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Megan Kwasniak
The sun is getting low in the sky as we near the end of our last home visit. The girls are excited to show us their notebooks. Jim and I flip through the pages of perfectly lined up sentences and neatly arranged numbers. “What’s your favorite subject?” I ask the younger sister through our translator, as my Spanish is to this day very poor. “Math” she responds shyly. Both girls are doing incredibly well in school in all of the subjects and their mother cannot hide the pride in her voice. We scan the small dark room where the…
It’s been a little while since I visited this place. I think the blog has been missing me, so I wanted to update everyone on what I have been up to lately. First and foremost, I’ve been taking a short break from my travels through the month of June and July. I have lots of things to catch up on and need some down time to process all that has happened in the last few months. I have been on the road almost non-stop since January. As wonderful as travel can be and as much as I…
I went to South Africa for the first time in the fall of 2000. I was a college student then and the trip was part of Semester at Sea study abroad program. Cape Town, being a port on our itinerary, quickly became one of my favorite stops at that time, among the ten different countries we visited over a span of four academic months. The trip happened almost eighteen years ago and I still remembered the way Table Mountain stood proudly over the majestic city. Tonight I dug out my old journal from that first trip. I wanted to see…
It has been raining all weekend here in south Florida and I was very tempted to crawl back into bed soon after walking my doggies this morning. I had been working in the ED all week since returning from South Africa and my body is definitely feeling it… But then I remembered that I really wanted to share more of my South Africa experience with you all, so I went to the gym instead, summoned all of my energy for the day ahead and here I am now writing this blog post. I think overall this was the better decision…
We stepped off the bus and grabbed our luggage. The flight to Cape Town from Johannesburg’s Tambo International Airport was scheduled to take off in a couple of hours. The group scattered about collecting their belongings and chatting happily away. Waiting to get into the airport’s terminal, I looked off to the side and caught his eye. He was a young boy of maybe fifteen years old, standing reservedly to the side, holding a large clear bag in his hands. Inside were a few plastic bottles he has been trying to collect. Our eyes met briefly: we gazed…