. We can never forget that being human is what unites us! I met my first Kenyan friend, Jim, on the flight from Amsterdam to Nairobi.
My mom always kids me that I run into people I know everywhere I go. It is not too terribly surprising I run into the Peeples family in the Asheville Airport flying on the same flight as me. Gary was randomly assigned the seat next to me. Both Gary and Molly are Peace Corp Veterans I could not think of more perfect people to meet up with before such a grand adventure! Their own enthusiasm for travel and adventure was a gift to me! The next connection awaited me in Detroit where I had five hours to kill (three now). I had a nice conversation with my Dad and then headed to the nearest crowded airport restaurant. I found a seat scrunched between two strangers who had to rearrange their bags to accommodate me. I put away my phone knowing I should make "stranger conversation", which is 9 out of 10 times a good idea! The guy next to me was a US Marine who was traveling home from training in DC to his wife and 4 year old son in Oklahoma. After chatting a bit about the unusual gyro sandwich we both ordered he shared he had been to Kenya to help the US Embassy! When he found out I was an art teacher he told me places not to miss and was very encouraging. I told him my two sons would be in the Dominican Republic with their dad while I was in Kenya and he had been there, as well! He also served in Haiti before and after the earthquake. When we parted I thanked him for serving our country... We should all have more "chance" encounters! Now the journey and connections continue....... It's hard to believe the day has actually arrived! So much work, worry, and effort has gone into preparing and going on this journey. I'm sitting in the Asheville Airport after first forgetting my phone at home and having to turn around to get it and secondly Delta telling me I couldn't check in without the exact credit card I used to purchase my plane ticket. All is well now, though! I have a long journey ahead.... Detroit to Amsterdam to Nairobi. I'll arrive "Nairobi Time" on Sunday at 8:10pm. Love to everyone who has supported me and lifted me up! The piece I was most worried about has arrived! My visa to get into Kenya is here! Whew! Just having that one little piece of paper is making this trip seem a whole lot more real. It is amazing how everything is coming together. School finished on Thursday and then we had one teacher workday yesterday. This gave me the chance to get the other teachers involved in making art for Africa, too. It was fun to get some of them out of their comfort level and creating and then see other teachers and staff just take right to it. Other good news is that I found out I can accept donations for my trip through the Buncombe County Schools Foundation. I am still $2,000 from funding the trip. This is just for the basics of the rest of the plane ticket, my accommodations, driver while there, and some meals in the homestay. I am planning on holding a community event when I get home to celebrate the friendships I make and to get involvement in a quilt we will be creating using fabric from Kenya and pieces of fabric that my own students have screen printed. One quilt will be sent to Kenya and the other will hang in our school. I would love for all of my donors to be a part of this! If you would like to make a tax deductible donation you may do so online. Please make sure you designate it for North Buncombe Middle School in Honor of Laura Norris. The link to donate: http://c2.bcsf.schoolwires.net//site/Default.aspx?PageID=189 If you would rather have a piece of art as a gift for your donation you can do that through the "Store". Just click on Store at the top of the page! Other good news:
I got a nice write-up in the Insider Employee Newsletter... take a look at page 6! http://www.buncombe.k12.nc.us/cms/lib5/NC01000308/Centricity/Domain/3570/BCS%20Insider%20June%202014.pdf Here is one of my North Buncombe Middle School students creating an artist trading card for me to take to the school in Kenya for the students there to get a glimpse of what my students here are about. I will take supplies for students in Kenya to create cards in hopes of bringing them back to my students in North Carolina. After getting the blessing from my principal, county office, and Superintendent that I could use the runner up grant money to go towards a plane ticket, I had lots to get ready! The first order of business was a passport. Yes... I HAVE a passport.... somewhere, but unfortunately it was not in my lock box at the State Employee's Credit Union. However, my birth certificate was safely tucked in there. I filled out all the necessary forms online (including the lost passport form), got my passport photos made at my neighborhood Walgreen's, and then got my birth certificate out of the lock box. I had made an appointment with the passport office in the post office on Coxe Ave and was all set. So. I. Thought. The Birth Certificate evidently was not the original one... no raised seal. Really?!!! I had it so secure all these years in my lock box. The postal worker was kind to me and told me how to obtain a proper birth certificate. More forms. Another couple of weeks. More money. More time. Then... the birth certificate arrives... with my mother's name spelled incorrectly. Her name is Elisabeth, but they had spelled it with a z instead of the s. Uh oh! Was this going to trip me up in getting my passport in time? I called to make a new appointment with the passport office. This time they were not so friendly. I had to wait until May 22 to apply. Yikes! I needed not only the passport, but the visa, too. I couldn't apply for the visa until I got the passport and I couldn't apply for the visa until I got my plane ticket. That meant I couldn't get the plane ticket until I got the passport. Ack!!!! I called the Biltmore Station post office hoping for better luck knowing at this point I really needed to expedite the passport (more money). They, too, were super busy and I couldn't get in until late May. She recommended I go into the Coxe Ave post office as a walk-in. I planned doing that and made an appointment with the Health Department for my Foreign Travel appointment on the same day. I walk in to a packed passport waiting area and luckily saw friends there so it eased the stress a bit. The postal worker asks me who I was and what I was doing. I told him and he told me he doesn't have time for me and to leave. My eyes welled up with tears. I quickly said good-bye to my friends embarrassed. What was I going to do? Was this a sign I wasn't supposed to go? Determined....I decided to go ahead and follow through with my Foreign Travel Appointment at the Health Department (it was right across the street from the post office and I had carved out this time to get it done). I walked into the Buncombe County Health & Human Services upset and down. My mind was racing again about how I could get a passport. I decided it might just be worth my time to drive down to Greenville, SC to the Downtown Post Office. Since Greenville was my hometown I knew exactly where it was and how to get there. I called to find out the hours, make sure I didn't need an appointment, and make sure they could expedite the passport (not all post offices process passports and out of the ones that do not all of them will expedite them for you). They did not require appointments and if I timed it right with the lunch break I could very possibly be the first in line. But first.... shots. To read what shots I need: http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/destinations/traveler/none/kenya I had a lot of shots to get and a lot of information to receive! I actually had to go to the Health Department three separate times to get shots. Hep A/B, polio, tetanus, typhoid, yellow fever.... and then I find out there are biting insects with no vaccines available that carry diseases! I will have to spray my clothes with bug repellent before packing and take malaria pills. All of this sounds like a lot to take it (especially when I was already upset about the passport), but it was the kindness of the workers at the Health Department that made my day. Some past experience made me think they would be cranky and not very personable, but I was proven very wrong each of the three times I went in. Annette is a light in the Health Department with her patience, warmth, and compassion. She was so very personal with me and we chatted about her teacher friends, the people who come through the Health Department who have adopted babies from Africa, and the woes of getting a new passport. It is the brightness of people who make this world a better place. A smile and a personal touch mean so much to me. I experienced the same thing when I went down to Greenville. Lucky me got to grab a sandwich at Duke's http://www.dukesandwich.com/ then sure enough I was first in line at the post office where I met a nice lady who was traveling to Mexico who was in line behind me. At 1 pm on the dot the passport window opens and a smiling post woman asks if she can help me. She assured me the misspelling of my mother's name wouldn't be a problem and I was in and out of the post office in 7 minutes flat! I was realizing that making connections and the kindness of others truly makes me happy! I am traveling to Kenya to make global connections and friendships, but the journey to get to Kenya is allowing me to make connections and build friendships I wouldn't have otherwise made. After getting my itinerary and convincing myself I was actually going to Kenya I realized it wasn't actually a given I was going to win. There are so many teachers out there with bigger and better ideas, more eloquent words, more experienced grant writers....
Why didn't I get more people to proofread my answers? My procrastination and stubbornness probably had something to do with it. These are things I need to work on. I was told I would hear by the end of March. It WAS the end of March.... what does it mean if you don't hear. Are there so many applicants that they are having to take longer to decide? Did mine get tossed out in the first round and they were going to tell me last? Was I a top pick and they wanted to tell the others first so they were just waiting to let the winners know? Luckily- I was on Spring Break and visiting with both of my sisters when I got the email. It was bittersweet, of course. April 3, 2014 " We would like to inform you that the selection panel judges have completed their review of teacher applicants and have submitted their recommendations to IIE and Hilton Worldwide. On behalf of Hilton Worldwide and the Institute of International Education, I would like to inform you that you have been selected as a Runner-Up for the 2014 Hilton Worldwide Teacher Treks Program: Travel Grant. As a Runner-Up of this program, you were among the top 1% of candidates who applied to this program. The 2014 selection process was highly competitive with a large response from experienced and eligible educators from all over the United States." Here is who won: http://www.iie.org/Programs/Hilton-Teacher-Treks-Program/2014-Grant-Recipients#2014-Grant-Recipients Of course- It was a big blow to me as I was so set on traveling. I did get $1500 for being a runner-up and I was very grateful for that, but it wasn't the $6,000. I decided to go on a run to clear my head and ponder it all. My mind raced with new ideas... maybe I should just go back to New Mexico and stay in the Airstream again... maybe I needed to travel to Peru (it's on my bucket list)... maybe I'm supposed to slow down and just go to the pool and paint and sculpt at home.... the ideas were endless and my brain wouldn't stop... but nothing felt RIGHT. I was set on Kenya. Plus my three school aged kids were accounted for June 28 - July 11. I had an opportunity to seize! Fifteen hundred dollars sounds like a lot to travel on, but with plane tickets at $2000 to Nairobi it goes quickly. If I could APPLY that grant money and then raise the rest then I could still go. It was just a matter of a little red tape. Lois introduced me through a email to a woman named Serah Mucha. At the time I didn't realize just how much Serah was going to be able to help me with my plans. In fact, I had no idea that she was going to not only be the one that was able to get me into the schools, but she also owned her own homestay ( http://www.mdawidahomestay.com/# ) in addition to helping manage a nonprofit with her husband. http://kosmossolutions.org/#
Serah has been my "go to" woman during this whole process. Since the grant was only a shot in the dark to get to Kenya I was very grateful that she was so willing to take take to help me figure out a itinerary to submit to the Hilton Teacher Trek Program. After telling her what I wanted to experience: visiting schools, making connections, visiting artists, understanding life in a village, getting to know the geography, having a little safari adventure, seeing the Indian Ocean, getting to know the culture of Kenya she created an amazing itinerary for me. I knew that if I didn't win this grant I was going to have to find some way to still take this trip. It was too real already and there was already another person on the other side of the world invested in me. The opportunity was too great. My fingers were crossed. Kenya was calling me. The proposed itinerary: June 29, 2014 Arrive in Nairobi Picked up at airport and dropped at Mdawida Homestay http://www.mdawidahomestay.com/# June 30, 2014 10 am - 4 pm: Nairobi Day Tour Visit the Giraffe Centre http://giraffecenter.org/, Elephant Orphanage http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/, and the Karen Blixen Museum http://www.museums.or.ke/content/blogcategory/13/19/ July 1, 2014 9 am: Visit Women's Group in Kibera that creates crafts. Spend the morning with them to hear their story. (Kibera is the largest slum in Nairobi, and the largest urban slum in Africa. Wikipedia) 2 pm: Visit various craft shops and talk to the different artisans. July 2, 2014 9 am - 4 pm: School Visits Visit a few schools- private, public, and community run schools (high school and primary) July 3 -5 , 2014 With hired driver depart for Wongonyi Village. The village has been visited by Western Carolina University students the last four years. (Here I will get a true sense of the village life in Kenya as well as how development issues affect a village in Kenya.) July 5 - 6, 2014 Whole Day Tour to Tsavo National Park http://www.kws.org/parks/parks_reserves/TENP.html Overnight stay at Voi Safari Lodge http://www.tsavopark.com/entries/voi-safari-lodge July 6 - 9, 2014 9 am: Depart for Diani Beach South Coast July 9, 2014 6 am: Whole Day Travel to Nairobi July 10, 2014 Depart from Kenya July 11, 2014 Arrive in Asheville, NC I decided I needed some help with my decision of which country I should apply to visit through the travel grant so I decided to call Lois. Dr. Lois Petrovich-Mwaniki was the perfect person to discuss this with. She has been my thesis adviser in graduate school at Western Carolina University and was the former Chair of the Art Education Department there. She has recently retired as the Director of International Programs and Services at Western and was very familiar with traveling abroad. On top of that we had been part of a the Global Partnership grant where we both got to host and stay with Japanese educators. She knows me, my personality, and my love of creating and teaching global connections (she was actually a big part of teaching me how to do this) and... I trusted her opinion.
When I called her she was thrilled to help me and had more information that I could even take in all at once. I took notes as we talked and I asked many questions about the art in different regions of Africa, the safety of traveling alone, the geography/animals, and the connections to schools she already had there. Lois gave me her suggestions and I decide to rank my three choices as 1) Kenya, 2) Tanzania, and 3) South Africa. One of the biggest reasons I ended up choosing Kenya was because Lois is actually married to a Kenyan man, Dr. Nyaga Mwaniki, who also was a professor at Western Carolina University and he had been taking students to Kenya through the Anthropology department for years. I could basically mimic the trip that he took his students on with an emphasis on art. I now had the connections I needed to get into some of the schools in Nairobi as well as personal friends of Lois and Nyaga to take care of my well being. |
AuthorLaura Mitchell is the art teacher at North Buncombe Middle School in Weaverville, NC, mother of three, runner of trails, and on a quest to find kindred friends for herself and her students both near, far, and in between. Archives
June 2016
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