World Beginnings

  One of my favorite activities in the school year was Week Without Walls, WWW. This was a time for students to learn and experience beyond the classroom. Teachers were in charge of planning the trip and there was a learning focus, to most of them. One that will stay with me forever, not my trip, was building bathrooms in Bali. We tend to think of Bali as an exotic vacation but there is extreme poverty off of the glitzy tourist paths and the students came back changed forever. It is important to point out that these students are extremely privileged, living in a rarified world of drivers, maids, cooks and gardeners. They’ve never cleaned anything in their lives.  Unsurprising, to those who know me, I always focussed on local animal shelters. My last year in Beirut our project was to build cat shelters for a woman who was feeding and caring for about thirty cats in a vacant lot across from her house. Students raised money through bake sales to buy all of the supplies, Then alon...

It was late in the Sri Lankan day, hot and muggy, as Jill and I drove up to to the ramshackle gate that was wrapped around with a big chain and bigger lock. We were on a mission, so without words, we left the car with our bags and scaled the fence. As soon as our feet hit the hard packed dirt, dogs came rushing at us from every corner of the property. As we opened the door to the house, the dogs followed at our heels and incredibly there were more dogs in the house. Some cowering behind doors, others stranded on tables covered with feces and urine because they were too afraid   to get down for fear of the bigger dogs. In the midst of this chaos, cats watched from   on high. We quickly unloaded the food we brought and bowls were filled. Then the clean up started. Jill and I met through her daughter, Geraldine, affectionately   known as Gel, who was my student. We quickly bonded through our love of animals and lost people. The poor soul who brought us to t...