"There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it"

When I think about this quotation from Hellen Keller, I often reflect upon a trip that I took in the summer of 1998 to Tanzania. Myself and eight other girls were chosen by the school to travel to Tanzania and teach at the Maasae Girls School in Monduli. The trip required a year's worth of preparation and fund raising and when the 11th June finally came we were prepared for it.

We arrived the next day after a long flight and met the girls that we would be so closely involved with for the next two and a half weeks. I immediately noticed how poorly dressed they were for the chilly night air and how skinny and small their bodies were. They obviously did not possess the same privileges that us "foreign girls" had.

The following two weeks were both mentally and physically challenging since we had to adjust to new living conditions and a new culture. Our day began at 6:30am and ended at 10:00pm and included 9 straight hours of teaching. The food was simple, staple beans and if we were lucky rice.

There were times when I felt like giving up but as time progressed the days went quicker. Even though I learned something new every day, I think that my last day in Tanzania was the most poignant. Our dinner was a feast compared with the Maasai's average diet: beans, rice, bananas, oranges, meat and sodas! They had decorated our table with flowers and a tablecloth, and although the table was simple by our standards I felt like royalty. They adorned us with beads necklaces, rings and bracelets that they'd made themselves and wrote us an almost never ending amount of letters and cards expressing how much they would miss us.

The following morning as we left the tear-filled eyes of forty grateful girls, I knew that I had been a candle in their lives. Those girls live in a society where women are physically degraded and not allowed the right of education. We spread a type of educational light by physically interacting with the girls ourselves instead of simply sending money. This experience has not only allowed me to shine a light on those Maasai girls' but has also shone a light on myself and has illuminated the simple things in life that we all take for granted.