Welcome to my journey! I was fortunate enough to be a recipient of the Zekavat Summer Sabbatical grant this year and it is my intention to share my experiences through this blog. Huge thanks to Diana Day for helping my slog my way through WordPress to get it set up, ready to go, and hopefully idiot proof!

First, some background about my trip. Emerging from the pandemic three years ago, I decided to step out of my comfort zone a bit and proposed to lead one of our Intensive Learning trips at Moorestown Friends School. We went to Alaska that year on a fabulous trip that was a great experience for all involved, myself included. My desire was to expose students to the beauty and uniqueness of the Arctic ecosystem. An unanticipated benefit was some genuine exposure to and learning about Alaskan Native Heritage. This lead to similar overlapping interests in our equally amazing trip to Northern Norway this past March with a focus on Sami culture. I became increasingly interested in learning more about indigenous cultures and providing opportunities for students to explore their own experiences and identity through those opportunities. The uniqueness of the Sami nomadic traditions lead me next to an interest in the Maasai. This broke the mold in a couple of ways. Most obviously, it is far from an arctic climate, but it would also be the first time students have traveled to Sub-Saharan Africa as part of the intensive learning program. Given some of those challenges, I thought it would be a good idea to have visited myself before taking students and I was lucky enough to find an outstanding in country partner, Paul Chege of Tembo Wild, who shared my vision of a less touristy, more authentic interaction for students with local schools and villages.

So, long story less long, I am on my way! I feel very fortunate to be leaving today, instead of yesterday as the Philadelphia airport was a disaster and you may have also heard about the unrest in Nairobi that I will comment on later as well. But I have a long series of flights to Boston, then London, and on to Nairobi!

Update: I made it and, miraculously, so did my luggage!! It was a long day of travel but a good one. I chose to fly British Airways for a number of reasons instead of the direct flight on Kenya airways and it was a great experience. There is something about walking onto the upper deck of an airbus A380 to soothing English Chamber music and having all the flight attendants speaking in their lovely accents that helps take some of the stress out of travel!