Asante Sana, In Spades

Greetings friends and family!

Time for the much anticipated thanks-so-much-for-your-support blog, and let me tell you, I have so many people to thank for their generous giving. Friends, family, coworkers, friends of friends, friends of family… the list goes on and on. So many of you have shown your support and shared your enthusiasm for what I hope to do abroad, and I cannot thank you enough. Honestly, each of you should be thanked individually no less than ten or twenty times. Or at least a baker’s dozen. Sadly, that’s not entirely feasible (did I mention I need to spend some time learning Swahili? Yeah, just a little).

Anyway, because of your aid and encouragement (including everything from beautifully supportive and handwritten snail-mail donations to epically creative garage sale fundraisers), I have officially covered the first leg of my African adventure! Look out, Tanzania! Sarah Yale is coming to town.

Now I can plow forward in fundraising for Volunteer Placement #2, which will be in Cape Town, South Africa, the balance for which is due at the end of November.

So… while I have your attention, I’d like to ask if any of you highly intelligent and thoughtful supporters have any ideas for future fundraising. I could seriously use all the help I can get, and I prefer to keep things interesting and fresh, so any new suggestions/brainchildren/thoughts on how to fund my volunteer efforts would be greatly appreciated! I need your help!

If anything comes to mind (or you have any questions) hit me with an email at sarah.atwood.yale@gmail.com. If you haven’t yet had a chance to sponsor my efforts and would like to rock my world/ do so, click the link to my Sponsor Page to the left. Additionally, feel free to spread the word (with the link to this blog and/or my sponsor page) about what I’m trying to accomplish to anyone you think might be interested in my international service.

All of you are incredible. Thank you so much (asante sana) for rallying around me! I’m so lucky to have all of you in my corner.

Most sincerely,
Sarah

In the Beginning/The Perfect Storm

Let me begin by saying that this is all I have ever wanted to do.

No, not become a blogger. I’d rather eat glass or retake college physics than talk about myself in this way, and assume others want to hear about it. Honestly, I’ve had this blog set up without a single post for over a month, the link to it on my desktop coolly judging me and my good intentions for just as long. No-- for as long as I can remember, all I have ever wanted to do is live and work in Africa.

With its unique countries and rich traditions, all its various hardships and afflictions, Africa is a place so foreign and fascinating to me, I hunger to learn from and integrate into it. Moreover, the life-long colossal nerd in me wants to experience in person all that I have spent incalculable hours (and money, come to think of it, in the form of library late-fees) researching and internalizing. I crave to speak Swahili and taste the native cuisine. I have an unyielding desire to stare in the face both lion prides and AIDS epidemics. I want to live Africa. I want to truly understand.

It’s much more than that, however. I want desperately to give myself up to something bigger. To share whatever skill or strength or shred of warmth I may possess with other people. To labor in a communal way, connecting with and valuing others in all that I strive to accomplish. Nothing fulfills me more than being useful to other people. I feel an acute and mammoth responsibility to the world, as a human, as a global citizen, to give what I can -- anything I can -- while I have the means to do so. The thought of others, especially children, needing or hurting somewhere in the world… it truly keeps me up at night. It’s like an itch I desperately need to but haven’t yet scratched.

And so, come this November, in an effort to merge these two separate passions, I am shipping off to the Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania with the international volunteer not-for-profit Cross-Cultural Solutions. There, I will give all my energy, time, and heart to Africa’s underserved children. In 2011, I hope to travel from East Africa to Cape Town, South Africa to do similar volunteer work.

I know I trek to Africa wearing many hats: educator, caregiver, and source of cultural exchange, to name a few. (Underemployed, twenty-something American, to name another.) I imagine that while I am there, too, exploring and experiencing true burdens and misfortune, strength and beauty… I will come to recognize many more sides of Sarah Yale. Of course, as one terrific greeting card someone once gave me declares, “Life isn’t about finding yourself; life is about creating yourself.” What better time than now to start the next chapter of my personal creation.

Anyway, I want to be able to share this experience with those who are interested, so I have fashioned this blog as the vehicle for my stories. If you want to follow along, click back for the perfect storm of passionate musings, grammatical errors, and ridiculous retellings.

Thank you so much for your support!

Most sincerely, Sarah