Once upon a time, a little Maria was fascinated by Curious George and all of the wacky adventures he got up to. "Curious George goes to the Zoo", "Curious George goes to the Hospital", "Curious George goes to the Beach". Well, if that little monkey could go on so many adventures, so could Maria!
Hiya all, and welcome to Maria Goes to Africa! Here you'll be able to read about all of my adventures. I'm not quite as cute as that little monkey, but hopefully I'm almost as loveable.
In case your curious about who I am and how I got here, welp, I'm Maria! I was dropped on my parents doorstep by a stork a while back (that's how babies happen, right?), and they took me in and raised me to be the weird little "human" that I am today. But let's skip forward a few years...
I somehow became set on the idea of joining the Peace Corps in the 6th grade, and at the same time developed an intense fascination with all things Africa. The experience of immersing myself in an entirely new culture and environment while simultaneously doing something that could potentially help other people has always been an ideal for me.
I graduated from Marblehead High School in 2009, and went to McGill University where I majored in International Development (focus on Agriculture and Environment), with minors in Environment, Management, and Field Studies.
Volunteering had been an important part of my life throughout highschool, but became more of a passion during university when I joined a student-run organization called Borderless World Volunteers (BWV). Through BWV, I was able to have my first international volunteering experience in 2011, in a rural village in Western Kenya. That was the beginning of "Maria Goes to Africa": a convenient way to communicate with friends, family, and fellow BWV members back in Montreal.
Luckily for me, "Maria Goes to Africa" didn't stop there. In 2013, I participated in McGill's Canadian Field Studies in Africa (CFSIA) program, which allowed me to travel to Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania along with 34 other students and several McGill professors, while taking a full semester's worth of courses. After the program, I stayed in Zanzibar working for a small NGO called Mikunguni Youth Development Organization (MYDO), where I helped with organizational development and jumpstarted an environmental awareness program.
September 11th, 2013 begins the next leg of my African adventures... the adventure that I've been dreaming of and preparing for since middle school. I'll be heading off to Cameroon, where I'll be serving in the Peace Corps as an Environmental Education Agent for 27 months.
I hope that my blog will help to serve three main purposes: 1) informing my friends and family of where I am and what I'm doing, 2) helping to answer any potential questions that future Peace Corps Volunteers (or anyone else interested in international development) may have, and 3) sharing new ideas and pieces of cultures from a pocket of the world that people back home may not get a chance to experience.
Enjoy, and never hesitate to contact me if you have any questions (or just to share the love!).
