I believe in a life of Experiences. Everyone on this earth
should have at least one defining moment in their life that they can look back
on as though they accomplished, lived and created greatness.
As a meek 15 year old who had already dealt with a
transcontinental move, decided it was my turn to have an experience that was my
own, not my families. That May I got on a plane to Arusha, Tanzania, with a
backpack and a journal. I arrived in pitch dark and was approached by an
elderly smiling man, Kimon, my guide. 8 experience seekers and myself got in to two Land Rovers and
drove off in silence in to the night down what was a supposed road in to the
Savannah. As morning broke, 4am, we stopped in an area of elevation, rocks,
brush and deafening sounds of the wilderness. I set up my home for the next
four months and without sleep set off to meet my new family, the Hutu tribe. I
spent four months learning the ways of a hunter-gatherer tribe and was shown
the majesty of the plains of Africa through a lens no standard hotel bound
tourist would ever see. Standing atop of the Ngorogoro Crater looking down on
the animals hearing the sounds so clearly with a smell of crisp rain in the
air, I have never been so emotionally moved by the pure beauty of this earth. I
built schools, I delivered HIV positive babies but most importantly I enriched
my own life with new knowledge of this once foreign culture.
While I have now been back in civilization for 8 years,
there is still, to this day, not a day that goes by where I cannot apply
something I learnt from the Hutu or from Africa. It is this experience that
pushes me to continue enriching my life through these experiences. I believe
everyone should have the same drive, to find an experience to not only
emotionally drive themselves, but to enrich their life from then on.
Narrated Time: 2 minutes and 48 seconds
