Room 606, Hotel No. 1

I am the director of a nonprofit that is legally based in New York City. We run our program work in several locations in Africa. I am currently typing from room 606 at the "Hotel No. 1" in the city of Kochi, Japan. I speak virtually no Japanese, but everyone I encounter is unfailingly helpful and kind, and we somehow get by on sign language.

I just clicked send on an email that will go out to my nonprofit's 1,000+ members, who reside in 30 countries. I'm listening to an online radio station from California that broadcasts jazz like Coltrane, Dolphy, and Mingus. The view from my room is of a concrete wall five feet away, and is smaller than most American closets. But the room is immaculate and has everything I need. Later I will go out in Kochi and point at plastic display food in the window of a restaurant, and will surely have an excellent meal. Then I'll come back to the hotel, try to figure out how to use the washing machine on the fourth floor, and finish writing and send a grant proposal.

Tomorrow morning I'll leave Kochi – I've never been here before and I'll probably never come here again. But for me, Kochi was home.

—Jeffrey Witte, Executive Director and Founder, http://amend.org/