This blog is being written from the airplane, en route between Johannesburg, South Africa and our brief stopover in Dakar, Senegal.
Today was a day of goodbyes, to our program leader Jackie James, to Graham Todd who was the leader of the South African team that was our counterpart that we visited in Arizona, to Gavin Schachat who was my first host in South Africa, to our team leader Randy Brooks (glad you found what you were looking for today, by the way!!!) and others whose names I simply can’t remember this late at night. It was also a much-anticipated time to really begin to reflect on all that we have seen, smelled, felt, tasted, heard, enjoyed, hated, learned. And oh, boy, that is quite a lot in the past month.
As our trip has neared the end, many of the Rotarians and people have asked what our favorite part of the trip has been. Of course, everyone wants to hear that it is their club, their project, their natural wonder, their museum, their meal and the like. Those things are just the backdrop. My favorite thing about this trip cannot possibly be a single place or event. My favorites cannot be placed in order nor all be even completely remembered, but the favorites were the people and the special personal qualities that each of them showed to us that is a reflection of their own experiences, passions, culture, faith – and how all of these combined into our experience over this past month.
To Jackie, who was a GSE team member and leader, for setting up such a wonderful program for us, and for understanding our elation, and frustration, at all the situations that GSE teams find themselves.
To Gavin, for staying up late at night as well as in our travels around the Cape vicinity, to chat with me about anything and everything. I have an amazing respect for your kindness, patience, trustworthiness, diplomacy and strong work ethic and hope that I can even begin to emulate this in my life.
To the Walwyns, who were my “mom and dad” in Newlands. I’m sure it is interesting to have a stranger in your home who is basically the same age as your children, trying not to be too parenting yet still help and encourage during this experience, while also maintaining your work and other activities. Oh, and for your wonderful sense of humor that matches mine regarding the howling cats that serenaded us two nights in a row at the most inopportune time… who needs sleep, anyway!
To Peter, my host in Gordon’s Bay, whose enormous smile, generosity, enthusiasm and kindness I will never forget.
To Arne, for talking politics, environment, social issues, life, relationships, this trip and just about whatever came to mind for – and for being brave enough to speak about all of these things in English instead of German and somehow always getting your point across even if you couldn’t find the right word.
To Jaco Coetzee, his wonderful wife, and beautiful children for sharing their home, animals and good old home cooking with me. For also having the compassion to care for a baby gray “bok bok” that was brought to you rescued from being dinner for another animal, and knowing full well that he will probably be heading to a game farm, hoping he will survive in the semi-wild for awhile and being pragmatic enough to know full well that he may also be in a hunter’s sights soon enough. It is a wonderful example that you give to care about others and do the best you can for those in need even if you are not sure that your help will change the eventual fate. Just caring and helping makes a difference now, for that one… and that’s all you can do.
To the Rowans, for sharing your beautiful home, town, work ethic and perspectives with me – I wish I had a couple more days to spend with you, and also appreciate your support through the difficult family situation that I had to deal with from afar. You and several others in George were very kind in continuing to check with me to ensure that all was well at home (and it seems to be OK now!).
To Biffy, who was so kind to us – again, and again, and again! Thank you for helping us on our fun tours, kidnapping us for a braai, and for making us honorary Newlands members with our goofy costumes (go, team dominoes!)
To the Van Niekerks, whom we did not have the opportunity to thank properly because of the mixed-up conference scheduling, for their hospitality, for making so many outstanding arrangements for our team, and for good food, spirits and surrounding themselves with great friends and club members!
To Uncle Randalo. thank you for choosing us, for training us, for leaving us to our own devices and trusting us, for your model of generosity, for your weird faces and voices, for your help in ways that we know, and others that we don’t know yet. Our team has so many inside jokes after being together for a month, some are just facial expressions or gestures that only we’ll understand. Sometimes you were the running joke, but it was all good fun and you seemed to embrace it rather than fight it!
To my team members. What a fun, and varied, crew! I was the lone guy out, and you didn’t go too girly around me. All I can say is, do you have any biltong left, maybe a Savanna Dry? I think Barb and I owe Sarah a half-dozen meals since we ate all her food. I’ll be in the little voortrekker’s room. Do NOT go in there afterwards… your eyebrows might go wild. Watch out!!!!!! (clunk)
I know that I am forgetting many of our day hosts, many who I met at the club meetings, vocational days, tour days, and social events. I think it takes me an average of 3 or 4 times meeting a person to finally remember their name; but I know your faces and remember how welcome you made us feel.
I already miss some of the precious young faces that we met twice in Khayelitscha. This was a major perspective for me, that a tiny preschool with more than 70 can survive and thrive, with dirt floors, no insulation, very little shade and probably not a whole lot more money each month than we pay at home for care for our son. I don’t even know their names and can only begin to imagine the stories their young eyes have seen unfold in daily life, but they and those who care for them are my inspiration for wanting to do something to help in South Africa. In spite of their surroundings they still have much more than a glimmer of trust, hope, enthusiasm, and goodwill. I wish that everyone could meet these sweet kids.
This may not be appropriate or follow protocol, but I am disappointed that some who know they are here and could easily be brought right to their doorstep choose not to take that opportunity. As with many of the “bad parts of town” anywhere, there are problems. But my hope is that others will take the challenge to step outside the sphere of comfort that you enjoy, and get to know people that are not like you, to help them, to learn from them. I can only begin to understand why someone wouldn’t be willing to at least try visiting this preschool (or the probably thousands like it). Is there a fear that it will change your perspective, or force you to re-examineyour own habits and beliefs? It certainly did for us as a team, but I don’t think that a new perspective, or expanded perspective, can be a bad thing at all. There is nothing to be afraid of. They’re preschoolers. And my gosh, they are so cute.
I’ve decided that I hate saying goodbye. There’s a phrase that Sole, my host mom in Spain, told me when I was leaving after living with her family for several months– “hasta la próxima” – translated roughly as “until next time”, which is certainly a wonderful sendoff, but the unspoken and fully understood meaning behind that is with a mix of love, hope, anticipation, and perhaps even just a little bit of sadness or even fear that at some point there may not be a next time.
So, for everyone I have met on this trip, and to the country of South Africa - hasta la próxima… whether this is at your home, mine, or just in our memories. Thank you. It was a pleasure…
Hello to everyone who has been following our team’s GSE trip!
keep checking out the pictures, more being added as I type this:
http://photobucket.com/gsesouthafrica
After two weeks of not having any time to post, fighting with the blog website, and just being too tired to stay up and type, I had just about given up on all things internet, but if this gets posted, my faith in technology will have been restored…
I did not have the opportunity to properly thank our hosts in George, and greatly appreciated Ian and Ferdi Rowan and their wonderful hospitality, conversation and shuttling us around. From there we traveled on to Beaufort west where I was hosted by the Van Niekerk family. The area looked and felt so much like home in the little Karoo desert, not much water, and also far less people. The wildlife viewing opportunities were amazing! We are now at the District Conference where our team along with the other visiting groups are staying in a series of chalets, and we are approaching the end of our journey.
I think our team members have described many of our other specific experiences. So I will continue to let the pictures speak for themselves.
We have discovered so many peculiarities and interesting things – a South African vocab list:
Bakkie: pickup truck; lekker – a word that seems to combine good, great, awesome, my favorite, nice, pretty – really depends what you are talking about; koffietee: your choice of coffee or tea; bok: just about any kind of deer or buck; biltong: beef jerky; braai: barbecue; droewars: dried sausage (kind of like a slim jim); and much more that I forget off hand.
We have also discovered there are so many things that we have in common: the diversity of a nation; the diversity of landscape; the contrast between extreme wealth and extreme poverty; education efforts ranging from expensive and privileged to just barely there. A variety of wildlife. Beautiful sunrises and sunsets; a smile and wave which crosses all cultures; that even the simplest politeness and kindness can make the day!
With just two days to go, while I terribly miss my family and have had to feel like I could not help with some situations at home that normally I would jump into, it has been great still have something to look forward to – a 36 hour plus series of flights home, andthe smiling face of my wife and son! Can’t wait to get home and be able to rest in my own bed, see my puppies, eat some Mexican food, drink water on a regular basis, and the like. I am, however, looking forward to the last hurrah, dinner and a conference party tonight, our team’s presentation, seeing the South African team that visited Arizona and just recently arrived back here; and then our team heading back to Cape Town tomorrow with some of our previous hosts; and the next day, one last quick visit to one of the projects that we really enjoyed, and then hopping on the airplane!
My best to all – in Africa, at home in Arizona, and wherever else people are reading this around the world.
No, this is not a post about Chinese food. I’ll explain later.
I had another professional day with municipal staff, but this time of the small metro area of Overstrand which includes Hermanus where we are staying. This is a quaint seaside community that has just tens of thousands of residents during much of the year, but also has on the order of several hundred thousand people living in it during the summer months. So, the city government has to essentially plan infrastructure and services for the highest peak even though that capacity is only needed for a couple months of the year. Right now the town is fairly quiet and easy to navigate. We were able to sit in on what amounted to a mayor & council study session, followed a short while later by the actual mayor & council meeting. Quite a bit more of the work of the council is done in committees (they have approximately 20 council members as well as a city manager), so the meetings are somewhat a formality but enter many of their previous decisions regarding zoning and developments, major purchases and project expenditures, personnel matters, and the like into the record. I was struck by the highly professional staff combined with a very strong elected body, which research and compile very thorough results, projections and the like, and then take decisive action and move on. As with any community, I’m sure they are doing quite a lot, and have a lot more that they could or should do; but they seem to be doing a great job and by the time most matters get to the full council they have been fairly thoroughly vetted by the staff, council and community at large. We also toured several city public works, learning about a major road building project to allow much of the city-center traffic to bypass the area and allow for pedestrianization of the city’s coastal business district. Residents, businesses, and government seem very excited about the prospect of having more parking available, less through traffic, and better pedestrian-friendly amenities near their restaurants, shops, tourist amenities and the like. A lot of their challenges and projects sound very similar to Tucson, only everyone seems genuinely excited to see the city center being revitalized, even as continued growth continues around the edge of town.
One of the final stops, for both Barb and I was to one of the City of Hermanus waste transfer stations. This also happened to be right next door to a recycling center; the City does not presently have an actual recycling contract, so the bags of recycled items are left for a small group of women to sort informally, and then sell to the recycling center next door. I found out later that my other teammates Randy, Sarah, and Jenny also visited another landfill in a city nearby where even children were working alongside their moms (and to a much, much lesser extent, dads). Needless to say, none of them were as thrilled with the sickeningly sweet and sour smell of these sites as I was! It was, though, an interesting face to face visit with the reality that here people are willing to scavenge through the trash of others to eke out a very basic existence. Reality isn’t as pretty or as pleasant-smelling as it seems. Our trash, and the few recyclables we did separate, will likely be making their way to these ladies’ hands to sort… truly bittersweet to think of the smiling face that was looking at me as I watched her stooped over her pile of cardboard, and the other women as well.
We are presently being hosted by the Hermanus Rotary Club. I have the joy of staying with Jaco Coetzee and his wonderful wife, young daughter and son (who are just a bit older and younger than my son!). It is very nice being in a family home with kids running around, laughing, playing, crashing into things and crying, and their various dogs, cats, baby bok, and hamsters meandering through the house. Yes, a baby bok (buck), that is being rehabilitated. Imagine my surprise, but Jaco is a veterinarian so I guess I shouldn’t have been totally surprised. It is nice to feel comfortable, as if I am at my own, middle-class home for the first time since I've been here. We had a nice homemade chicken & potatoes with gravy dinner tonight, some good home cooked food for the weary traveler. All of this reminds me of how much I very much miss my wife and young son, but it is nice to be able to have a sense of normalcy for the first time on this trip. This town also seems beautifully ordinary with a mix of incomes, industries and the like. I love it!
In the past several days since my last post, we have continued to have a variety of professional, cultural, and social exchange opportunities here in South Africa, this time hosted by the Helderberg Basin Rotary clubs. I was hosted by Peter from the Gordon's Bay club. I was also excited to have a team member from the German team also staying at the same place. We had found out that the German team was just downstairs from us when we were at Newlands but didn't have the opportunity to meet them that day. The group is a lot of fun, and having a combined double exchange meant being able to share the experience with even more people! It's interesting seeing the perspectives of other visitors. We are all having a blast, seeing the sights, visiting with people in areas relating to our profession (my most recent professional visit, as well as my German room mate Arne, was to an environmental planner, that is working on community based improvement efforts in the townships - if you thought that planning for well-funded and extensively planned development efforts was difficult in Arizona or elsewhere on raw land, try cramming hundreds of thousands of people into squalid conditions, and then trying to renovate with literally dozens of constituent groups to please surrounding even the tiniest change in the area after it has developed very organically and out of the blood, sweat and tears of a generation of South Africans living in the township. The challenge is to create a plan that results in the highest aspiration, rather than the lowest common denominator...
Just yesterday we were brought to the small seaside town of Hermanus, and the local Rotarians actually left us - unattended - as a team in a home near the town's center. It is very much a quaint and pleasant little town, and a place that I know my wife would enjoy thoroughly with its laid-back atmosphere! Yesterday was "Freedom Day" in South Africa, a public holiday that means different things to different people in the country. For us, it was the first opportunity to be able to choose our own location for dining, to
I think that part of the charm of this town, is that it reminds us a lot of home for better or worse. We're sitting in "Mugg & Bean" Coffee Co. which is very starbucks-esque with inexpensive Wi-Fi, drinking coffee tea lemonade or whatever else we want. For the first time in two weeks, tonight we have nowhere to go, no name tag, no presentation to give... just us, as a team for this entire day, doing as much or as little as we like. I'm looking forward to getting back to our activities, but truly appreciate the opportunity to un-wind a little bit and be able to process our experiences of the trip, the good, the bad, the funny, the quirky, and share those experiences with our team. It's so great having a team that we can feel a level of comfort, trust, honesty even if we don't agree with each other fully, and at the same are able to have a lighthearted mood even when we're talking about very serious and important matters...
We're also listening and singing along to Christmas carols on the coffee place's music system... how funny!!! I guess it really is Christmas in April...
Miss everyone, and thanks for reading and supporting this great trip --
LOTS more pictures on the website,http://photobucket.com/gsesouthafrica
As I am writing this, Earth Day has just begun here. On the other side of the world, back at home it's still "yesterday". In celebration of Earth Day, a bit early, we enjoyed a relatively calm day of just a couple activities - first learning about the "Bushmen" - which is a somewhat degrading term for the San and other indigenous people who lived with the land, plants, animals and climate in the area. Oh, did I mention we also visited a nuclear power plant? I still need to digest all the information given to us, but am reassured that the site is doing its best and adheres to very strict internationally monitored safety and operational standards, similar to the Palo Verde site near Phoenix, of which I also heard a presentation about a month ago. It is interesting though, that I was actually able to be within 200 or 300 yards from a functioning nuclear reactor!
Tonight this American guy was given an outdated French 5 Francs coin, by an Englishman, at a the Melkbos (Milkbush) Rotary club in South Africa. Welcome to the global reach of Rotary.
Tomorrow, South Africans will be voting in another historically important national election, only their fourth since apartheid was abolished. It is a strong campaign by all sides, and interesting to see the tactics used by politicians, the opinions of the public, in a true multiparty system but one with an apparent majority and a potent group of varied runner-up parties that sometimes form a coalition as necessary. Oh, and alleged criminals potentially getting voted into office anyway. Tomorrow will be an interesting day, to see one of the world's youngest - and one of Africa's most stable - democracies, in action. The buzz is exciting!
Rewinding the clock a couple days, I had an outstanding day with Alistair Semple, a non-Rotary community leader in environmental matters in the Cape Town area. Through his contacts and expertise I was able to visit with someone who is managing invasive plant removal at the Table Mountain National Park (the enormous mountain in the center of Cape Town), visit a new recycling center which is under contract by Cape Town City Government for a pilot curbside recycling project (hand-sorting; no separate bin as of yet; many difficulties yet much enthusiasm); also visiting Ocean View secondary (high) school with an impressive principal and, while the school is in need of more resources certainly an energy that is contagious when I met with him; and ending the day with a visit to a community-based recycling, conservation, and jobs program. To say that they do so much more than even my own office's work - and with far less - is an understatement. Recycling, beach cleanup, invasive plant removal, school environmental education, litter cleanup, tree planting, the list goes on and on. I am always amazed that people in Cape Town are from so many other places, and choose to make this their home (it is, beautiful after all) and then dig in to the grittiest of the grit to help make the area shine as best as they can.
The Cape of Good Hope Rotary club also took us on an extensive tour to the Cape itself, far south - babboons, penguins, some kind of "bok" that I don't recall (a buck, or deer), ostriches, so much natural beauty of the mountains and ocean, two lighthouses, a winery, food, oceanside tea... it keeps on going, and we keep taking it in as a team!
I woke up this morning to the first substantial rain we've seen (it was very misty yesterday but beautiful, while we toured the beautiful Kirstenbosch gardens - I filled up my camera and ran the battery out in 4 hours). I also woke up to cats howling at each other, which I haven't heard in years!
Today reminds me that those who are reading this are probably lucky to have a roof over their heads that doesn't leak, enough food that they can eat what they want, and more importantly the opportunity to do something better for themselves and their family. It has been very interesting meeting with people involved in many different levels of community services and improvement - and I am struck by the strong, formalized planning, communications and implementation processes that they have in place - meanwhile there is a second tier where conditions are so bad that it is nearly impossible to actually make any long term plans (for the residents themselves and for the government as well).
Last night we were asked what our best moment of the trip was. Each project and activity we have visited thus far, has had a different impact on me, so it is hard to make a comparison. Some give me ideas for my own profession at home; others show how we can make a difference in the lives of those who are the most fragile in our societies. This is a package tour, folks!
Last night I finally was able to sleep for a good 6 hours. This trip has been so busy, to the point that the days seem to run together and I think that we have packed in at least a months' worth of activities into a week's time. That's Rotary - perhaps combined with South African - passion and efficiency at work! It's so energizing to be with our team, and on this fast-paced trip. They also keep us well-fed (though on a European schedule) so that keeps our engines running all day and well into the night.
The rainy weather today may force us to take a more leisurely approach to things. We'll see how the day gets improvised!
Because the blog site is a bit difficult to upload pictures to, I created a new site where all of my good or halfway decent pictures from the trip are now housed (along with some sent by our previous Rotary hosts) http://photobucket.com/gsesouthafrica
To Hanna: The "artistic doorway" photo you requested is included here. "Happy Days"! also, Penguins, ocean or seascape... I feel like I am checking these off very quickly but others are sort of tricky and have had to give myself new photojournalistic assignments. There are a couple (unpublished) pictures of trees that Peggy's painter friend in Alaska would appreciate.
These pictures also help to understand the spirit of the people here as well as the extreme contrasts.
I enjoyed immensely, my time with the Sea Point Rotary including my host Gavin Schachat! Yesterday we transferred to the other side of Table Mountain to continue our adventures, sharing and learning along the way.
We took tours of the Lavender Hill school (there is neither lavender, nor a hill), an under-resourced school in an area full of old apartment blocks that are ridden with crime, graffiti, litter and the like. Surprisingly, you see the extreme inequities in educational opportunities between less affluent versus wealthy neighborhood schools here, and a similar system in the Tucson metro area and across the US. The political and financial arguments are the same here, and with similar outcomes - some schools with high success, and other schools with terrible dropout rates and perceived as dangerous even though it looks like an ordinary normal school and schoolyard. But there is a glimmer of hope in these disadvantaged schools, as back at home.
We also visited the District 6 Museum (a "coloured" - mixed race - neighborhood which was completely leveled about decades ago, and was never rebuilt, with the exception of a few peripheral areas, and a University campus which also sits on land claimed by those that were forcibly removed. They took people's entire lives and literally knocked them over and filled in the bay with it (creating a new, upscale area that for better or worse is one of the highlights of Cape Town). I am now with Mike and Sheila Walwyn. They have a beautiful back yard, and I was greeted by two small dogs, two cats (one of which is usually shy but has taken a liking to me), and loud, honking birds of which I cannot remember the name but I had seen them as well.
We also visited the Rhodes memorial with a beautiful panoramic view of the urban sprawl of Cape Town (but not the city center which is hidden on the other side of the mountain. Rhodes, of the namesake Rhodes scholarship, Rhodesia now known as Zimbabwe, and many other modern colonial influences from the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Today I met up with Lew Botha, an environmental lawyer, and Alex Amponsah, who is studying on a Rotary scholarship here in Cape Town, (he hails from Maryland originally but is a resident of Austin, Texas normally; he and his family immigrated from Africa when he was young, and he has also traveled the world).
We took a tour of additional City of Cape Town facilities meeting more staff and some familiar friendly faces, learning more in depth about the environmental plans for the city and 2010 FIFA world cup, and getting more in depth in one of my favorite areas, recycling! Now I believe we're heading out the door for a walk in a nearby park area.
My new hosts, Mike and Sheila Walwyn, have already made me feel at home! Their two dogs and two cats are a bonus, since I am missing my two dogs at home. Oddly the shyest of the cats has taken a liking to me!
My debit card was not working yesterday, adding a bit of frustration to the otherwise outstanding trip. I'll try to withdraw money this afternoon...
Lots of love, hugs & kisses to my family... Wish you were here!
Today I met a physically and mentally challenged lady who cannot speak words but says more with her expressions and smile than I ever could. I smelled lavender harvested by her cohorts in a group facility - the best smell I have ever smelled, by people that would ordinarily have been discarded by society. (They make recycled paper too, a plus in my book!)
Today a two-year old girl abandoned by her family walked over to me and I picked her up, and melted when she smiled at me. We got to put her and her siblings down for their afternoon nap.
Today I saw a four year old girl, victim of sexual abuse by her half-brother (who had probably also been abused), putting her baby doll toy in a stroller, putting a blanket over it and walking it around.
I met a slew of preschool-age children in a shantytown far north of Cape Town, that in spite of their seemingly horrific living conditions in leaky tin shacks with no running water, were happily playing in a schoolyard no bigger than a small backyard, singing songs, smiling, teaching us new handshakes (and, thumb shakes), and getting ready for their meager lunch.
I had a wonderful lunch with our team and a few hosts (about 10 people) compliments of one of our Rotary hosts, on a beautiful hillside looking out on all that is good and bad about Cape Town. A meal that was by our standards very inexpensive yet very filling, and would have probably fed all the people we had met today for the entire day if they had the money instead of us.
I called my wife and son. In tears. In appreciation of how lucky we are. I miss them dearly and will look forward to seeing them in a few weeks. In awe of the resilience of the human spirit. But I know that I need to be here right now, in this place, in this experience. Africa has already changed me, in ways that I recognize and probably in ways that I will never begin to understand.
As of right now our team has officially been in Cape Town for two days. It also simultaneously seems like we've been here forever since the Rotary members and their fellow Cape Town residents have made us feel so welcome! Yesterday myself, Randy and Jenny were taken by Gavin (my host) on a short drive to Hout Bay along a beautiful mountain road (that is presently closed to traffic due to boulder falls) - little did we know that we would be right back in the area tonight to give our first presentation about ourselves and Arizona, to the Hout Bay Rotary club who were also great!
Gavin has been quite gracious, staying up late chatting with me and letting me use the computer to keep in touch with my family each night. I think we are both staying up far too late for our own good, but I am glad to have the opportunity to get his perspective and also to be able to keep in touch with those whom I love and miss very much! His hospitality and that of other Rotarians makes this trip so much easier
The first day we also took a trip to Robben Island as a team, to see where Nelson Mandela had been incarcerated as a political prisoner for nearly 20 years. While the jail cell he was in was bigger than I had imagined, certainly it was a very thought-provoking scene to see Cape Town off in the distance (9 miles or so) and yet to be inside and near a prison that is a symbol of all that was wrong with a country; it is also now very much a place of healing. The tours of the island are given by individuals who were themselves imprisoned there. The mood was lightened by the fact that I also saw little penguins on the island, a whale in the ocean, and a sea lion and otter back at the harbor. A very eventful first day.
I also have fallen in love with Biltong, which is the South African version of beef jerky. I think I purchased and ate a half kilo of it on my own, after Sarah gave me a small sample of it. For those of you who know my love of all foods containing salt, this is it, except so much easier to eat than regular beef jerky!
On the second day, Barb and I met with officials from the City of Cape Town who work on development planning, the World Cup soccer stadium building, habitat conservation, managing and improving the conditions in settlements and townships (basically, shantytowns on the outskirts of town and in various other places). It is a land of contrasts, and still a certain level of inequality but there is also so much good being done and particularly through Rotary to try to make conditions better. What a land of contrasts, with wealth and poverty right next to each other...
Tomorrow we will be visiting the Nonceba child rape crisis center (please take the time to Google this, and watch the 20 minute long video; I am sad to say that such a place has to exist here but it shows the dire situation that needs to be reversed before literally millions of Africans can lead what anyone who is reading this would consider a lower-economic class life beyond just managing to survive until the next day. That's all for now, I'm sure plenty more adventures and thought-provoking images to come.
Please take care all, and remember to help someone who is less fortunate than you. Every day. "Each one teach one". In other words, pay it forward!
I work for Tucson Clean & Beautiful, a non-profit environmental education organization. I am married and have a 3 year old son. I was born and raised in Arizona.
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