I’ve got to admit…sitting down to write this blog post is daunting. If you follow me on Instagram, you know that last week I accepted a job offer and I’m now beginning a new chapter of life. But it’s not exactly as simple as just telling you what the new job is. To me, there’s a whole background that is necessary to share so that you truly understand my enthusiasm over my new position. And there’s also quite a bit of hesitation that comes along with sharing it. If we’re being honest, I keep coming up with ways to distract myself from writing this because I’m procrastinating to the fullest extent. Since I’ve started typing this paragraph, I have: checked my mailbox, opened boxes on my porch, gotten up to grab a Bubly water, gone to the pantry to mindlessly snack on marshmallows and Honey Nut Cheerios, responded to some emails, started and then stopped a movie after two minutes, scrolled Instagram, etc. Suffice it to say that I’m actually quite nervous.

To start, I’ll share an anecdote that set me on the course that eventually lead to this job…

Despite my now laser-focused ambitions, I haven’t always been this way. In fact it wasn’t actually too long ago that I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. During freshman orientation in college (now 13 years ago), I walked up to the table where I was supposed to declare my major and since I still hadn’t decided, I sort of blurted out Graphic Design. I still don’t understand what possessed me to say that, and I’m even more surprised that I didn’t correct myself and say something else. So Graphic Design it was. And for the next year and a half I actively failed at trying to be an artist. I felt like the odd man out in every single class. My peers were all super talented and I just did not belong. Not only was I not good at anything I did, but I also knew this wasn’t the road I was supposed to be on.

As part of my required courses, I had to take a Photography class. One day in this class, our teacher showed us a documentary that changed the course of my life forever. The documentary was about James Nachtwey, a photojournalist and war photographer. He’s known for the unforgiving and unapologetic way he takes photos of pain, deep sorrow, egregious wrongs and extremely harsh realities. He frequently gets asked how he can do what he does and very succinctly answers, “If I don’t show you what’s happening across the world from you, how will you know? But because I can show you, it can move you into action and something might be done about it.” I don’t know how else to explain it…call it a God whisper, call it a self-realization or a lightbulb going off…but something clicked inside of me and all of a sudden I saw the rest of my life. I knew what I needed to do. Immediately after class was over, I walked myself straight over to the registrar’s office and changed my major to Journalism (communication is the beginning and end of all things and I knew it would set me up for success later on) with a minor in Political Science. I’m worthless with a camera so I knew I couldn’t do what he did, but I knew that day and every day after that I had to use my best skills to make a positive impact on this world and to do what others aren’t able or willing to do.

Around this same time, I was forming a huge passion for issues in Africa. I think it originally began during the Invisible Children campaign to make Joseph Kony a famous household name. If you’re not familiar with this, Invisible Children is a nonprofit organization that seeks to end the practice of kidnapping children and turning them into soldiers, which is a prevalent practice amongst rebel groups across Africa. Joseph Kony is the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group that is extremely well known for using child soldiers – and is still active today. Back when I was in college, Invisible Children was working to rescue these children from the LRA’s grip and reunite them with their families. Part of their campaign in the United States was to raise awareness and the strategy was to popularize the name Joseph Kony by creating a mock presidential campaign for him. The theory was that when someone runs for president in the US, they become a globally known name and so if they could create a campaign to the same scale, they could make Joseph Kony so famous that people could no longer turn a blind eye to his atrocious crimes. I went to screenings of Invisible Children movies, I donated online, I bought a ton of tshirts for me and my college friends, I helped plaster campaign posters around my city, etc.

But really, at the end of the day, what happened was that I started to care. I started to become aware of what was happening in the world around me and James Nachtwey’s words played on repeat in my head. I began to wonder: What can I do about this? How can I make a difference? How could I set myself up to do something about this not just in a passionate-college-kid type way, but in a real tangible way?

Shortly after this, in 2011, I took my first trip to Africa. I spent two weeks in Malawi, in a very remote village called Chikombe. It was that trip where Africa became part of my soul. I still describe to people the feeling of first getting off the teeny tiny puddle-jumper type airplane I arrived in from Nairobi, Kenya. Yes, sure, there were armed guards with AK47s lining the tarmac…but all I could feel was that amazing warm heat, I could smell sweet fruit and yesterday’s rainstorm and it felt like I had just arrived somewhere my heart had been trying to get to for its whole life. I was asked to go on this trip to photo-document it as it was the inaugural visit of a new nonprofit that had just purchased their plot of land where they would build an orphanage, a school, a community feeding center, etc. We laid the foundational bricks to these buildings, but more than that we started to form the foundational relationships with the local villagers. I wasn’t part of the nonprofit and knew I probably wouldn’t be back with them, but it felt like such an honor to photograph everything that happened and to be a part of it.

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When you travel to these super remote parts of Africa, there are just so many thoughts that plague you, or at least they did me. How had I been living my little sheltered life so comfortably before now without knowing or caring what was going on halfway across the world from me? Now that I knew about it and had seen these people and truly known them, spending time in their homes cooking with them and eating meals on their dirt floor with them, how could I go back home and turn my back on them? How do I make the transition going back home to mass consumerism and excess of everything right at my fingertips? Will I move on with my life and forget the dire needs of the people I met or will it stick with me enough that I will commit to doing something about it?

I came back home but I never forgot. It stayed with me so much that I decided to pursue a Masters degree in International Relations with a focus on African issues. I spent my first semester in DC at American University and my first elective I chose was Peacebuilding in Africa. I dove deep into my education. I soaked up everything like a sponge. The hardships that are so deeply rooted in the African continent are no easy task to tackle and I knew that on my own I would never be able to achieve anything, especially if I didn’t understand it historically. But I envisioned a world where I could enter into a profession in International Relations and then have a tangible impact and *actually* be able to do something about it on an institutional level.

In 2014 I went back to Africa, this time going to South Africa. I didn’t go with a group, it was just me myself and I that decided to go work at a center for refugees, providing after school educational programs in English, Math and Science for refugee children along with black South African children who were behind in these subjects as a generational result of apartheid when it was illegal for their parents to be taught these subjects. Simultaneously, I helped provide free AIDS testing and counseling in the huge slums of Cape Town. It was the trip of a lifetime. I met so many unbelievable people. I’m still in regular contact with one of the men I worked with at the center. I got very close with him and his family, even attending Sunday church services with them – which were half in English, half in Xhosa (an African click language). My relationship with Africa deepened on that trip. My desire to be a part of sustainable change grew. I went back home and I finished my Masters degree. Every research paper I did was on conflict diamonds, child soldiers, peace treaties, refugee migration, offshore drilling in the Niger Delta, the politics of economic development, etc. I studied and studied and studied about African issues. And then, yes, I also studied and studied and studied about nuclear security issues (LOL) – if you follow me on Instagram you know that all too well. What can I say, I’m multifaceted!

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Essentially, over the past ten years of my life, I’ve been working towards an invisible goal. I didn’t know what it would be, but I knew that I could get there. And I’m wildly, over the moon, excited to finally say…I’m there.

This week I accepted a job with a nonprofit organization that works on the water crisis in sub-Saharan Africa. Since 2008, this company has changed the lives of over 1 million people that now have access to clean water and sanitation. To put it into perspective, the water crisis claims the lives of 3.4 million people a year and so the work that this organization is doing is not just wildly successful, but it is also statistically astounding and I cannot wait to be a part of it, starting next week. My specific role is in the strategic partnerships department which means that I will be responsible for maintaining old and forging new relationships with international institutions, NGOs, multilateral banks, etc. to work on clean water initiatives, policies, funding and more. Basically, I’ll be using my degree to make a positive impact in this world – and more specifically in Africa – which is basically all I’ve ever wanted.

{Oh, and just to throw in a WILD story to tie my time in Africa into this job in a very specific way, I present to you the following story. Remember that trip to Malawi I told you about? Well, this village – although extremely remote – had a clean water pump. The images I’ll post next are some of the local kids very proudly showing me how to use it. When interviewing for this job recently, I decided to ask what part of Malawi this company worked in and the answer? Salima, Malawi. The village I was in, Chikombe, is in Salima, Malawi. God works in mysterious was, yes He does.}

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Why do I hesitate to share this part of my life with you all? Well, simply put, the juxtaposition of the harsh realities of the world doesn’t seem to groove very well with a fashion and lifestyle blog. It has been so incredibly hard to reconcile in my mind how I could possibly continue to post about designer fashion, Amazon finds, shopping guides, home design, luxury travel and everything else I post about while also wanting to share with you all my new job which might include images and stories of my time spent in Africa from time to time. Fashion blogging is essentially the height of American consumerism and the last thing I want to do is not acknowledge that I’m aware the two don’t mesh well together. For the last week, I’ve even been considering whether or not I want to continue blogging for this very reason. But here is what I’ve decided to do and basically, I’m wanting to share my decision and allow you the opportunity to decide if it’s something you could get on board with or not.

Here at Down in the Hollow I’ve only ever tried to represent myself exactly as I am. I haven’t tried to mimic other bloggers or do what everyone else in the blogging industry is doing. I just kinda do my own thing and hope that people want to follow along with it. I’ve decided this new chapter of my life is no different. I think that at the end of the day we’re all people with varying interests and passions and I’m no different. I will continue sharing shopping guides, fashion, pretty shoes, recipes, travel, antiquing, home design, cocktails and wine and more. And I will also share about issues in third world countries that will break your heart. I will share about the countries I travel to in Africa and the work that I’m doing, just as anyone else shares about the work that they do. And to be fair, traveling for my job will also include major US, European and Asian cities so I guess that could even come across negatively if something thought that it was “extra” or braggadocios. However you want to slice it, my content might look a little different going forward as I share about my life and all the many facets of it. This is me. This is now my life. And I hope that you still want to follow along.

I have waited a whole week to share this news with you all and I’m bursting with happiness that I’m finally able to do so! So, what do you think? Is that what you had expected??

I’ll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Mother Teresa that I had tattooed on my wrist while I was in South Africa. It’s a reminder to me every single day and has recently taken on a whole new meaning as it is water-centric: “You may feel like what you are doing is just a drop in the ocean, but the ocean would be less without that one drop.”

XOXO, Thessali