This is something I’ve wanted to write for a long time now. Reading it might make you feel uncomfortable. I sure as hell felt uncomfortable while writing it. And that’s a good thing. That’s the whole point actually. If I was doing what I do (working in development as a white woman in countries with…

Approximately 35 white plastic chairs huddled under a tin-roofed awning extending from an empty concrete building into the red mud of the village road. Rain dripped off the ends of the tin sheets and created a thunderous racket for those of us sitting underneath its shelter. I was there with six colleagues from GPI, our…

Sweat dripped between my shoulder blades and pooled in the fabric of my jumpsuit as I walked up the steps to a small, one-storey concrete building at the far end of the courtyard. I followed Endy, my “manager” at Girls Power Initiative, blinded in a delightful way by the sun reflecting off her rainbow-sequined high…

Over the last few days I’ve sat down to write this blog post no fewer than four times. The first time, I spouted some nonsensical metaphor about the unfamiliar, the unknown and a deep, dark body of water. I was trying wayyyyy too hard.  The next two times, I felt like I wasn’t writing for…

Hey blog followers… it’s been awhile! I have some super exciting news to share and that’s why I’m jumping back on the blog wagon. As you can probably guess from the extremely straightforward and non-creative title of this post, I’m moving to Nigeria (and no, I have not fallen victim to a 419 scam)! I’m…

He was wearing a light blue shirt tidily tucked into khaki pants, and a look of nervous excitement. I watched as he rifled through the not-so-tidily stacked notebooks sitting outside the crowded stationery shop, considering each one carefully. He would sift through them, occasionally extricating one from the pile to examine the binding or run…

Dear friend I met while travelling, I remember the first time I ever saw you.  No, really, I do.  You were hiding from the rain in a hotel lobby. You were bundled in your toque and sleeping bag on Skype, trying to escape a cold that settles in your bones. You were coming through the…

So I’ll admit, I’ve fallen off the wagon a bit with this whole blog thing… or so it might seem. What actually happened is that I decided to start a business at roughly the same time as my teammates here in Nepal decided to keep a group blog.  All this to say, I got a…

If I had a nickel for every time my parents chastised me about not taking photos of my day to day life abroad, I would have several nickels. Once you live in a place long enough, the details of regular life become so mundane that they don’t seem worth sharing. I write stories about trekking…

Every time I travel for an extended period of time, I try to keep a journal. Not because I like journalling. I actually really don’t like journalling. More because I like the idea of 80-year-old me sitting in a rocking chair in the woods somewhere, reliving all the crazy shit I did as a youngin’.  So,…