Last Saturday, the 15th of January, marked the halfway point of our seven-month stay in Senegal. Three and a half months down, three and a half to go. I find it hard to believe that we are already on the downward slope, when so many things are only just beginning.

In my apprenticeship at l’Ecole Sebiroute for example, I have suddenly found myself launched into a whole new array of exciting activities: introducing students to the computer lab and the library, starting an english club at the high school, and sitting in on women’s alphabetization classes (see previous blog…). I feel as though my first two months here were but a gradual preparation for being able to do what I do today; and I feel as though I’ve had to travel miles to get to this point of actually starting to work. Its like when you’re hiking in Maine and for the first good portion of the journey you’re under tree cover and you can’t be entirely sure of where you are or where you’re headed, or if you’ll ever break through. And then suddenly you break through the tree line and you can see all around you, and ahead of you – the fruits of your current and past labors. The path isn’t any easier, and often times it gets rockier and steeper. But still, its definitely the best part of the climb.

I’d like to dedicate this blog post to retracing the various steps I’ve been through in my apprenticeship, in order for any subsequent stories I’d like to tell to make any sense. I apologize in advance for the length of this blog, which probably should have been staggered in four or five previous others. But I decided it was needed, to give a more realistic picture of what its really like to be a volunteer. I stopped writing blogs about my apprenticehip for a while because nothing significant was happening. There have always been lots of exciting possibilities, but nothing was concrete enough to write about. Often, a day’s worth of ‘progress’ would consist of merely managing to have a casual conversation with a certain someone; although I rarely failed to find some way to occupy myself for the remaining five hours I would spend at the school.

For my main task over the past few months has been to determine my role within the school community, a challenging, delicate process considering what I had to work from. For the teachers at the school, I arrived on day one as nothing more than a nineteen year-old white girl who looked even younger, who had no teaching experience whatsoever, and who could barely speak French. No one was openly skeptical (the Senegalese are incapable of being anything but welcoming) but the obvious question hovering in the air, that even I began to ask myself, and that I sometimes still ask, was: what right on earth do I have to claim any role of significance within this school? Even if that role was going to consist merely of sitting around and watching? Read more…

It is nine thirty on thursday evening and someone has just installed a new loudspeaker in Sebikotane, right above my bedroom. And currently blaring from this speaker, for the past half hour or so, is what seems to be a never ending chant of verses from the Qur’an. Every once in a while the voices will abruptly cease, and for a minute or so I’ll hear only the distant chatter of all the other loudspeakers in Sebikotane, but then it’ll start up again on a fresh verse. Usually I really don’t mind all the loudspeakers and the singing, and sometimes even find it soothing, but there is something about this new one (maybe the fact that it was installed, uh, right above my room) that makes this singer sound particularly off-key, and the accompanying mush of voices particularly static, and the screeches particularly sharp. I think tonight’s broadcasting must have somthing to do with the fact that tomorrow is Friday, the day of the week when all the men go to the mosque, and everyone dresses in their nicer boubous, but most evenings of the week are rarely without some sort of background narration. And if all the loudspeakers are taking a break, my neighbor, an arabic teacher who rents the room next to mine, never neglects to fill the silence with verses recorded on his cellphone, which he listens to while he prepares his academic charts, sitting at the wooden table where I am now, wearing his funny little winter hat with the pom-pom.

Anyways, I sat down this evening to write a blog post about more practical things (such as my apprenticeship, and don’t worry its on its way) but then the racket started and I felt the moment was only just right for writing a a little bit about our discussions of this past weekend, on Islam. This past weekend, we GCY fellows were in Dakar for our second monthly meeting. As is typical for our monthly meetings we spent a good portion of the time seated around table in Rachel’s living room either talking or eating – assuaging our cravings for good food, english conversation, and believe it or not, academic activity. Away from school for over seven months by now, you’d think we’d been starved for knowledge or something – the way we gulped down the information that Rachel emitted so profusely, diving into the good old tasks of “notetaking” and reading fine print. “Intellectual Stimuli” is what Matt calls it. Read more…

Watching Mame Ami carefully trace the lines and curves that make up her name reminds me of me when I try to help cut onions without a cutting board, or clean rice, or help with laundry back at home. I am always amazed by the speed at which Kine can shave an onion without cutting herself, rotating the juicy white sphere in one hand while hacking at it with a knife in the other, or the way she can empty an entire calabash of rice into the pot without spilling a single grain. And as for laundry, no matter how hard I try, as I rub two soapy corners of my t-shirt vigorously between my wrists, I just can’t get the right sound. Kine and Ami Ndoye will laugh – by now more at my determination and persistence than at the awkwardness of my attempts to copy them – bend over my bucket next to me and dipping their palms to the surface of the water, in one graceful gesture, effortless but firm, produce the most wonderful, satisfying sound. It’s the sound of soap suds being squelched through the layers of my host mother’s boubous, or through the frills of little Cogna’s endless collection of ridiculously frilly dresses. It’s a sound of strength and precision, of cleanliness and cool water on a hot, dusty day, and it’s the sound that I come home to almost every day at one o’clock, and that I sometimes wake up to in the wee hours of the morning. Read more…

Sitting here in the computer lab, having just given a lesson to a young woman, a friend of the school director, I am suddenly very thoughtful about computers. That’s how it is here – I came this morning without any specific plan, I opened the computer lab, spent some time exploring the various activities installed for kids, and then I was introduced to this young woman, and now I’m teaching. On my other side is Monsieur An, a school ‘inspector’ who tends to hang out in the computer lab and the library with me. We make a good team. I like to talk about what I’m doing – explain this or that section of the library, this or that site on the computer, ideas I have – and he responds with incredibly lengthy lectures on Islam and all sorts of stories and theories on human behavior. I’ll listen patiently for about twenty minutes, and eventually he’ll stop, and then we’ll continue to work. Right now he’s having a lot of fun with the keyboard; I never really thought about it before but he’s right – all the vowels are on the top row.

During the past month I have been gradually ‘initiating’ the teachers in the computer lab, basically introducing them to the machines that they have access to, and actually have had access to for over a year. Read more…

This post by Gaya Morris has been cross-posted from the Current TV News Blog.

When I first entered the backstreets of Sebikotane, a large town just east of Dakar in Senegal, Africa, I saw only a peaceful, culturally vibrant, almost idyllic community – people and houses packed together in a spidery web of sandy streets and family ties. I was struck most by this tight social web; by the way people drifted in and out of each others houses, doing each other’s laundry, eating out of each other’s bowls, watching each other’s televisions; by the way nearly every person I was introduced to in the street turned out to be related to my host family in some way, and so by consequence was introduced as my new uncle or cousin, my second father or mother. The town seemed to be basically one big family and everyone welcomed me in with open arms, lots of laughter, and bowl after bowl of steaming, oily ceebujeen.

And so during the first few weeks I saw only prosperity. People around me always ate well, dressed well, and were always celebrating – baptisms, weddings, holidays. Everyone seemed relaxed and content – no one stressed on in a hurry. Life was centered around the home and the family. Any lack of material amenities I took for simplicity. Who really needs food processors and dish washers and sinks and whole sets of cutlery? Vacuum and showers? These people live in complete dignity with just a few buckets, a spigot and a toilet bowl – and for cooking, some bowls and pots, spoons, knives, a single gas stove and a wooden mortar and pestle. Garden fences made of sticks and rags I saw as signs of resourcefulness, not poverty. The women who are obliged to spend their days selling vegetables and fish in the streets seemed cheerful and proud, calling out respectful greetings to friends as they passed – not at all poor or desperate. The copious piles of trash bordering the paths along the outskirts of the town kept the pigs fat and happy.

These were my first impressions as a newcomer in this maze of sandy streets and people. Now, nearly two months later, I can say without a doubt that a lack of resources, a lack of money, is a reality for the majority of Sebikotane residents. I’m not just talking about the kids who watch me unpack my backpack of interesting possessions and gadgets with envy; the people who dream of moving to America and France to live the luxurious lives they see ‘tubabs’ (white people) live on TV; people who might not be able to purchase things on a whim, but who live comfortably. These are the people that I, in my GCY homestay, spend most of my time amongst. I’m talking about the greater mass of families who lack the material means to live comfortable, healthy lives, and the education or opportunities with which to improve these lives. Poverty is here, but, as we GCY fellows all agreed discussing our first impressions during our first monthly meeting in Dakar, it is less striking in Senegal than it could be because of the way people take care of each other – the deep traditions of generosity and charity. I actually think it is almost impossible for a child to go hungry in Sebikotane because he will always be welcomed around the bowl in whichever house he might wander into. Read more…

I am sitting in a CI (first grade) class right now, behind the teacher’s desk as an observer. This is usually where I end up in the mornings when I am at a loss of what to do. Today these six to eight-year-olds are learning how to draw shapes on their little personal chalkboards. These fifty little first graders start the day by marching into class in three equal lines like little soldiers. Then they usually sit at their desks restlessly for at least ten minutes, many still knawing on their identical breakfasts of white bread spread with chocolate, beans or mushy spagetti, while Madame Diatta prepares. She has to consult the charts she is required to write out to plan every lesson, following a government timetable. One of the harder parts of her job is to somehow translate the government instructions into lessons that actually make sense. This morning for example, 8 to 9 am on Thursday, the timetable calls for ‘art plastique’ (plastic art). I’m not sure exactly what that means, but there certainly aren’t any art materials to be had around here, so the teacher resorts to drawing shapes on the board. The goal today is to have the kids be able to identify the different shapes – a simple concept it might seem for kids of their age – but not such a simple task in this case.

The second most difficult challenge Mme Diatta must face is the sheer number of wiggly, wandering minds into which she must somehow plant the first seeds of knowledge. Fifty-two is the exact number, sitting shoulder to shoulder on benches behind four rows of desks squished so close together that the teacher sometimes has to walk sideways to move in between them. Actual physical space is the only limit, the school director tells me, by which he can ever justify turning kids away each year – and he does have to do this every year. At a certain point he has to say to some child, sorry, you can’t come to school this year. Its not his fault obviously, being given only a certain number of classrooms and being at the mercy of the government for all his funding, but it still weighs heavily on his conscience to have to be the one to refuse children their right to an education. And every year more children come. Read more…

Earlier last week I believe I reached an important turning point in my homestay experience: I was allowed to do dishes! It has been a long month of sitting on the highest, softest chair and watching; having the choisest morsels of ceebujen into my corner of the bowl; being allowed to stir the pot but not touch the knife; and feeling often like I was being treated like a five-year-old princess.

But the past few days have been a flurry of activity: the preparation for, the celebration and the aftermath of the Muslim holiday of Tabaski. I came home from l’Ecole Sebiroute early on Thursday morning, after all but three other teachers decided take an early vacation and didn’t show up, and after all of 20 computers in the Salle Informatique refused to let anyone log in (I think that was a sign…). Having nothing planned, I just kind of fell into things, starting as always with helping cook lunch. I don’t think sweeping, peeling vegetables, washing dishes and hanging laundry has never done me so much good. Hundreds of washed bowls, peeled onions, scrubbed panties, swept up grains of sticky rice, three sacrificed sheep and five days later, I already feel like something had shifted, whether in me or in my surroundings, that makes this place feel a bit more like home. I’ve always believe that shared experiences are what bring people together, I just had never considered the massacring of three very large rams to be one of those. Read more…

Off in search of a pot of jam (to add some fruit to my diet), some face wash (to remedy the annoying spots due to an excess of oil in Senegalese cooking that tend to provoke the question: did a mosquito bite your face?) and some interesting candy (to bring home to every person who upon learning that I would be going to Dakar, requested that I bring home a present), Victoria and I stumbled upon a sort of mini-America in Dakar: a modern supermarket. We had been to smaller versions of this westernized grocery store called Casino, but never one like this. Already driving into the parking lot and seeing the enormous facade, I sensed that something wasn’t quite right. Read more…

It’s three o’clock in the afternoon here in Sebikotane and the inside of the ‘salle informatique’ (computer lab) at l’école Sebiroute is like an oven. There is a slight breeze through the door that opens into the large sandy space around which the separate classroom buildings are situated. I’m glad for this chance to write a blog post, although disappointed that the high school English class I was going to sit in on this afternoon is not going to take place. The high school students are on strike, if you can imagine that. This room is large and modern, with fans spinning on the tin roof and those long flourescent light bars on the walls. There are twenty identical computers on the tables along the perimeter of the room each draped in a shiny purple sleeve that reads ‘l’informatique dès l’école élémentaire, SENECLIC, c’est désormais une réalité’ which translates to ‘computering since elementary school, Seneclic, it’s already a reality’. But I seriously doubt that the majority of those purple drapes have every been lifted off the screens. Electricity; ceiling fans, and twenty computers that are never used…. some reality. Read more…

My host family’s house here in Sebikotane is made up of three separate buildings enclosing an open concrete-floored space shaded by a single fruit tree (never seen this particular fruit before) and hanging laundry; it is usually empty except for me, my notebook, my nalgene, lots of little kids and a few buckets full of dishes and laundry to one side. But throughout this past week I would come home at one o’clock for lunch from the elementary school where I started my apprenticeship to find this space full of large colorful bodies, mostly women, sitting on stools and mats, bending over large bowls of fish guts or white rice, or stirring a cauldron sized pot of sizzling oil. I would go around and shake each of their hands with a little curtsy to show respect, and inevitably be commanded to sit down, after which would follow a fairly predictable series of questions starting out with where are you from? and proceeding quickly to why don’t you have a husband? Read more…