I consider myself a life-long learner and the world is my teacher as I take a break from the classroom during the summer. Winning the “Travel for Good Grant” through Travelocity this year helped me to get to Ghana to volunteer with Globe Aware. Now I’m in love again. With a whole village. I can’t wait to return to Mafi Tsati, a rural village outside of Ho, Ghana, approximately 4 hours from Accra (Ghana’s capital)—and I hope to return soon. My mission now is to do several things: 1) to raise money for a new school, 2) to raise money to buy Maxwell, the teacher I connected with in Mafi Tsati, a laptop with internet access, and 3) to return to finish a photo project I started, and hopefully publish a book about the women in the village.
It’s been 16 years since I started teaching, and though I grow more passionate about my profession each year, I also want to continue my global connection—merging teaching and learning with travel. Perhaps as I find ways to return to Africa to be involved in improving lives there, I can bring other teachers—and maybe someday students—to improve our lives in return. Africa has changed my life in ways She will never know, and we—in our hectic, often myopic, western culture—have a great deal to learn from the amazing people in Africa. - Margit Boyensen, June 2012,
