Africare Banquet

I flew back from Africa (Niger to Mali to Senegal to New York to Washington DC) and had three hours to recover and dress up for the Africare banquet at the Washington Hilton. It was quite a night. I'm glad I was able to fight the jet lag and stay awake. Collin Brown, a fellow board member and super volunteer, flew in to join me and the African Well Fund organization to sponsor a table.

Two great events of the evening.

1. Meeting Colin Powell


Yeah, so, this was a highlight of MY LIFE. It was short and completely unoriginal - "It's very nice to meet you," was all I could come up with - but it was certainly an honor to meet the man. I wish I could tell you that Colin Powell is my new best friend, that we spent hours together talking about international relations and development, about Africa and about social justice. But that's for the next time I meet with him.

2. Meeting the Vice President of Sierra Leone

I live in a dream world where I had the privilege of visiting the poorest nation in the world, of interacting with the communities and working with them on development projects - and then coming immediately to Washington to actually meet one of the most prominent leaders of Sierra Leone -- and having the honor of telling him how wonderfully received I was in his country, how dearly I miss it already and how thankful I am to see someone offering such strong leadership for a broken, but healing nation.

The Vice President invited me to join him the following day to meet with him and his delegates. I changed my flight to make such a thing happen.

3. Oh, okay, so there were three great events of the evening. I met Dave Chappelle. To be completely honest, I had no idea who this guy was, but Collin did and he was excited. I don't have cable, so I don't know these things!




Jena