Travel With Sinja
Sinja Stötzner, born 18-07-1991 Germany
Sinja Stötzner received her education at the University of Education Weingarten. After her graduation, she was offered a challenge to travel to Kenya on a voluntary mission. And that’s where her life took a different route and her philanthropic spirit was ignited. Sinja left her job, settled in Kenya and started Jiamini CBO to extend a hand of hope to the less fortunate orphans of Kenya. Traveling to Africa has changed her life completely. She has always asked herself whether she was meant to live in Africa. The desire and curiosity to explore other African countries grew every day.
After 5 years of traveling solo in Kenya, living within a Maasai family, in the Umoja women’s village, volunteering in a slum, taking courses in meditation, mindfulness, and hypnotherapy and Sinja Stötzner founded Travel With Sinja to help individuals to transform their lives through traveling.
Mission
TRAVEL WITH SINJA helps you to connect with Mother Africa, to recharge your soul with new positive energy and to be #changedbytravel.
Vision
TRAVEL WITH SINJA will help more than 1000 individuals in the next five years to realize their life-time dream of traveling to Africa and to see the world with different eyes.
My Story
The feeling of making a positive impact as a volunteer in a third world country and exploring mother Africa inspired me so much that I found an opportunity through my university to go for an internship to Ghana. My plan was scheduled. But in my half a year of preparation time I almost got desperate. I had my doubts. Sometimes I asked myself if I would manage or if it was the right decision to travel that far as a young lady. I was so scared of my journey to Ghana. What if no one picks me and my friends from the airport? Where will we go? How will we contact this person?
However, I was curious at the same time. A sense of calmness settled within me when I realized that other students had gone before me to participate in the same internship. To my dismay, my first international flight brought unexpected horror! In Strasbourg, I missed my flight to Accra, Ghana. And worse, I lost all my bags that had all my personal belongings. All the mosquito repellents, the medical travel kit, the clothes for changing, completely everything got lost in Amsterdam. I felt like crying, but how would that help my situation?
Traveling to Ghana changed me completely. I experienced a free African lifestyle, a free spirit, and mentality in Ghana which I had never known before. The internship was over but back home in Germany I knew I had to go back to Africa. It was very hard for me to focus on my studies just to continue with my “normal” lifestyle. I even ended my seven-year relationship, because I knew my future would be somewhere in Africa. The same week after finalizing my exams at the university, I started my next adventure: six months in Kenya as a solo female traveler!
Traveling to Kenya as a young lady just by myself scared me a bit. One of my biggest fear was my broken English and to be lonely. What can I do alone at the other end of the world? How do I move around? Where will I stay? Where will I go in case something happens to me? Will I be safe? How will I contact my family? How will I get cash or internet there? Back in 2014 WhatsApp or Facebook wasn’t that popular. So I didn’t even know how to keep contact apart from writing e-mails.
But this is my dream. This is what I’ve always wanted. I can’t wait for someone to travel with me neither can I risk not going at all. I overcame my fears by signing up for a volunteer program where I had someone taking care of all my needs and questions. It helped me a lot just to know that in case of anything there will be someone there for me.
After two months of living in Kenya, I already knew I would extend my stay and I eventually started the organization, Jiamini CBO, to safeguard the rights of vulnerable children in Kenya. How I managed to build an organization and daycare center without any professional background in social work or community development was a task that challenged me every day. But with the strong belief to be able to make a difference and the help of a local team and our fundraising team in Germany we managed. Today we successfully run a daycare center in Thika, Kenya, for more than 20 orphans.
After half a year of traveling in Kenya and volunteering in my own project from one day to the other, Germany didn’t feel like home anymore. A country I have lived in for over 20 years, a country where I have grown up, a country where my entire family lives, didn’t feel like a place I could live anymore. It was conflicting and confusing at the same time. In my mind, the only thing I could think about is how I can go back to Africa. Mother Africa was calling me and I couldn’t explain it. I felt my life was caged. I couldn’t continue living in my familiar surroundings and getting employed in a secure nine to five job and being stuck in the system. I needed to break out and nothing or no one could hold me back. Something inside me was telling me I can make a positive impact in Kenya. I can change the lives of so many vulnerable children and especially my own.
After moving to Kenya, running a non-profitable organization for orphans, falling in love with a Kenyan, getting married and divorced in between 1 year, I moved away from the town I was living and moved by myself as a foreigner to the capital city Nairobi. And believe me, this was the best decision ever! I broke up almost all my contacts I have had in the town I was living in before and started all over again. Alone and with no income…
Imagine you have the chance to start a completely new life and you only do what fulfills you!
Of course, it is not as easy as it sounds and it takes time, but already after a few weeks of daily meditation and listening to motivational speeches, I could see a positive change in my life. I started eating healthier, taking better care of myself, only surrounding myself with people I love and who inspire me. When you are on a spiritual journey you feel that this journey will take you far and there is so much undiscovered which you want to discover. I even traveled for a 10 days silent meditation to South Africa for one specific method of meditation where you learn how to purify and calm your mind.
10 days without communication, 10 days meditation from 4.30 am until 8.00 pm.
Meditation and Mindfulness taught me how to be aware of your senses and how to be grateful for every single moment in this life. Mindfulness has opened my mind, body, and soul to live in the moment and to simply be in the NOW.
What I realized is that many visitors are coming for a holiday to Kenya to relax and re-energize themselves and to take a holiday they truly deserve. But the reality looks different. Instead of rejuvenating, their mind is busy day and night thinking about their job, their kids or family they have left at home or things they have to do before the day ends.
Imagine you could travel on a holiday, where you will learn how to be present in the moment so that you can see all the beauty surrounding you and travel back home recharged with new positive energy.
Our new Mindful Safaris offer the traveler the chance to be in the present while going on safari. In daily meditation sessions, you will learn how to quiet your mind, how to let your thoughts and worries pass like clouds in the sky and focus on the positivity and what is happening around you.
Take this holiday and learn a tool for your life on how to access your inner self and bring yourself in a state of calm and inner peace so that you can take an off whenever you need it in the future.
For More Information
Call: +254 715 486 703
Email: info@travelwithsinja.com