I suffer from chronic wanderlust that has taken me all over the world. My hardworking career as a real estate agent in the Hamptons allowed me the freedom to travel as long as my checkbook was topped up. I always had photos of the next destination posted on my desk at work and hoped that, if I used the phone successfully, the deals would get done and it would be wheels up for me!
Time moved so quickly, and all of a sudden I turned forty years old. I was successful and enjoyed my freedom as a single woman who was not tied down to a family. I was perfectly happy moving about my life … until I wasn't but didn't know it. Selling large second homes to very rich people who had every comfort was no longer a challenge or exciting. It was time for a life change, but I couldn't figure out what change I wanted or needed.
So I booked another trip. I had traveled on many horseback-riding safaris, but Africa was my favorite. The frequent chaos and poverty is balanced by the beauty and richness of the tribal cultures, wild animals, and generous people.
Determined to find my purpose, I researched volunteer projects all over the world. A project in Namibia run by Elephant Human Relations Aid was flexible enough that we also did work at the local school. It was a government-run boarding school (in rural communities in Africa, most schools are boarding schools since students live too far away to walk to school) that was not well funded and had very scant resources. From the minute I met the students, I knew something in my life was about to change.
I am a strong proponent of women in power and as leaders. I felt I needed to help the girls at the A. Gariseb Primary School put their future in front of them and dream big. Just because they were in the middle of the desert with little exposure or a promising future in the bigger world didn't mean they shouldn't try to achieve it—in fact, just the opposite!
At the school, I was a magnet for these girls and their smiling, promising faces. I loved when they all rushed up to me with little Valentine notes on tiny postage stamp–size scraps of paper. They always had a lovely flair: "Plis kip me in your hart fo eva." They always had butterflies, flowers, hearts, and, usually, uncanny drawings of me with them and "frends fo eva." They never asked for anything. Just a simple declaration that we were friends and that I would not forget them.
In my "back home" life, I was also on the board of our local library, and at that time, we were about to build a new addition. While sitting in a decrepit old cement school building on a three-legged chair propped up by a pail as its fourth leg, I kept thinking that these children were in need of a simple library with books that would expand their knowledge. "Learn to read, read and grow, grow and learn" became my mantra and theirs, too. So I set about sending books to Africa with a small amount of donated books from my library friends. It filled a room at the school we had painted in bright colors. On the wall, we painted, "Learn to read, read and grow, grow and learn."
These girls would run up to me in the schoolyard with their tattered books and blurt out passages at top volume for all the world to hear—proudly showing they had mastered not only reading but amazing self-confidence and poise.
We continued our aid to the school, and after ten years, we had renovated the dormitories, replumbed the showers and lavatories, and built a computer room, a playground, and more.
But my proudest moment happened when I was walking down a street and heard two girls calling my name. Most of the girls in the first group had either ended their primary school careers and returned to their farms or headed to high school—"Big School," they called it. These two girls were tall and skinny and in their "Big School" uniforms, standing proud and ready to take on the world. They reminded me who they were and what it meant for them to learn and read at that library with those books. It worked: They were dreaming big—and I knew they would succeed. My second chance was their first in having someone believe in them. It made me believe in myself as well.
—DOREEN
They never asked for anything. Just a simple declaration that we were friends and that I would not forget them.
