Africa is Calling- My Dream

Last week I said Bon Voyage to a very dear friend. Although I will miss her over the next three months, I know that this is the fulfillment of a dream for her. She is, at this very moment, on the island of Zanzibar off the east coast of Africa. An organization called "Hands Across Borders" has welcomed her into their world. For many years, she has always wanted to become more culturally aware, teach and learn about tolerance of people beyond our own small worlds, in a way that she felt immersed in their world. She didn't want to portray herself as the affluent westerner that lacks the compassion or the desire to motivate the culture to learn. She wanted to teach them how to be healthy, how to become educated, how to build a self-sustained life that didn't involve exploitation of the poor masses. It had to be an experience that filled her with a feeling of purpose, a feeling of community, and a feeling of appreciation and peace with the world she left behind.

I researched the organization that she became involved with. It's hard not to fall in love with the beauty of the land, the willingness of the people to make a better life, the philosophy behind what these cultures are working towards. In reading the goals of Hands Across Borders (HABS), I can better understand how my friend was drawn to this small village of Jambiani- even the name is fun to say as it rolls off your tongue, and makes the speaker sound intelligently exotic.

"Hands Across Borders Society's goal can be divided into four main purposes as outlined in our constitution:

* To assist in alleviating poverty through Community Economic Development
(CED) initiatives
* To provide and advance education and health care
* To create international links between Canada and the developing world
* To involve and encourage active participation of youth"

As a nurse in the truest sense of the word, with her caring, compassionate character that transcends her work world, extending to her family, and her friends, this opportunity did seem like a perfect fit for the dream that she has carried within her for so many years.

The passion of her dream, combined with the balance in her mind that this was what she really wanted to do and needed to do, are both what gave her the courage to take action, apply, receive acceptance, then finally board the plane. I can't wait to hear about her adventures, listen to her stories, see the spark in her eye that made her new journey so worthwhile. This was her dream.

Watching her take this courageous step, in combination with the more frequent appearances of many other interesting people and events in my own life, now have me re-evaluating my own goals and dreams. I once had a passion to teach overseas. When I was younger, I admit, it was more the thrill of traveling and the adventure of it that caught my eye. After teaching for many years, resigning, and now opening up the world of teaching to myself again, I have a different perspective about my passion of teaching the underprivileged, whether it be Africa, Asia, Central America... the options are limitless.

But why? I want to share the world. I want to soak up as much information as I can and share it with the wonder-filled students that I teach. What better way than to live the reality of another culture. How are we expected to teach students about the world, if we rarely leave our own classrooms? How do we adequately explain the tastes of the food, the feel of the climate, the flamboyance of the culture, the arts, the talk, the traditions? How do we teach tolerance? How do we explain the perseverance and desire of these people to learn? In our over-indulged, desensitized society, many students are coming to school unwillingly, or with prejudgments about what school will be for them. The desire to learn and grow is a tough concept to break through the preconceived notions about traditional western school life. How do we motivate? How do we duplicate that desire of the students in Africa, in Afghanistan, in any underprivileged country? I don't have the answer to that.

My dream: To teach a classroom full of students with that look of wonder on their faces, grateful that they are even at school, learning to read and write; that they are even being given the chance to think about a dream of their own someday.

Tonight on my run, listening to my iPod, the song "Anyway" by Martina McBride started to play. The idea for tonight's blog was already rolling around in my mind when I was running, and the theme of "dreams" was prevalent in the blog-writing part of my brain. One line of that song repeated for me, and stayed the rest of my way home.

"You can chase a dream, that seems so out of reach, and you know it might not ever come your way. Dream it anyway."

Fate, coincidence, I don't know, but words to live by.