It’s been exactly a year since I landed in Africa. A year and a day from the start of this journal. So much has transpired – victories and defeats, joys and sorrows, beginnings and ends. Yesterday, scrawled onto the wall of an elevator I saw “Love Overpowers”.  A fitting reminder of the great weight that this idea, this emotion, this action, carries in each of our lives. For love we lift one another out of our swamps. For love we tell difficult truths which end relationships. For love we travel around the world in search of answers. For love I would lay down my life.

Looking back is a great burden, looking forward is a mysterious joy, but existing in today, in all it has to offer, is how to have a life worth living.

May I become worthy of the respect of my peers, grounded in a foundation of truth so that one day, many years from now, people may run their fingers over the smooth cold stone of whatever remains and say to themselves ‘this was a man who taught men how to see, who treated every woman as a jewel, and showed children that there will always be great wonder around you – sometimes you just have to hunt for it’.