A Washington native recently donated her time to those less fortunate in East Africa and climbed the tallest mountain in Africa while there.

Riziki Omonde, a 2012 graduate of Washington High School, recently took a five-month trip to East Africa and while there, volunteered in Tanzania and Kenya. The daughter of Lois and Peter Omonde, she also visited family from her father’s side, and there, she experienced a Kenyan Christmas with family, according to Omonde.

In Kenya, her first destination on the trip, Omonde stayed in the city of Kisumu and helped teach English to a Kindergarten class through an organization called. She also helped with another project and traveled around to different elementary schools, teaching health and sanitation to kids in order to prevent the contraction and spread of disease, Omonde said.

“My dad is from Tanzania and he has family in Kenya as well,” Omonde said. “I wondered what my family was like, and I wanted to see how it was. It was a good opportunity to get to know them and gain experience of another culture and help improve lives, as well as learning new thing that I could take back home to America.”

Omonde then spent time at an orphanage called City of Hope in Tanzania where she taught teenage girls, who escaped female circumcision from their villages, how to read. She also taught children that lost their parents from devastations of the HIV virus and local clan fighting, according to an email from Lois Omonde.

The city was built for orphaned children to be able to dream again, and has been coined the “city of 1,000 dreams, Omonde said in the email.

While in Tanzania, Riziki Omonde climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, a five-day journey from the base to summit, a feat that stemmed from not only a personal interest in the outdoors, but also a desire to bond with her father, who had climbed the mountain as a high school student, she said.

“That’s something I’ve always wanted to do because when my dad was in high school, he hiked it,” Omonde said. “I love nature and my major (in college) is recreation management. It’s something I kind of wanted to do to be connected with my dad, and it’s also something that’s really beautiful.”

Omonde said she set up the trip through a family member that works with KUAP. As a current student at Appalachian State University, Omonde received an internship credit for her volunteerism during the trip and had to complete assignments and report back to her advisor throughout the trip.

“(The trip) means a lot,” Omonde said. “I know that I’ve been extremely privileged and my parents have given me a great opportunity. It’s really opened my eyes to what the world is outside of America. Going to Africa, it was complete culture shock. Everything is very different, and it’s really eye opening for me to experience that and learn that not everyone sees the world the way we do. They go through things that no one really thinks about sometimes. I’m extremely grateful that I had that experience. I definitely felt like I learned a lot, and I’ve become a stronger person and learned more about life because of my experience. And Kilimanjaro was beautiful and amazing.”