More pre-travel thoughts

Over the past few days, I've had a lot of time to prepare for and contemplate the personal project I'm planning to tackle in Kenya. Our leaders have advised each of us to develop some sort of lesson plan that we can share with the Kenyan students, and I've chosen photography. I will bring several digital cameras and a photo printer with me to Africa-- two of our group leaders have graciously offered to fund my idea. Now, I'm not especially gifted in the photography realm, nor do I consider myself an expert in the field, but it is an activity that I enjoy. I also think it's worth sharing, not to mention the fact that it is much more teachable and concrete than some of my other hobbies, like making music video parodies or impersonating celebrities (haha). The most exciting part of my photography plan, however, is the fact that I will be exposing these young students to a craft with which they have very little to no experience. I was recently informed that many of the students I'll be working with have never had a photo of themselves to bring home-- it took me a while to wrap my head around this reality. Having grown up in a world where annual class pictures were an absolute given, it was difficult to imagine never having grasped a tangible image of myself. Acknowledging and embracing these types of cultural differences will be vital to my experiences in Africa. While I consider myself an extremely open-minded, "culturally aware" individual, I'm also allowing myself to be molded by whatever might come my way overseas, whether it's something scary, beautiful, confusing, unfamiliar, or some fantastic combination of these.