It started on April Fool’s Day, 16 years ago, with a bunch of students watching Tom Hanks movies on a double decker couch in Kalamazoo. (I know right?!) They enjoyed the day so much, they did it every year after that
I never imagined a point in my life where I would have the ability to travel across the globe and speak with organizations affecting people’s lives at such a profound level. Yet, that’s exactly where I found myself this past July…
It’s one thing to hear about classrooms with 200 students, but it’s another to visit one. While at Kakuma Refugee Camp we spent time in a Grade 3 classroom packed with 200 students. There wasn’t so much as a chair or brick for them to sit on. all of Kakuma’s 24 primary schools are overcrowded.
The 15th annual International Tom Hanks Day was celebrated on the 07 April by more than 500 revellers. Everything was what it promised to be: loads of fun and fellowship, clips from Tom’s movies, Tom Hanks chants, a Tom Hanks shop, a costume contest, Tom Hanks memorabilia raffle, a band called what else, The Hanksters
If you told me on April Fool’s Day 2004 that a simple joke would result in me traveling to Zambia in Southern Africa, I would have said, “The joke’s on you pal”. But sometimes, life takes you down unexpected paths.
