On Travel and Experiential Education...

When I walked through the iron gate and into the front hall of our cozy house on the corner, the ripe smell and noisy crowd were unfamiliar. The house served as my safe zone - my mama’s huge and embracing arms welcomed me home each day and gave me the quiet I needed to process a day filled with Xhosa, lamb skulls, questions, smiles, and stares. That day, however, did not provide the quiet and warmth that I needed after a tiring day. Instead the warmth that filled the house was that of family coming together and slaughtered goat intestines being cooked on the stove. Were it not for the six goats, bare and legs flung up to the ceiling as if running in heaven, I might not have known the peculiar smell floating out of the kitchen area. That day the complicated and loving wide circle of family I was welcomed into rivaled the complicated family structure I had at home. The unfamiliarity was familiar at the same time - the two months I had spent living in Newanga Township, Port Elizabeth, South Africa, had made the feelings of unfamiliar and uncomfortable a way of life rather than an anomaly. As I wove my way through the crowd I found my mama and she gurgled a deep laugh and cooed “Oh Kelsey” in her loving and protective way. Her smile embraced me first, but the enveloping hug that followed was all that I needed to feel at peace.

I learned more from my Mama than I did from many of the teachers I have had in my life. It was not in a four wall classroom, but in our little home nestled among other homes on a small street, that gave me insight into the concept of Experiential Education.

A dear teacher to my heart and my ethos, my Mama will forever remain as a woman who guided me not just in the Xhosa language and culture, but in how to live in a diverse and complicated world.

-Kelsey Sullivan, Co-founder of SEED Academy