Cordelia Hart
Life is the most beautiful fairy tale of all.
St. Lucia, South Africa
Ever since I was a little girl, Africa has always appealed to me. Why? I am not quite sure. At the very surface it seemed to be a place with collections of stories that held vulnerability and hope. Underneath, even from a small age I knew that there was more to the story. Inside of the crippling pages and bound together at the spine was the pursuit of strength to rebuild, tradition and most importantly the most quintessential elements of what it is to be human. At nineteen years old I set off on my first international flight to Durban, South Africa. There I would begin to fulfill this lifelong dream of giving back. Throughout my lifetime I have been given so much, sometimes without even asking. It is my duty, as a world citizen to give what I have been given by tenfold.
At a crèche in rural St. Lucia, I found just how capable my heart was at loving.
In the open safari, I wore no mask, for the first time in my life. As vulnerable and raw as I could become I opened myself up to ten girls.
I set off to Africa to try and find myself. Instead, I found ten monumental, extraordinary pieces of my heart.
 Being nineteen and having this feeling for forever; long hair to whip around, welcome initiation into South Africa by drinking a mixture of six types of beers from a bowl, learning from strangers. Loving these strangers. I need this lifetime to always be this wild. |  |  |
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 |  "Sing the melody in my heart ... " I am six, I am eight, I am ten again, in a baptism of sunbeams and folded limbs, freckled cheek pressed to the pillowcase, smelling of rain. Somewhere inside, I am still this child, seeing the world with wide-eye wonder, forever free, and wild. |  They say the Zulu are people of heaven. |
 |  In volunteering I want to plant a seed of imagination in the places where imagination has been lost to war or poverty. To make a home in hearts, for childlike wander, creativity and play. I want to go and fuel the dreams of those without means. To see their dreams blaze brighter and higher than the sun and the moon. I wish, so passionately, to spark the imagination of those burdened with hopelessness. For I don't want to see any nation, any people, lost in darkness. |  |
 |  |  Playground hugs |
Saturday, January 19, 2012
Today is the last day with Ben and the girls. When you put a group of strangers in a foreign land with extreme conditions, you quickly learn how to trust and rely on people.
It's funny because I cannot name ten people from back home I trust completely with my life but I can name you ten people from the other side of the world: Ben, Ali, Brit, Iz, Tess, Rikki, Rhi, Jaime, Bronwyn, and Ashleigh.
I came on this short journey in search of myself. Instead I found ten beautiful souls and ten remarkable humans. IT was then through each of them was I able to collect small pieces of myself.
To think in our family of eleven there were eleven stories. All unique from one another and yet each of those stories led us to getting on an airplane, allowing it to take us thousands of miles away to uncharted territory. Surrendering to the journey.