Carmen Lanette Cheek's Page

Before I left, I sat down and seriously thought about everything I would miss in Africa and my team... I was wrong. That list was much too short. After being home for a few days, I'm realizing that what I miss the most are all of the small things that made my team so hilarious and great, all the small things that made the trip so impacting, and all the small things that made the mountain so beautiful and painful. Continue

My trip has come to an end. It's time to wrap it all up and say goodbye...but I don't want to. Why do I have to go home when I feel at home right here? I've fallen even more in love with Africa, its people, culture, food, and langauge and have come to love my team. I'm not ready to leave it all, but to avoid getting too emotional, I've written a list.

Things I will miss:

-Felix, the best driver/tour guide/swahili instructor ever.

-crazy, chaotic, outta control…

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Today was our last day at the secondary school. Since so much happened today and there's no way my mere mortal words can describe the vast wonder of what really happened and went on emotionally, I'm going to do a simple overview.

Morning: Shanked myself with a chisel...blood. blood. blood. gauze. blood. bandaid. great teammates.

Mid Morning: Dance party with students.

Afternoon: Painting benches, getting my hair braided by 23847 girls at once,…

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Seriously. I have the best team ever. God definitely put us together for this week. We have evolved into a family unit and this week we're working at the school in Dandora. Our service project is building benches. Although none of us knew quite what to expect, we each had somewhat of an idea of how we'd be building said benches. We were all wrong. Power tools? No. Pre-cut pieces of lumber? No. Assembly directions? No.

Hammers. Nails. Handsaws. Chisels.

As I've been working on making… Continue