One Student's Experience With Learning AFAR

AFAR

Watch this video to see one student's experience with Learning AFAR, a non-profit program in partnership with GLA and AFAR Media.  Learn more about Learning AFAR: https://glaif.org/learning-afar-fund/  ---- CONNECT WITH AFAR Afar.com is a digital and print magazine that publishes travel tips, guides, news, and stories: https://www.afar.com  Get updates on the latest articles, travel news, and more from AFAR by signing up for the AFAR newsletter: https://afar.com/newsletters  Follow AFAR on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AfarMedia Follow AFAR on Twitter: https://twitter.com/afarmedia Follow AFAR on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/afarmedia Follow AFAR on Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/afarmedia  -~-~~-~~~-~~-~- Please watch: "If You're Not Doing This, You Might Be Missing Out on Free Travel"  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKjnsEP9xww -~-~~-~~~-~~-~-

Transcript

00:00 [MUSIC]

00:07 Around when I was six years old, my dad obviously, not with the right people,

00:11 wrong time, just wrong group of people, that's what he always telling me.

00:15 And he got a life sentence in prison.

00:17 You can't let a situation put you at a disadvantage from the start.

00:22 That's what my mom always told me.

00:24 There would be some times where you kind of felt anger.

00:26 There would be some times where you kind of felt just neglect, and

00:29 you would feel like, the world's getting mad at me.

00:31 Why would they do this to me?

00:33 Why would they do this to my family?

00:34 And you would feel yourself kind of going off the wrong path.

00:38 I started doing bad in school.

00:39 I started getting into discipline issues.

00:40 There's been times where people can tell.

00:44 This kid didn't have a father in his life growing up.

00:46 My mom talked to me.

00:47 She said, what motivates you?

00:48 What gets you on your feet?

00:50 What makes you wanna be better?

00:51 As I got older, I realized it's either sink or swim.

00:55 It's either you're gonna let this situation put you down, or

00:58 you're gonna allow it to motivate you and lift you up.

01:00 Kinda going from, I don't have a father, that motivates me.

01:04 That's before the Ghana trip.

01:05 That was me being just this kid from New Orleans East,

01:09 with not a lot of opportunities, not a lot of resources, just his mom and

01:13 his family members, trying to make it out in life, basically.

01:16 The Ghana trip, it was just crazy.

01:20 I mean, for lack of a better word, it was crazy.

01:22 I mean, it taught me so much.

01:25 It opened my eyes to what the possibilities are in the world.

01:28 It opened my eyes to what I can do in life.

01:33 Actually, I didn't quite understand the magnitude of what I was doing.

01:36 It didn't hit me until about a week after the trip.

01:38 None of my friends had been out of the country before,

01:40 not even thinking outside of the continent.

01:42 So for me to have done that, it went from I'm stuck in this ground,

01:46 let me motivate my way out, to now I'm out, let's just motivate even higher.

01:50 And so I realized that so

01:52 many possibilities in the world, I can't be stuck in this little corner that I was

01:57 always in.

01:57 I have to branch out, I have to connect with people,

02:00 I have to do things that I never thought of doing.

02:03 You're not the only person going through what you have to go through.

02:06 You're not the only person dwelling in this situation.

02:08 There's millions and millions of other people that have it worse than you.

02:12 I just realized that.

02:13 I can't dwell in my corner when there's other people out here in Ghana, Africa,

02:18 who can barely even afford to do half the things that I do, but

02:22 they're happier than 90% of the people that I know.

02:25 Going from New Orleans where you barely have anybody in your neighborhood we can

02:29 communicate with, to an entire village of people that we would play soccer after

02:34 we go on adventures.

02:35 We would literally, when we went to the schools,

02:38 the kids would just be so accepting to us.

02:39 They would wanna learn from us.

02:41 That was a surprise for me.

02:42 I didn't think I would like teaching at all, but I actually ended up loving it,

02:45 especially in that aspect.

02:47 That was beautiful, man.

02:48 That, I remember the first day I actually, I took a deep breath watching everybody

02:52 just play over the sunset.

02:54 And I was like, wow, that's such a grateful thing to be a part of.

02:57 I couldn't envision me, what, two years ago,

03:03 when I was going through such a tough time in life.

03:05 Now I'm looking at the beautiful side of the other world,

03:07 the beautiful side of Africa, the beautiful side of humanity.

03:11 And so that was just an eye-opening experience, and

03:15 the knowledge that I got from that trip was incredible.

03:18 These trips by learning afar are just so important.

03:21 I mean, I feel like if I had a couple of my friends,

03:24 some of them come from single parent households, some of them come from

03:26 households where they don't have a mom, or they don't have a dad, or

03:29 the younger brother got involved in an accident.

03:31 I feel like they would have somewhere into the same feeling that I have after

03:34 the Ghana trip, just enlightened, just blessed,

03:38 just feeling so grateful for the things that I do have here.

03:42 You never realize how many things you take for

03:44 granted until you do not have it.

03:46 When I got back home and kinda realized, I have it pretty good,

03:49 even in the situation that I'm in.

03:51 And so trips like that are just so important for that reason.

03:55 It's in your blood to wanna stay in comfort, wanna stay at home,

03:59 wanna take the easy way out.

04:01 But life has so many different things to offer.

04:03 And so taking a trip to Ghana, or taking a trip to Peru, or taking a trip

04:07 across the world to somewhere you never thought you would be,

04:10 is a part of life that you should definitely experience.

04:12 Everyone should.

04:13 [MUSIC]

04:23 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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