Places that shaped the journey
Some places became home. Some opened doors. Some introduced new communities and ways of seeing. Others challenged what I thought I knew. Together, they have shaped how I understand belonging, opportunity, community, and the work we build with others.
This is not a list of stamps in a passport. It is a record of places that left something behind.
Roots
Before travel became movement across countries, place was already shaping identity.
Dago Kogelo
Belonging. Western Kenya is where community first became more than an idea: family, neighbors, teachers, elders, and young people making life possible for one another.
Ranen & Sony
Movement. Childhood roads, school, markets, family transitions, and the everyday discipline of moving between village and town taught me that place can shape how we learn to adapt.
Rapogi
Formation. Boarding school meant distance from home, routine, responsibility, and learning how to find your footing inside a larger world.
Nairobi
Exposure. Nairobi widened the horizon through education, entrepreneurship, rugby, friendships, work, and the experience of learning how to make a life in a city that rarely waits for you to be ready.
Crossings
Some places changed the journey because they made a different life imaginable.
Ann Arbor, Michigan
The first crossing. In the winter of 2008–2009, America stopped being a distant idea and became a place I could experience: snow, unfamiliar streets, new conversations, and the realization that a story rooted in Dago could travel into rooms far from home.
Evansville, Indiana
Belonging somewhere new. Graduate school brought me to Evansville, but the city became much more than a degree. Teaching, rugby, university life, friendships, and community work made Indiana another place where relationships turned unfamiliar ground into home.
Louisville, Kentucky
Learning across difference. A university diversity trip and conference became part of a larger education in how people enter difficult conversations, listen across experience, and grow through encounters beyond their usual circles.
Greater Orlando, Florida
Convergence. Florida is home today: a place where higher education, youth development, entrepreneurship, environmental work, organizational strategy, multicultural community life, and the Kenyan and African diaspora continue to meet.
Places that widened the view
Not every place became home. Some mattered because a short experience made the world feel larger.
San Andrés Semetabaj, Guatemala
Learning by listening. A university immersion and microfinance consultancy with Mission Guatemala and local coffee farmers reinforced something community work had already taught me: entering another community should begin with curiosity, humility, and attention to what people already know.
Miami, Florida
Ideas and cultures in motion. Miami appears in more than one chapter of the journey—from personal exploration to an Ashoka U gathering that connected university changemakers working across different institutions and communities.
The Caribbean
Seeing beyond the postcard. Nassau and Paradise Island, St. Thomas, San Juan, and Grand Turk were part of a 2014 journey through places often reduced to scenery. What stayed with me was the reminder that every destination is also somebody’s home, history, economy, and everyday life.
Las Vegas, Nevada
Sport as a passport. Rugby helped open doors to people and places I might not otherwise have encountered, including a 2013 USA Sevens experience in Las Vegas.
More places that widened the view
Some experiences belong here even when the archive does not yet hold a full story for them.
Cuba
Experiencing Cuba added another reference point for understanding how a place can be very different when encountered directly rather than understood only from a distance.
Greece & Turkey
Travel through Greece and Turkey added a Mediterranean chapter to the journey—places where history, culture, movement, and contemporary life meet in distinctive ways.
Tanzania · Uganda · Rwanda
Experiencing neighboring East African countries deepened my understanding of the region as connected but never interchangeable, with each place carrying its own communities, histories, landscapes, and ways of life.
Yellowstone
Yellowstone added another kind of learning: the scale of landscape, distance, and the relationship between people and the natural world.
Denver & Colorado
Colorado belongs in the journey through both personal travel and later relationships and work connected to youth and community.
Dallas, Texas
Dallas is another confirmed American city experience, including a multi-day visit in 2019.
Along the way
Washington · Salt Lake City · New York · Austin · Cleveland · Atlanta · Macon · Providence · Minneapolis–St. Paul
Some journeys were for conferences, university visits, community relationships, work, sport, or simply time away. They do not all need their own chapter to matter. Each added another reference point for understanding how people build community, identity, and opportunity in different places.
Returning & continuing
Travel has never felt like a straight line away from home. Some of the most meaningful journeys are returns—with different questions, different responsibilities, and different eyes.
Dago & western Kenya
Returning keeps the story grounded. The village is not a symbol or a memory; it remains a living community of family, relationships, work, change, disagreement, hope, and responsibility.
Mombasa, Kenya
A 2025 journey between Nairobi and Mombasa added another layer to experiencing Kenya not as one story, but as many regions, histories, cultures, and ways of life within the same country.
What did this place teach me?
That question matters more to me than how many places appear on a map. The journey continues through the people, communities, questions, and responsibilities that each place leaves behind.