February 11, 2015

Daraja Here We Come!

Tomorrow night, Friday morning, at 2:00 am I will be boarding an airplane to fly to Kenya. I will be leading a school trip to The Daraja Academy for girls. I have been to this school twice before. The first time I went, Kaia was only this big...


The other time I went, we were literary painting the walls...


...and hiring teachers...


There were no students and the campus sat expectant, heavy with ambition and promise. I remeber sitting on Jason's (the founder and my best friend since we were 15) deck talking about how I might be able to help him design a Wordpress blog to promote the school. We were so naive and innocent. Well, I was. Jason had a fire in his eyes and a vision that must have been crystal clear, because since that first trip, not only did the school open, but it is now filled to capacity with over 250 girls from grade 9-12 and has graduated at least one class. Their website is stunning and they are a fully sustainable and operational school. We will be arriving a few weeks before Daraja's fifth anniversary.
You can look at more pictures here or read previous posts for some context here.
Daraja is the opposite of the slums and poverty from which her students will come. It is beyond politics and good intentions. Daraja is the realization of a dream. Hope actualized and made real. Hands in soil, trees planted. Seeds sown. It is beyond donations and charity. Daraja is a place where regular people like you selflessly give their time, money, and energy in the hope that change begins within each of us.
 I can't pin-point what excites me most about this upcoming trip. Will it be...

...seeing this guy again, after so many years.


And relaxing on his deck and talking about what it feels like to be forty and sitting on the grounds of a school that was born in our dreams. Together. Talking about the students he has hand picked from across Kenya. He will tell me about the tough young women his school empowers everyday to make a change in Kenya and beyond. Perhaps we will reflect on the work I have done at UWCSEA to stay connected to Daraja. I will relish the fact that I managed to pull off this trip after years of hoping. I will tell him how five teachers paid their own way to make it happen, and how Claire and Joy worked tirelessly not to let this trip sink. We might discuss the strange magic that has followed us for most of our lives. Directing us to moments exactly like the one described.

Perhaps we will be in the kitchen watching his students interact with ours. While there are only five from our school, we will discuss how the beauty of Africa will infect them to maybe create schools of their own in the future. I will introduce him my friends. Worlds will collide.

Maybe I will talk to my friends/colleagues, beautiful women in their own right, under these stars...


We might pontificate on the immensity of the universe and the forces that might have brought us all to this spot on planet. We will shed the stresses of big school big city life and remember why we do what we do. They will thank me. I will thank them. We will be thankful beneath the stars. Paula will take stunning photos. Jen will keep us grounded. We might make a movie, write a book, scream at the universe. Be noticed. Be ignored. We will be alive and we will know it, and we will remind the people around us of the intensity of life. The intensity of our  awareness.

Maybe I am most excited by the quiet walks I will take looking for light like this...


Finding the nooks and crannies of the campus for my quiet contemplation. I will remember and reconnect to the unnameable unmistakable gravity of Africa. I will remember the afternoons I spent in Mozambique. I will envy Jason for the fact that he can live in this place all year, every year, for years. I will promise to be back and bring another group next year.

I am excited to walk each of our students to their rooms...


and I will think about the thrill they must be feeling-- so far away from home. I will be excited to think about them contemplating their place in a continent advertised as so wild, knowing that they are there, alive and safe.We will shatter stereotypes and build worlds on experience. We will hug and love and befriend strangers. We will never see people as charity cases or recipients of our pity. We will learn to see people for who they are. We will learn respect and honor dignity. We will listen and listen and listen. Then we will record and scribble and draw and then...we will shout and share and create until we heard. We will make promises to bring others here.

I am excited by walking down roads like this one...


With the red soil beneath our feet, the metaphor of the path not-taken not lost on any of us. We will be excited by the not-knowing. What will we see? What will we learn? About the school? Each other? Ourselves? We will walk. We will breathe.

1 comment:

  1. What a beautiful post Jabiz.So beautiful to dream and then to catch that dream.I look forward to seeing the amazing photos you'll post.

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