That photo is one of my favorites. Her expression, so calm and confident with a touch of mirthful understanding at the corners of her eyes and lips as she stands in the “perombre” entrance way to her house, wearing a sky blue tshirt and a colorful headscarf knotted loosely to one side, is beautiful. It captures Ami Diop, my Senegalese best friend, at her simple fullest. I was kind of worried that working on this portrait series every day would be a little emotionally intense, like staring into the eyes of my past for five hours, but the truth is that 95 percent of the time my eyes blur the images into a maps of shapes and forms, patches of light and dark and layers of color, which I must translate onto my canvas.

“Hello, how are you,” I say, all in one sentence, as another group of Sunday shoppers wanders in from the outdoor vintage market in the parking lot. Fine, thankyou, how are you? They usually answer. Pause. Is this your work? — Honey, don’t touch that, it’s fragile!

No, actually, the ceramics are all done by professional artisans in Italy, it’s all imported from Tuscany. I’m just working on some of my own stuff here in the back.

Oh, well it’s all beautiful!

Hmm isn’t it? Smile.

It’s a fairly straight forward job. And convenient for me to have a time and space in which to work on my portrait series Many, Many Faces, an art project which I began last summer to fundraise and advertise for GCY. The idea is to combine images of American kids and adults with images of friends, family and acquaintances from Senegal, all in one series, to symbolize “the two worlds coming together,” a theme that still hovers beneath the surface of my seemingly smooth every day routine – popping up at unexpected moments.

Such as when my phone rings.

Hello? I answer cheerily.

Allo? Gaiya?! Man, Anna la!

My heart skips a beat. (It’s my host mother.)

Eih, Anna! Ca va? Nanga Def?!

Chuckles. Ca va? Nam oon naa la! (I miss you)

Ma la raw! (I miss you more)

Ca va?

Ca va bien. Ana waa ker ga? Ana xale yi? (How’s the family, how are the kids)

Nungi fi, nun nepp nungi fi. Ca va? (We are all here)

Wow, ca va bien, merci.

Nam oon naa la!

Its the usual pattern. And I’ve been through it so many times – I know how it goes. But it’s becoming trickier and trickier to whip out like that on the spur of the moment. I know what to say, but somehow the words feel stranger in my mouth, less smooth on the tongue, more just like stuff I’ve said before, or that I used to say, playing on a tape recorder.

As the glass door swings closed behind some probably very confused customers, familiar background noises flood my left ear from behind my host mother’s chuckles. The television first of all. Its seven o’clock there, time for De Tout Mon Coeur, or perhaps a newer Mexican Soap Opera dubbed in French. I might even hear fast Wolof chatter in the background, or even the clanging of a few pots. The best part is when my host mother presses the phone to little Mamor or Chuna’s ears, and I get the usual nanga def, nam oon naa la from their adorably small voices. I make sure to ask about each family member, and a few friends. I might ask what they are eating for dinner even though I know the answer (ceeb!). I might ask what’s new in Sebikotane, even though my host mother always tells me nothing has changed. Dara besul. Somehow I like hearing this. Selfish I suppose, but I like being able to imagine the patterns of their every day lives, from the sounds they’ll wake up to in the morning, to the last lights switched off at night. From the clothes they’ll wear on fridays, to the cups they sip their tea from.

Another couple strolls in, gliding their hands over the surfaces of the volcanic stone tables. I try not to worry about the funny looking old man with a beard flicking the inside of the bella frutta bowl to see what sound it makes.

The hardest part is to try to offer news about my life. Instead of saying that I’m painting, I just say I’m working.  About my summer job as a camp councelor, I just say I’ve been teaching. Everything has to be translated. And I always have to explain that I haven’t quite started university yet, the reason I left them. My host mother wishes me many, many good grades and diplomas. I ask her about the pictures I sent of me cooking ceebujeen at home, and she tells me she wants an American kitchen just like ours. And then its hard to know when to say goodbye. Even with the Senegalese you can only say nam oon naa la so many times. Well, maybe that’s just me who still has my limits. But the phone call is very expensive and so eventually we say our goodbyes – lots of merci’s and greet so and so for me. Even those seem to go on forever and I always hesitate to push the red button.

And then I’m back in Boston. I take a deep breath and sit down.

Hi, how are you?

Doing well, thanks.

Beautiful day isn’t it?

Yeah, it sure is.

You could say that I’m fully “readjusted” by now, but there are some things about my life, about my way of life, that seem to have changed permanently. Like the way I sometimes hold my left arm behind my back when I bend over to pick something up, just like Kine or Ami nDoye bending over the laundry bucket; the way I still can’t pass things to people with my left hand (its bad luck), the way I scrape food off the plates with my fingers rather than with a sponge, or cut slivers of onions right over the pan, instead of on a cutting board; the way I make sure to give my u’s and m’s little stems when I write by hand. My newfound interest and passion for education and children’s literacy. Having a second family on different continent.

I always tell people that even though I don’t know how or when, I know I’ll go back to Senegal. How could I not? To visit at the very least, but  in a way I also feel a responsibility to some day give back to my host community. I am the “partenaire” in charge of procuring other “partenaires” for an association of students working to improve the education system in Sebikotane. So far, with the help of a fifth grade class here in Boston for my capstone project, I’ve sent them one box of books. Just one box. And what a lot of work that was! This responsibility is exciting, inspiring, thrilling and daunting. On the surface things are pretty normal – just a few unexpected Wolof phone calls, emails to write in French, a few peculiar habits and what you could call one more extracurricular in college – but its quite a balancing act, a many dimensioned way of living, that I’m still trying to figure out.

Excuse me, how much does this glass table cost?

Oh, that one’s actually not for sale. Its from IKEA….

After deciding to take off a “gap year” between high school and college last summer, Gaya Morris, a Hingham resident, recently returned from a stay in a rural village in Senegal as a participant in the Global Citizen Year Founding Fellow program.

What do you think of when you hear the word “Africa”? I’ve been asking kids, elementary to high-school age, over the past few weeks. Having just returned from a seven-month stay in Senegal, West Africa, I’ve been visiting French classrooms in the Boston area, giving presentations on my experience in Senegal.

Their answers usually involve a few iconic images that we generally associate with this triangular presence in our geography books: lions, grasslands, giraffes, men with spears, and maybe a few thatched huts. And then some don’t have any thoughts to share, as if they have never before been asked such a question.

Showing slideshows of photographs and film clips, I struggled to put into words my love for Senegal and for its people: from the crazed, vibrant bustle of Sandaga market in Dakar to cooler evenings sitting on the star-lit stoop outside my host family’s house in the town of Sebikotane, sharing bowls of porridge with the kids; from jokes with passing strangers to the wise Wolof proverbs uttered in my host mother’s bedroom; from lazy afternoons of hair braiding and sweet tea under the shade of the Sapoti tree to the meaningful work I discovered in a school library, sitting down next to little kids on the plastic woven carpet — tracing my finger under lines of text and sounding out the French words in a thickly Senegalese accent, pretending to taste the soup like Goldilocks or knock on the door like the Big Bad Wolf. These are the memories I’ve carried back with me to the United States.

Looking back as a 19-year-old resident of Hingham, getting ready to go to college at Princeton University back in the state where I grew up, New Jersey, I’ve always been eager for travel. When the opportunity to take a trip to the developing world under a program called Global Citizen Year popped up on my computer screen last summer, I immediately leapt for it.

I had already decided to defer my college admission for a “gap year” to do something a little different, and this was a chance to try out a type of work I had always dreamed of doing, before I went off to study about it. I wanted to know what it would be like to fully immerse myself in a foreign language and culture, and, to quote my pre-Senegal self, “learn how to make a meaningful difference in the lives of others.”

That felt like quite a lofty statement back in August when I wrote it down in my journal, but I am pleased and proud to say that, in light of my past seven months in Senegal, it makes perfect sense. For we Americans have all sorts of assumptions about what the “less fortunate” in the world need from us, and I would argue that it is only by living amongst these so-called less-fortunate people, experiencing the intricacies of their lives, that we can even begin to determine what our contribution could, should, or shouldn’t be.

As a volunteer in a public elementary school in Senegal, I was at once stricken by the lack I observed as well as inspired to see better education as a solution to so many other problems in Sebikotane, in Senegal, and in the world. More specifically, I observed first-hand the difficulties hindering literacy acquisition amongst Senegalese children. Bare-bones classrooms are packed full of up to 70 students, taught by just one teacher.

Very rarely do children attend preschool before their first day in the first grade and so it can take a teacher almost two months to simply make sure that every child can hold a pencil. And then, try learning how to read and write in a language you don’t understand. For Senegalese students who grow up speaking Wolof, this language is French. All of this means that it is simply too easy for the average student to fall behind and drop out of school before ever learning how to read and write.

Through my work in the school library I was able to explore one potential solution to this problem, which for me came in the form of children’s literature. After dusting and reorganizing the books that clearly hadn’t been touched in years, I eventually managed to bring small groups of students into the library.

I designed activities involving card games, skits, singing, drawing, and of course, reading not only to improve the students’ reading capabilities, but also to interest them in the books, which they had so rarely encountered in their childhood. It was very rewarding at the end of my six months to take note of even the smallest improvements among my students, or at very least, the pride with which they would announce they could read.

Now back in the United States I am working on a project engaging American youth in sending books and letters to correspondents in Sebikotane as a way to continue to contribute to my host community. And I know I will take this inspiration that I found in that dusty single-room library in Sebikotane with me into college, and the work I hope to do beyond.

So how does this very distant place and these very distant people become relevant to us where we sit now, sipping a morning cup of coffee in front of our computer screens perhaps, or glancing at the paper while inching through rush-hour traffic? The only answer I can give is that it most certainly doesn’t have to be relevant, but what if it were? An individual can gain so much for himself or herself and for others by reaching out into an unknown part of the world to learn.

I would without a doubt recommend this sort of experience to other Americans, especially students my age who are in midst of defining themselves and their paths. A gap year may not be the easiest choice to make after graduating from high school, but it is worth every ounce of initial doubt, and it sends one into college with a freshened perspective, a greater sense of self, and motivation.

I visit schools and tell my story not so much to say, “Hey, look what I did,” but more to say: “Look what you can do, too! The shrinking, flattening, globalization (or whatever you want to call it) of the world comes with so many worries about complications, interferences and change, but rarely do we talk about the possibilities and the opportunities for mutual progress.

To learn more about my experience or the organization Global Citizen Year, visit:

www.globalcitizenyear.org/

Dear Hassane,

Remember that day back in January or February when you asked me about America? It was during one of our Saturday English club gatherings and as usual our discussions had turned to comparing Senegal and the United States: culture, schools, values and ways of life. Life in Senegal is difficult, you kept repeating. You told me the story of your family, and how you, already at the age of eighteen had been forced to spend your summers working for minimal wages on the grapefruit and mandarine plantations and in the green-bean factory, to support your brothers and sisters. You expressed your desire to one day go to America to find the well-paying work that is so scarce in Senegal. I tried to explain to you then, as I have attempted to do for so many others, that life in America really isn’t as “easy” or as perfect as everyone who has never been is convinced it must be. Why? you asked and I struggled then to put all the pieces into words, working off of memories and stumbling through wavering definitions of success and happiness. But now that I have arrived home in America I may be able to respond with greater clarity. For your question goes hand in hand with some of my recent foremost thoughts.

For now I can say for sure that I understand how one could say that ‘life in America is easy.’ Stepping out of the airplane into the long, shining corridors of John F, Kennedy airport in New York, I had the impression of entering a sort of space world – ordered, sterilized and efficient. And indeed this description would fit pretty well the overall sum of the observations and impressions that I have been taking note of over the past few weeks of the landscape that is for me America and home – spaces indoor and outdoor, public and private (and please let me specify, this is an upper-class cross-section that I am describing, a section large enough yet to build up a world of its own). There was so much space, so much calm and quiet contained within the smooth and polished, glass and marble surfaces and contours of the airport building.

Abundant would be another word that keeps surfacing in my mind to describe the sites around me. Like along the Route Nationale heading into Dakar there are so many things to buy, but no, this is different. Not just fruit and nuts and cookies, although we’ve got plenty of those too, but every good imaginable and others that you can’t imagine, all laid out on shelves and hanging from hooks; displayed in cases and under spot-lights to look pretty. Shoes, hats, candy, electronics, books, cds, medicine, tshirts, toys, games, magazines, newspapers and many varieties of each. And all of this the most blatant evidence of that essential underlying fact that separates America from the rest of the world, that elevates it in your mind into that realm of dreams and future, and in mine up with the space ships and pixar movies. Yes, Assane, there is a lot of money in America. It doesn’t grow from trees, as I’ve often heard people joke, but you can sense it, feel it all around you.  And this does in certain ways make life “easier.”

How? Well, money translates into an array of amenities that we have at our disposal. Cars are the best example. Having one of these means you can go wherever you want, whenever you want, and most people have one. Then there are household appliances: everything from lawn mowers to vacuum cleaners to dish washers to food processors to every gadget and kitchen spoon designed to its specific function. I mean I guess pushing lots of buttons to get your daily chores done does make life easier; being able to core your mangoes in one swipe, dice all your vegetables with one pulse, leave your dishes in a box until they are clean. And then sometimes you don’t even have to cook, like when you can take saved food out of the refridgerator, or call someone to your house to drop off a just made meal, for a fee of course that you are more than able to pay. The average housewife can indeed cook and manage her domain in much less time, and with much less effort. Then when she leaves the home and travels long distances to do ‘erands’ there are other conveniences that assure she will succeed in her various tasks. She only has to go to one store, one very big store, to buy all she needs at once, all food and household products and even clothing and toys and school supplies for the children. And the prices of all these things are fixed, so she needn’t worry about bargaining and can be added up with another machine that has a sort of conveyor belt and that people stand in line to get to. I mean I guess life is easier with stairs that move, with disposable utensils in abundance, with doors that open when you merely step in front of them, with faucets emit water when you merely reach out your hand. Its like the world were redesigned, just for you. Your ticket into this world of ease? A sort of shiny card, the validity of which can be verified by other machines and which testifies to the shop keeper, the landlord, the car-leaser, stock-broker, bank-person that you have money, that your husband has money, that your husband’s boss has money, that your husband’s boss’s boss has money, that there IS, in fact money – so you can have that extra pair of those Halloween-patterned toe-socks.

Ok, so we can go where we want to when we want to, buy what we want when we want, eat any type of food at any time of day (with some limitations of course). There are so many options, choices, different brands of kleenex to chose from. Its one type of freedom. Life is evidently easier with fewer worries about essential things like food, shelter and other basics (not to mention other services that a wealthy country can provide like health care, insurance, schools and libraries)…but I wouldn’t exactly say that we in the United States are a care-free people. In fact, rarely do you meet Americans lounging as relaxedly in their swiveling chairs in from of their touch-screen computers, or behind the wheels of spacious air-conditioned vehicles, as the Senegalese in those slivers of shade from the blazing sun, waving away black flies and sipping the dregs of strong, sweet tea. I guess you could say that material ease comes with a price. I remember how I talked about competition, and work ethic and how everyone in America has to work hard to achieve the standard of living that they have. But it goes beyond that, beyond the day you secure that dynamite job, buy the house, the car and the family boat. Americans are so good at finding ways to make their lives more complicated, or perhaps you could say, more interesting. Its like we’ve created a vacuum of necessity that must be filled with something; spare time that must be occupied, spare change to be spent, spare space to be furnished. And we can get pretty creative. I mean, isn’t it in these spaces that artistic creations are born, in music, fine arts, literature, fashion, cooking and film? Sports and other forms of entertainment, too. Such ingenuity and beauty becomes possible, it is true. But then the creativity extends into spaces that you didn’t even know were there. Like the contents of your grande, extra-shot, non-fat mocha frappuccino. And then into spaces that were only created by the problems caused by abundances that become excesses. Like fake sugar and tred-mills. A lack that causes an abundance that causes another lack. Makes you wonder if there is really a solution to anything.

It gets really confusing and I swear I’m trying to keep this straight-forward, Hassane. Trying to stick to the point: Is life easier or not? But let me digress just one more moment. My first time in a Starbucks after seven months. I had just gone with my grandmother to her morning pilates class, which is sort of recreational sport that older woman do to keep their bodies pain-free and healthy with the strange, sedentary life-styles people lead these days. I walked down the near-empty main street of the town, watching myself in the tall, tranquil glass panes of store fronts, enjoying the many traffic signals blinking for the cars and people that weren’t there. Inside Barnes and Nobles book store I couldn’t bring myself to be interested in the titles of books, or the pretty designs on gift cards that I knew would ordinarily give me pleasure. My eyes looked up at the cavernous ceiling and counted skimmed the rows of shelves and the rows of books on the shelves as though counting. In line at the Barnes and Noble-Starbucks-cafe I wasn’t really looking that carefully, wasn’t too concerned about reading the list of options above the counter to make sure I made the right choice. Anything would be good enough. When I finally opened my mouth to speak it was with some surprise that I said the words ‘one chai latte please.’ There is no way I could have brought myself, back on that first day back in America, to be as particular about my choice of beverage as I would have been seven months ago. I felt there was some piece of my experience in Senegal that a overly involved order would betray. Whether it was with detachment or deliberate defiance, I might as well have said. I’ll just have tea, thank you.

And yet here I am, three weeks later, and yesterday I swear I asked for one of my longest, mostly complicated concoctions ever, without a drop of remorse. Its quite amazing how quickly one’s perspective can shift, and how one’s feelings and judgement  can shift along with it. I mean really, how significant is a cup of coffee? When its all you are looking forward to at 7 o’clock in the morning its surely something crucial, but when you put it next to the pair of shoes you’ve been saving up for for weeks, the school you really want to get into, your journal, your piano, family, love and life, well, maybe not so much. When its just one empty cup at the bottom of your kitchen waste basket who cares, but when it becomes millions in the hazardous landfill encroaching on the school playground? And then you can throw it into a statistic. Like compare the amount of money Americans spend on coffee each year, to the amount of money it would take to end illiteracy in the world, or eradicate AIDS.

And that’s I think where the kernel of the question and my quest for conclusions can come back. We Americans may have far surpassed material ease, but this does not mean we are not without needs. ‘Cluttering’ is the word that always comes back to me to describe the way we have encumbered the clarity of our lives, the way we can spend too much time peering down the necks of our bottomless coffee cups, searching for meaning. We have indeed achieved so much, but have we made the right things easy? Like what use is it to have that dream job if it means you are too busy to spend time with your mother when she comes to visit? You could call me a traveler-snob, the way I still refuse sensory input and material comforts as if to say I don’t need those things! My heart is too full of the sounds of bare feet and laughter pattering in the courtyard, the smell of my host mother’s incense and Kine’s porridge, the sight of a friend’s extended hand, reaching out to me from down a long sandy street, calling my name.

I don’t have all the answers, Hassane, but at the very least I can say: be careful what you wish for. Come to America to make your money if that is what you need – I guess we’ve concluded that that part is easier – but then make sure you go home, back to where you have friends and family.

But instead, I felt as though my goodbyes were spread out over a gradual period of a few days, during which by simply spending time with friends and family, savoring last activities, I and they too were able to remark on the significance of our time spent together. The process was rather emotionally exhausting, and did feel a bit drawn out , but in the end I think I will always look back on those final days as some of my best in Sebikotane.

The subject of my departure had been a looming shadow over discussions for several weeks already, despite my constant efforts to evade it, but it wasn’t until my final Saturday with my host family that our activities seemed to reflect a sort of purposeful preparation for this fact. On Saturday morning I cooked my first and last very own ceebujeen, almost completely on my own. Kine got to gutting the fish before I could stop her, but after that my host mother made sure that I was the one to carry the calabash bowl to the corner market (although she came with me to assist with barging through the crowd of women to actually reach the table of veggies), to pound the stuffing, fry the fish, spice the sauce, peel the vegetables, sift  the rice, wash and pour and stir the rice, scrape the delicious sticky bits from the bottom of the pot, and divide the meal between the various bowls. I love the rawness of cooking in Senegal: its hard but satisfying work that requires strong, deft hands, agility and fearlessness of oil. I’m going to miss being able to just throw scraps on the kitchen floor.

At some point during this process I announced that I was planning on taking the kids to the beach that day. I had been contemplating this outing ever since the day I had discovered that Yama, my nine year old host sister, had never seen the ocean before. I had promised her right on the spot to take her to see the ocean before I left for America. Rufisque afterall, a seaside town, is only a half hour’s diaga ndiaye ride from Sebi. Yama wore her bathing suit under her clothes for two whole days after that conversation asking me every five minutes ‘Gaya, kan la nu dem geej?’ When are we going to the beach? That was back in early March.

And so that is why I had waited until only a few hours before a hypothetical departure to let the family know of my plans. Sure enough, as soon as the little ones heard the news, preparations began: Chuna, Yama and Mamor scurrying around trying to figure out what outfits to wear. A lengthy discussion with Mamor failed to convince him not to wear his shiny new converse sneakers, while Chuna peed in her pants three times so that by the time it was actually time to leave, she didn’t have any dry bathing suits left.

Around four o’clock we finally – me, the four kids and their mothers, Ami Ndoye and Kine, plus a little girl from the down the street who happened to be hanging around the house at the time – piled into a clanky white taxi called a clando that my host mother had called to pull up right outside the house. With the fast drumming beat of mbalax music blasting out the open windows and five kids jumping up and down like popcorn in the back seat (ontop of Ami ndoye and I), little Cogna clapping her hands and screaming with glee, we were quite a spectacle leaving Sebikotane, and hardly less of one when we got to the beach, a touristy nook called Toubab Diallo, only about a half hour’s drive away. The little ones were absolutely terrified by the ocean, the crashing waves, the swells of water rushing up all around them, the chill of the wind, the salty taste, and their mothers were hardly sympathetic; splashing and giggling they would drag nervous Chuna and Mamor down into the water. I scooped up little trembling Cogna in my arms, determined that at least one of them not be traumatized by her crazy mother, and held her just at the water’s edge. Yama and her friend were unsure but a little more bold. Soon the whole family (driver of course included in the true Senegalese way, although we had only just met him this afternoon) was one big sandy, giggling, screeching heap rolling about in the shallows of the waves. I took pictures of course, and then assumed the role of piggy-backing Yama actually into the water. Both of us breathing fast against the cold, Yama’s bony arms clinging about my neck for dear life, me walking backwards against the waves to shield her – it was an experience I’m sure she will remember. By the time we started getting ready to leave, only poor little Cogna still seemed unconvinced. The two year old had the most confused, bewildered look on her face as she sat down in the sand looking out at the water, her bottom lip trembling from cold. I wrapped her up in my towl and handed her to her mother in a bundle. Back in the taxi returning to Sebi she and her brother fell fast asleep intertwined in their mother’s lap. The others were quiter too, though Yama’s eyes followed glimpses of the water through gaps in houses and cliffs for as long as they could.

The next day I started packing. I took advantage of some quiet time early in the morning while the kids were still mellow and had not yet returned to their favorite hideout (the hallway right outside my bedroom) for already Yama had started crying and I wasn’t ready to face this yet. She would just stand in the doorway to my bedroom and cry, and tears streaming down her face repeat in the most helpless little voice – that in other attention seeking situations I would call manipulative and do my best to ignore - Gaya, sooy nibbi damay jooy, bul nibbi, Gaya. Gaya, when you go home I’m going to cry, don’t go home Gaya. When I had first told her I was leaving earlier that week she responded immediately by emptying her school back pack and stuffing some clothes and her favorite sneakers into it. Sooy nibbi damay and ak yow! She declared stubbornly just as she always would when I told her I was going somewhere. When you go home I’m coming with you. She carried a plastic bag to school for the rest of the week. I tried to explain her that this time it was going to be different – that she actually wasn’t going to be able to follow me this time – explaining the bus I had to take and the airport and the plane. And with the help of her grandmother, by Friday, though her backpack was still stuffed and waiting, she had started to understand what this actually meant. And thats when the tears started. I was startled and feeling the need to I tried to comfort her, though I knew from six months of experience with this child that these were not tears that could be wiped away by any tender hand. For she did not yearn for the solace of an embrace, did not understand the meaning of sympathy or reconciliation or forgiveness having never received any. Her frequent fits, tantrums and tears were never acts of vulnerability, but acts of anger and defiance. Like a little girl who had been lost too long in the forest, had shouted for too long without hearing an answer, it was as if by then she shouted, howled into a void, and so thats why she shouted louder than ever, and drowned out the possibility of any response. I’ve already written a whole post about my relationship with Yama, so I’ll just leave it here for now though I’m sure this is something I’ll be returning to. She’ll be the puzzle I’ll never give up trying to solve. How a child can become so alone, so orphaned, within its only family. And such a family!

And something tells me she probably won’t forget me either. At least for a very long time. I left her my favorite backpack. The orange Jansport one that I carried to school when I was her age. Though hard to part with, I felt like only something very significant like that would be fitting; kind of symbolic of a part of me that, thanks to her, I’m leaving behind.

***

While my main priority during those last few days was certainly to spend time at home with my host family, I found myself back at l’Ecole Sebiroute for some reason or another almost every day right up til the very end, determined to have some sort of a hand in the fate of the computer lab and especially my dear library. Months ago when I began questioning the sustainability  of all my efforts I feared that there would be no one able to “take my place” and ensure that the two rooms would be unlocked from day to day. And then one day a few weeks ago, by pure chance, I had happened to meet Mamadou Soumare in the computer lab and he happened to mention to me the movement he is a part of of high school and university students living in Darou Salam, the neighborhood right behind the school, who want to work to improve the level of education amongst all ages in their neighborhood. One of their planned initiatives was to start a local library/cyber to occupy students during after-school hours. Immediately I jumped at this glorious idea.

But you already have a library! I said. Right here at the school. And I’m pretty sure that in a few weeks time no one will be using it.

Later that week Mamadou introduced me to the founder of the movement, Amadou, to whom I promised a meeting with the school director, Monsieur Faye, to discuss our idea. It wasn’t that they needed me in order to talk to the director; I just couldn’t be sure that they actually ever would if I didn’t arrange the appointment. Just a little help with coordination was all I gave them. During the actual meeting which finally took place two days before my last, I was basically just there to listen, and did so contentedly, sitting calmly in my plastic chair in between Mamdou and Amadou, facing the cluttered desk and golden torso of M. Faye, illumated in a shaft of sunlight pouring through the open window, listening to the hopeful words being uttered, ideas being exchanged, promises of dedication: change being made. Acknowledging that their numbers were slim, M and A stated quite humbly that they were prepared to carry the brunt of the work during its beginning stages. They agreed that the best way to get started would be to talk to the teachers and gauge the needs of the students. And then they even spoke of building a sort of training center on school grounds, meant to occupy those youth who do not continue on to high school but who choose to take up trades instead such as carpentry, mechanics, tailoring. And they weren’t empty promises, for both the big and small were discussed – grand theories and visions as well as practical details. Challenges were anticipated.

Not without a bit of a lump in my throat, I sat there feeling my past six months’ worth of work slipping out of my hands. Part of me was regretting that I couldn’t stay to see what would become of this new partnership while another part wanted to pinch the other and say but just look at this beginning you’ve made possible. You should be happy and proud that they don’t need you anymore. Before the meeting was ajourned I tried to express some of this hopefulness that I felt for them, and warned them to not be too annoyed by my frequent emails asking for news and updates. And you never know, I said, there may be some way for me to continue to contribute to your efforts from the United States, at least until the day that I come back. Inshallah.

The following day I dressed in a bright yellow jumpsuit-like boubou my host mother had had made for me, complete with the plastic purple shoes that she had bought for me for my birthday oh so awkwardly back in November, and I walked down the sandy, litter strewn path to school, for the last time. I hardly ever wear Senegalese clothes, always feeling when I do that I’m dressed up in a ridiculous costume, but on that day I felt that the yellow jumpsuit was just too appropriate. Sure enough I was greeted by so many surprised smiles.  Sai-sai gna! You look so nice! Various teachers called to me from classroom doorways, and I would hurry up to shake their hands, just as I always would.

I was encouraged to see that someone had managed to retrieve the keys to the library for the door was already open, and inside Mme. Boodian, Mme. Kane and Mme. Diop were busy dropping handfuls of beignets onto plastic plates and filling tall crystal cups with a thick syrupy juice. I knew that the purpose of the little goodbye party was basically going to be giving me gifts and making speeches about me, as I’m supposing is traditional for the Senegalese to do when someone leaves. They just love ceremonies. I soon felt quite overloaded with handfuls of fabric, clothing and jewelry, and I did my best to accept everything graciously. Then some of the teachers with whom I had worked most closely read their prepared words of praise and admiration, M. Hanne reciting peotry off the top of his head, poor M. Ndoye stuttering nervously through his scientific-like evaluation of my work, and M. Sow reading a letter of recognition from the mayor. My host mother, present and tearful at my side, gave her thanks in wolof, and as would only be appropriate, proclaimed each and everyone of ‘my colleagues’ to be her children, since I, her daughter, was one of their family. But what really got me the most were the letters Mme. Ndiaye had had her kids write which they read out loud to me, in those nervous, robotic run-on sentences that I’m so used to hearing them read in. And then they sang a song of farewell. Mme. Ndiaye, usually the most cheerful and boisterous of all, had been unusually quiet ever since she had stepped foot in the library and almost tearful, avoiding my eyes, and now I understood why: she had undoubtedly spent the whole morning preparing this little ceremony.

Finally I read my little speech which I had prepared just that morning over breakfast to be able to somewhat eloquently express my gratitude to all the teachers. I asked them to look back on the person I had been when I had first arrived, and then to take a look at what they had helped me to do, accomplish and become. I thanked them for their faith and patience throughout the gradual process, and finally concluded by saying that they had inspired me. And I wasn’t just saying it, for it’s true! At the start of my bridge year I was interested in working in all fronts, areas and aspects of development (health, agriculture, education etc.) and am now coming out of it with a more focused interest, inspired as I was every day within the walls of that school, by the challenges, importance and wonders of education. And inspiration – truly – what greater gift could one ask for?

Overwhelming and daunting though such grand things said can be, the beignet banquet felt like the most perfect way to conclude my six months at my apprenticeship. I poked my head for one last time into each classroom to say goodbye to the kids, and then I left.

***

Despite the relatively high degree of ‘cultural competency’ I felt I had achieved by the month of April – an ability to greet people with ease, joke along, know when and how to refuse or accept constant offerings of food, deal with tubabing and stereotyping of westerners – my departure reminded me of how I will always have more to learn. For just as Ami nDoye and Ami Diop (two of my closest friends, one a girl my age and the other one of the young mothers in my host family) had lead me practically by the hand through the various introduction ceremonies back in November, they now lead me through the conclusions.

I was hovering around the kitchen doorway Sunday evening, bouncing around Cogna and watching Kine stir her enormous pot of porridge, as I usually like to do when I can’t think of anything else, when Ami Ndoye marches up and asks me so when are you going to visit ker noom nabou?’ (a family living down the street who is apparently related to ours). I was rather taken aback by the force of her question. Uh, I wasn’t going to, I said. Why? To tell them you are leaving of course, says Ami Ndoye. But I just saw Rama a few hours ago and I know she knows, I said. But Ami Ndoye shakes her head and I start to get the sense that this is another one of those important things that she understands and that I don’t, although as usual my conversations with Ami Ndoye are limited by the language barrier. So I have to go huh? I ask after a few moment’s pause. Yes, she says, you should go now, and she grabs by hand and drags me out the door.

For apparently, although on a day to day basis this doesn’t apply, there is a proper way to say goodbye to family and friends when leaving after a long visit. The process is called “tago” and it involves making visits to the various families you’ve known to announce your departure. The visits aren’t really all that different from any others except that upon learning of your departure, the host is meant to present you with a gift, whether it be cheap plastic jewelry bought on the spur of the moment from a boutique, or a barely worn dress or pair of shoes. You sit on the couch in the family’s salon and you might intermittently break the silence by repeating how much you are going to miss each other, the friend often clinging onto the joke that you are taking him or her back with you. The tv will be playing in the background and you shouldn’t feel bad to stay and sit even if there is no conversation, for its as though the shared knowledge of the importance of you simply being there, of simply having made the visit and accepted the gift prevents silences from being awkward. Once the time to leave has come your host walks you to the door and sometimes all the way back to your house. Your friend might wish you a bonne voyage and express some last regrets at your departure, but there is no need for tears because you shake with your left hands (which is meant to guarantee you’ll meet again some day), and besides you’ll probably see each other again before the time you actually leave, passing in the street, at the boutique. But like I said the actual last moments before your departure are not all that important because what needs to be said has been said, what needs to be expressed has been expressed. Oh, how the Senegalese have a way of easing some of the potentially most distressing situations.

Our very last “tago,” fellows all together, was to the Sebikotane Mairie, the town hall. Bags packed and loaded into the bus, this was our very last stop. Though the words spoken during our last little goodbye meeting brought tears for many, the final embrace I gave my host mother I felt was a happy one, as a culmination of all we had been through together could only be. Somehow, although I had been dreading this moment for weeks, wishing fervently that I could stay just a few more months, I felt finally ready to leave, like the time had come.

]]> http://globalcitizenyear.org/updates/conclusions-of-many-sorts/feed/ 0 http://globalcitizenyear.org/updates/a-memory/ http://globalcitizenyear.org/updates/a-memory/#comments Thu, 06 May 2010 19:04:41 +0000 Gaya Morris http://www.globalcitizenyear.org/fellowsblog/?p=3934 Here is a blog post I meant to post a couple weeks ago but somehow never found the chance to. I guess now you could call it a memory.

My alarm rings at quarter to seven (as I am unable to prevent it from doing every single day due to the broken screen) and I jolt awake to the dim bluish light and soft shuffling beginnings of morning traffic in Dakar. The five rectangular shadows of the other fellows and their mattresses are motionless, poor Mathew still with his backpack for a pillow. Fifteen minutes later I’m dressed in yesterday’s outfit, damp from the humidity that the sea breeze brings to this northern part of the city, my hastily stuffed tote bag already cutting into the same old nook and in my shoulder, and I pause at the door wondering if I should wake somebody, feeling weird setting out alone. But I had told the kids that I would be at school at nine as usual – and besides, I had already decided. I take one last look at the large, emptied room, the site of so many monthly meeting memories, and then turn away.

I let the door click closed behind me, and start trudging through the sandy roadsides of Yoff, up towards the highway. I stop to buy a pain au chocolat at the French bakery, full of warmth and delicious smells at this early fresh-bread hour, hurrying past the talibe, little boys barefoot and in tattered clothing stationed already at the threshold of the glass door, shaking their empty tomato cans already containing a few coins and sugar cubes. Saraxsi egg naa, I say under my breath. I’ve already saved my soul. At the highway I wait for the right moment to dart across, clamber over the concrete barrier in the middle and then hurry after an already stopped clando. A clando is like a public taxi that can take many passengers at once short distances for small fees. The only way to recognize them is to simply look for the smaller, older-looking, most battered up vehicles on the road; the ones emitting little spurts of brown exhaust and making the loudest clanking noises. Cracked windshields are almost always a given but these days even for the regular yellow taxis broken glass isn’t that extravagant.

Assalam Malekum I say as I climb in after the other two male passengers already seated. Patte d’oie. And nothing else. No one is talking at this time of morning. I fish around in my pocket for a 100 franc piece, not really sure whether it should be 50 or 100, and sometimes I get really hung up about not getting ripped off, but then I just think, really, does ten cents make that much of a difference?

I climb out of the clando at the “estation” (the Senegalese can’t pronounce the ‘st’ without putting an ‘e’ in front of it when speaking Wolof) of patte d’oie which I learned later on means literally “duck’s foot” although the figurative English translation would be “fork in the road.” The station is made up of a haphazard cluster of white buses in an unpaved clearing alongside the highway. A few of the vehicles have colorful word art painted on their fronts and backs (religious phrases such alhamdoulilah, thanks be to God, or simply Touba, the name of the holy city of the Mouride brotherhood in Senegal) and some have colorful tassles or ribbons hanging off back bumpers and lacy curtains framing foggy plastic paned windows.

Scraps of stray fabric and litter beaten into the dirt form a sort of carpet and a few umbrella shaded stands overflowing with piles of plastic wrapped confections, strings of phone cards flapping in the wind, seem abandoned in temporary corners in between buses. A few individual vendors wander bearing washcloths and packets of chewing gum, perfumes and plastic bags of water. But its too early for the women, balancing platters of fruit majestically on their heads and dangling long strings of peanut clusters right in front of your nose.

I stand but for a few long moments in the middle of the clearing, wondering how to find the right bus, and trying to ignore all the hissing (what people do when they want your attention) before someone calls out to me “eh, toubab, fooy jem?” (hey white person, where are you going?) I identify the speaker, “Sebikotane” I answer, and then hustle after him as he weaves his way through the crowd, deeper into the throng of buses.

The Ndiaga Ndiaye (that’s what all the white buses are called) that he takes me to appears full when I step up the back stoop. But then the apprenti (the young man who hangs out the back yelling out the destination and collecting bus fares) lowers the extra bench down from off the roof to stick in between the two back rows. After two other people take their seats on this extra bench there is really barely any space left: only just a tiny sliver perfect for no other than a small person such as myself and I squeeze in to perch on the edge of the seat cushion, remarking that the only thing actually holding me in place is the pressure from the bodies around me, on all four sides. I try to ignore the awkward angle of my lower back and lift my head to look around. Two small speaker sets fastened to the metal walls above the windows with nails and rope are currently emitting a tuneless, blaring Arabic chant which must be of verses of the Quran. The male voice is sometimes high pitched, sometimes throaty, rising and falling, bursting with passion and then collecting. Craning my neck to look over people’s heads to the front of the bus I can see the usual colorful posters of ninja-looking marabouts and wrestlers alike, Senegalese celebrities. Hawaiian leis and prayer beads dangle from the mirror above the driver’s seat, and grungy looking teddy bears line the dashboard.

The people are dressed in a full array of outfits, from fully dolled-up dirianke women with their sparky, starched headscarf configurations perched like feathery crowns atop their heads, with bangly gold earings dangling and pungent perfume, to shabbier though hardly less beautiful grandmothers, loosely covered in drapes of boldly patterned, colorful wax fabric, bearing buckets of goods to sell in their laps, and gnawing on the usual thick wooden twigs, which I’m told are for cleaning teeth. Men are dressed in everything from track suits to work suits, to full boubous complete with embroidered hats.

I try to make myself as inconspicuous as possible in my little nook, but I can’t help wondering what all these people must think when they see me: a small, young toubab girl with an incredibly full bag and a curious green colored jug of water. Alone. It’s rare enough for them I’m sure to see any toubabs at all on public transportation headed out of Dakar. Its likely that some of them think I’m a peace corps volunteer, for the Senegalese are generally familiar with the peace corps and it wouldn’t be the first time I was associated with this group, which I honestly find kind of cool. But really, who am I in the eyes of these strangers? Someone with a lot of money who is too stingy to spend it on better transportation services? One of those cheap hippie tourists who play guitar and smoke with bifalls? Vaidehi or Anna Julia (soap opera stars on Senegalese tv) finally come to Senegal? An albino? (probably not) Or simply an unexplainable mystery? My anonymity amongst the fleeting gazes of these silent strangers is at once thrilling and liberating, though often it can be overwhelming to stand out so much, distanced by a gap of understanding, and yet to be physically so close and present amongst them. Sharing, perhaps more literally than I would like, the same breath.

Traffic is at a steady flow at this time of the morning and yet we still get held up a few minutes in the bottleneck leaving Dakar, the stretch of highway along which vendors rush down the side embankments, down from the shack-like dwellings built into walls and fences atop them, to dangle sachets of peanuts and cashews, beignets and cookies through bus and car windows. Coins and goods are passed from hand to hand amongst passengers and vendors. The apprenti calls out ci kanaam, seen paas! (Just like with Mel and Tapha back in my old wolof textbook) and one by one people start passing back their bus fares. Having already paid, my eyelids start to droop, and I relax into the sway of bodies.

When I open my eyes we’re approaching Rufisque. Sheep corner, I like to call it, the market-like clearing that right before Tabaski was a sea of sheep and vendors. Then over the putrid, green-puddled canal, past the ‘village des tortues’ sign, past the route of the horse drawn carriages and the goods of sidewalk vendors displayed on low tables or on plastic sheets right on the ground: whole fish, shoes, bananas and baguettes. After Rufisque the stops are more frequent: Barny, Diamniadio, and then Sebikotane

Jumping down somewhat clumsily from the Ndiaga Ndiaye, a transformation comes about me. Whether its more like stepping out of a dream or back into one I’m not quite sure. The thrill of riding the currents of the public transportation system, a lone anonymous traveler immersed in one of the tightest saturations of the sights, smells and sounds that are Senegal, never fails to be a well needed dose of fresh air, perhaps more figuratively than literally. It renews some sort of perspective. But returning to Sebikotane after the wild journey, the sudden step back into familiarity, is perhaps the best part. Its just one stop among many – poste-courant, Sebikotane its called – but it has somehow become my stop.

Following the usual path along the winding sandy streets, I pass a few people I recognize, and others who undoubtedly recognize me. Adjia fooy demoon? Where did you go? People ask. Kids call out, sometimes my name, sometimes just ‘toubab, toubab.’ But then nearing the corner of my host house, one little voice calls out louder than ever ”Mademoiselle Gaya! Mademoiselle Gaya!” I turn around to see Souleymane Gueye running up to meet me beaming that soft, sly smile I know so well. Souleymane has been one of my favorite students ever since we became friends on the first day I arrived at Sebiroute. He had hurt his leg playing soccer and so I sat with him under the shade of the big narly tree in the school yard, trying somewhat awkwardly to comfort him while his classmates continued to play. Such a sudden outburst from a usually shy, quiet boy surprised me but made me smile. Souleymane had been disappointed that he had had to miss the library activities during the vacation since he had had to go to visit family in Thies. But now he is back. “Aujourd’hui on vient a quelle heure?” he asks me. What time should we come today? “Tout de suite” I say. Straight away. “Je serai la tout de suite.” And I hurry into the house to greet my host mother, drop off my bag, scarf down my pain au chocolat and get ready for school I think how truly, I don’t think I could have thought of a better welcome home.

Answering the question, ‘who has influenced you most during your bridge year?’ for a GCY worksheet, I recently chose Yama as one of the people who as most impacted me. For she has given me insight into the issues of neglected children, into the depths to which a child can fall without parents, or without someone who acts like a parent. For it’s not just the fact that Yama’s mother has given up trying to control her or, or the fact that her father spends most of the year in the Casamance fighting ‘the war,’ it’s more the combined effect of the very many people in the household who never open their mouths to her but to insult or tell her off. Considering the little girl’s impossible attitude, I don’t blame them for not liking her. But a child who is always treated like and animal will only ever learn to act like one. It’s a downward cycle.

Naturally, what Yama wants most is attention, and she has figured out that she can get this from me. I let her play with my cards, with my guitar, let her draw with my colored pencils and make her practice her letters and numbers at nighttime, and then let her draw all over my door with chalk. I’ve taught her to ask nicely and to say please. But when all of a sudden I don’t give her what she wants and start ignoring her (when she forces me to take things away because she’s being rude and stubborn), that’s when she gets really angry. For the past few days for example, it would seem that her sole purpose in life has been to annoy me. And with such persistance. It took me an extra hour the other day to get to Victoria’s house because she wouldn’t stop following me and then I had to take her all the way home and sneak out the back way. When I tell her she can’t come in the computer lab, she’ll climb up on the bars of the windows and dangle there for hours until I let her in. And if I close the windows she’ll bang on them. Once inside the computer lab she’ll nag at me incessantly for paper and crayons and when I give her some to just get her to be quiet (so I can concentrate on my capstone worksheet) she’ll tell me the crayons are the wrong colors, and then start chanting ‘danga bon, danga naaw, danga soxor’ (you’re bad, ugly and mean) under her breath for hours on end.

Now if I were Senegalese, I would have beaten this child long ago, just to get her stay away from me. But I don’t do that because she gets hitting children disciplines but rarely educates them, and as much as her behavior seems to be asking me to hate her (she likes to tell me flat out, I’m bad and impolite and I don’t care what you think), I know what she really wants is the opposite, to be loved, and I pity her for not knowing how, for never being taught how to get this. Its like she doesn’t even know what its like to be “good.” And despite the language and cultural barriers that hinder my ability to teach her this, I can’t give up on her like everyone else.

Yama is my shadow, but for the past few days she has been more like a shadow over my head. For I don’t think I’ve ever met a more impossible child, and it depressed me so much to think how it is so completely possible for a kid to sink this low – and out of a household of perfectly normal, perfectly nice people. My host mother, Yama’s grandmother, claims that its her mother’s fault for letting her ‘roam the streets’ where she picks up everything she sees and hears. And indeed its not the first time I’ve been shocked by the behavior or children in Sebikotane, or the first time that I’ve considered this other flaw in the education system, at the root of Sebikotane’s education system. For school is really just one half of the puzzle. One could argue that the more important type of education occurs at home. Even the teachers at school confirm that’xale yi danu raaw ci Sebikotane‘: that children here are particularly impolite. Many of them tell stories of having much better teaching experiences in rural locations because people in rural villages tend to value the education of their children more, and because smaller amounts of kids can be better looked after. Here, once school lets out, children basically run wild through the tightly winding sandy streets, coming home at night for leftover ceeb (rice) and never opening their school books until the next morning. Most parents enter the school yard only twice a year: at the beginning to pay the entrance fee, and at the end to pick up their child’s exam booklet. Teachers complain about the lazy attitudes of Sebikotane parents, telling me how when called to school to deal with a troublesome kid they’ll say ‘oh my child is just like that, there’s nothing I can do about it. But don’t worry I beat him every day.’ Teachers even describe a worsening of attitudes in the past five years ago. It seems that it was once possible to get parents to pay 1000 fr a month for teachers to tutor their kids after school, but now most parents refuse. In the words of Madame Ndiaye, the people of Sebikotane don’t know if they are villagers or residents of a city, and that’s why they have the problems of both.

Unfortunately, instead of thinking of ways to address the problem, most teachers, including the almighty Madame Ndiaye, talk of wanting to move away and find better places to teach. The population just doesn’t help us they say. But then every once in a while you’ll see glimpses of hope. In the past two weeks I have discovered to locally founded education related organizations. Ousmane Soumaré I met in the computer lab one day and happened to learn about a little movement he is trying to start in the quartier of Darou Salam to get educated residents more involved in l’encadrement des enfants, with the practical goal of opening a local library/cyber in Darou Salam to offer after school learning activities for kids. This was very exciting for me to hear about considering that was basically what I had been doing in the school library for the past few weeks, giving kids exercises and games to play during the Easter vacation. I suggested that Ousmane should contact the school director to use the library for his organization after I leave, for otherwise I fear no one will be using it at all. And then there is also a nationally recognized local organization for the education of children in Sebikotane, L’Amicale des Elèves et Etudiantes de Sebikotane (AEES), which has a ‘siege’ and seems minimally active offering after school tutoring at the middle school, although on paper their list of activities seems very comprehensive. I only wish I had discovered the existence of the se organizations a few months ago, so I could further explore what they do. Until I heard of them, I would have thought I was the only person in Sebikotane who volunteers personal time towards to goal of educating children. And if the people of Sebikotane care at all about reversing this decline in the education of their children, its going to take the efforts of many more of them.

Finally, yesterday, Yama took a first good step in the right direction. Her grandmother had beaten her twice the night before for her attitude towards me, but it was clear that that hadn’t really made a difference. And so after lunch I told Yama we were going to ‘waxtaan ak sa maam’: chat with your grandmother. I had Anna MBengue translate for me to her that she has two weeks to change her behavior, if she wants to be my friend. We told her what she has to do to be polite (listen to what I say, stop insulting, leave me alone when I have work to do, etc.) and if she can do it, I will be nice to her again. And, in the deep, fluid Wolof of her grandmother, under Anna’s piercing gaze and thick pointing finger, I think it kind of worked.

Later that day Yama accompanied me to sit in on a meeting of a woman’s literacy group. At the end the women had a bit of a shouting match over how the substitute teacher had made them stay later than usual. Anger and insults all around. Walking back down the hill towards Sebi as the setting sun makes the sky glow yellow, and as the call to prayer rings out in the distance, Yama clinging to my pinky with one hand and holding my nalgene in the other, she asks me ‘those women weren’t very polite were they?’

No, Yama, you’re right, they weren’t, I said. Insulting is very rude. You don’t insult do you?

Deedeet, she says. And so I know that finally she has understood.

For unexpected discoveries keep on popping up. The conversation I just had with my host mother the other day for example, about all the various ‘groupements’ that exist in Sebikotane and her involvement in them (I can’t believe its taken me five months to finally have that conversation), or my interaction with a group of Senegalese camp councelors who are being trained in the classrooms at l’Ecole Sebiroute during the holidays, or my discovery of a local organization in Sebikotabe dedicated to the education of children. All of this begging the question why now?!!! But I try to tuck it all, all these knew possibilities and ideas, into a safe place, telling myself these are things I may come back to in the perhaps not so distant future.

But as for this evening… the best example yet… I was finally about to sit down to a computer to start typing away after having dismissed my small group of students in the library next door, when someone knocks on the door asking to ‘connect’ to the internet. I’m used to that, as the school director has instructed me to let people access the computers if they pay 100 fr per hour. He is wearing a long white tunic with an artsy tie-died pattern and has a colorfully woven pouch and painted sort of gourd hanging from his neck. He introduces himself and recites a rambling list of the many professions he considers his own (singer, dancer, reciter, educator, collective something or other…ecc.). That’s quite a lot of work, I say, a little surprised but intrigued, as I busy myself with turning on the computer. And so what do you do? He asks me. Are you the one in charge of the ‘salle’?

And so I explain to him a little bit, that yes, I am the one in charge. I’m a volunteer at the school and since I happen to know a bit about computers and no one else does, they decided to put me here. He remarks that he’s never before seen a computer lab in all the schools he’s been in in Senegal. Well what good is a computer lab, I say, if no one uses it. And I explain a little bit about my attempts to train the teachers so that they can teach their students, and about how it hasn’t really worked out. I didn’t even need to explain why and he already understood. And he launches into a little speech about how he understands how I feel and about how he’s experienced the same sort of frustration in all of his work in Senegal, telling stories of events he tried to organize, a pre-school he tried to start. The Senegalese love to criticize themselves for their laziness.

And so the conversation goes on and eventually I decide to voice a question that’s been going through my head for a while but which I hadn’t quite posed to anyone yet. What do you think about books? I asked, and explained a little about my experience in the school library, my discovery of the difficulties kids have with reading, and of the scarcity of proper paper, reading, writing materials in homes and in schools alike. About how I’ve always believed in the importance of stories in education, and about how I know a little bit about the Senegalese oral tradition. What do you think about recording these stories in books? I asked him. Do you think its a good idea, or even right to transform this part of your culture, traditionally retained in memory and transmitted in sounds, onto paper?

His response is mostly positive and encouraging, although he seems to understand my reason for my asking. I thank him and am about to head back to work, when he suddenly feels inspired to launch into another speech thanking me, talking about the rareness of openness of people these days, telling a story of one time he tried to hand out a free mosquito net to a white woman and she tried to avoid him automatically assuming he just wanted money out of her. He leaves the computer lab before his time is up, leaves me a slip of paper with his name on it, and a necklace from around his neck.

Openness is indeed so important, and yet sometimes so difficult. It can make you quite vulnerable. And how do you find the balance, especially when you have to be firm with students, ignore cat-calling in the streets, or when you have to be wary of handing out your phone number to every stranger who asks? And yet it is still possible to meet, randomly, so many decent people in the world, to have meaningful conversations, and to learn unexpectedly from a stranger.

When people think of ‘poor schools’ in developing countries, they usually think of the poor conditions: not enough desks, no electricity, no books, no writing materials. And there are plenty of NGOs or organizations that deal with the goods. Donating books, desks school supplies… But what these schools really need is people. More teachers. There are just so many students – up to seventy in a classroom – that it is just too easy for too many of them to fall behind.

I take this issue to heart almost every day, as part of my apprenticeship activities has been to lead library activities with students needing extra help with ‘lecture’, reading. At first I envisioned the typical, circle time, let’s each read a page and try to understand the story type of thing. And that works for certain groups of students. But when I realized that so many of them really just couldn’t read at all, and that many these students couldn’t read because they didn’t even know the alphabet (these are students in their fourth year in school), I decided I needed to modify my plans a little. Instead of telling the students to show up with their livres de lecture, I told them to come with their ardoises (mini chalk boards) and, taking a few tricks from what I’ve spent the past five months observing in the younger classes, I’ve started reteaching them the alphabet. But it just pains me to think that when I leave, these students will be completely on their own again. Their teacher is “too busy” to do the tutoring himself. And I can’t think of any one in the school community who would be able to take my place. Will they somehow manage to finagle their way through their exams in two year’s time and continue? Or will most of them drop out after just a few years in school, as certainly isn’t uncommon, without having ever learned how to read or write?

And the problem isn’t limited to these particularly troublesome 20 students. Watch any class and you’ll see that in general only about 25 percent really understand what is going on. The rest, the “imbeciles,” cheat off their neighbors, get beaten for occasionally holding up scribbles on their little chalk boards, and get sent back to their seats after failing to read the first few words of a text written on the board. It takes a truly incredible teacher to pace a class of sixty students properly, to be able to really look at every single chalk board to see what’s up, and to do so using methods sane and humane for all. I truly don’t think students, kids in general, would have to be beaten if there weren’t so many of them, or, so many of them that aren’t looked after.

Ideally, the answer to this problem would be more Senegalese teachers – more well trained, culturally embedded, motivated individuals to work in the classrooms. Two at a time if its really that hard to find extra space (classroom space is a problem). This lack of teachers is an obvious reality. Visiting a school in a village close to Sebikotane last week, Yeba, the director himself stated that, in his opinion, this is his school’s greatest need: more teachers. I wouldn’t necessarily say that the cause is that ‘nobody in Senegal wants to teach’ – its more that there are just so many children.

What about Senegalese youth? Couldn’t young Senegalese people my age help out in schools, tutor, work in the library, get a head’s start on their professional training? Just today in fact I posed an idea to a few Senegalese friends that I’ve met through the English club Victoria and I started at the high school. I asked them if they had ever heard of, or would ever consider, a sort of “service club” through which high school students could volunteer in schools, health posts etc., thinking that this particular American phenomenon might not be such a bad one to share. Their answer was simply, maybe… but we don’t really have time. Thinking back to my crazy busy high school days I wouldn’t exactly say that I had time either…. but I guess that’s just another cultural difference.

But anyways, what I wanted to say was, if you are looking for a good place to insert young, inexperienced Americans, motivated to give some sort of meaningful service while learning about another culture and the realities of the developing world (I never said anything about changing the world, or completely solving the problem of the lack of teachers), schools are an excellent option. True, I was pretty useless at the beginning, knowing very little about the culture, speaking faltering French, knowing not a drop about the Senegalese education system. But I’ve learned so much, and combining a young person’s capacity to learn with their energy and motivation, I truly think any sort of volunteer, local or foreigner, pre-college or post-college, can bring something to a school. Obviously the longer they stay the better, and I might say that six months is maybe two or three months short of an adequate amount of time to really carry out a meaningful project from start to finish.

I was actually thinking to myself not too long ago, what if GCY just sent volunteers to schools? Or what if there was some sort of an organization dedicated to sending volunteers to schools? And I think it is important at this point to ask the other fellows, who have been working on farms, in health posts, and with NGOs, their opinions on their apprenticeships. Do they feel like they’ve had meaningful experiences personally? Do they feel like they’ve been able to contribute positively to their work places?

It’s getting late here in Sebikotane, Senegal – the chatter of children out in the schoolyard is starting to dwindle, the loudspeakers are about to break out with the evening call to prayer, and a cool breeze has finally started to trickle into the computer lab, lightening the lingering midday heat. I really should be hurrying home before my host mother starts to worry, but I want to take this moment to write to you, where ever you might be, perhaps scanning through the Global Citizen Year website, flipping through all the official GCY literature, considering taking a gap year, and probably trying to imagine what it would really be like. Fingers crossed the power doesn’t cut again…..

I remember what it was like to start thinking about and planning a gap year. In my case I had always been interested in GCY- ish things – in travel, in global issues, in foreign languages, in volunteering, in changing the world – and so the idea of a gap year was always there in the back of my mind, as I went through the whole college application process, and started to ask myself all those big questions about what I wanted for my future. My ‘idea’ of a gap year at the time went a little something like this: get into college, defer college admission, find an NGO or two in some interesting part of the world, get in touch, get there somehow, live there alone and work for several months, learn about development and the NGO world (practical, real-life skills that I knew couldn’t be learned in a college classroom), learn another language, refresh my perspective on the world and on life, have an amazing experience, and then come home and work for a few months to pay for it. Assuming that I could come up with a good plan (and convince my parents), I eventually decided I would go for it. I was excited for college, but even more intrigued about taking the opportunity to do something daring, unique and meaningful before hand.

But, as I’m sure you can imagine, putting this dream-experience together was a little more challenging than I had anticipated. I started by researching on the web. Key-word Google searches: volunteering in nothern India, sustainable agriculture in Peru, orphanages in Tibet. I came up with all sorts of exciting ideas and possibilities, very few of which were realistic. When I finally came across Global Citizen Year, I knew right away that it was exactly what I had been looking for all along. Although I was into the whole lone-traveler idea, I realized that I would probably be better off with a little help, not to mention the fact that it would make my parents feel a lot better. And the Global Citizen Year program just seemed so comprehensive and thorough, and the idea of being a part of something bigger – a movement of gap year students – definitely struck at something right inside.

And now, after five months here in Senegal, as one of the founding fellows, I would definitely still use the word ‘comprehensive’ to describe my gap year experience. Between the US training, the in-country orientation and language instruction, our carefully chosen homestay and apprenticeship placements, and monthly meetings, I really feel like I have found my way to a wonderful, balanced place of work, learning and living that I could not have without the guidance of GCY. And sure enough, I would say that one of the most important ingredients to this has been the support network: the support of the other fellows, my team leader, and other GCY staff. For while each Fellow’s experience is certainly deeply personal – we each have our different objectives, needs and interests which are taken into account – it would not be the same without the constant dialogue between us of our shared impressions, feelings, ideas and discoveries.

And so, I truly hope that you will consider joining us! This sort of experience, as I’m sure you can guess by now, is very important to me, and I truly believe that it could be for many, many others as well. Its almost dark, the schoolyard in silent and now I definitely have to hurry home.Thanks for reading and best of luck!

For I think we each left California in September with the idea pretty well hammered into our brains that with our age and level of experience, we were learners not change-makers, despite the catchy titles and phrases on the GCY website that had lured us each. At the US training we were also introduced to the idea that volunteer and aid work in the developing world can not only fail, but even have unintended negative effects, such as when it leaves a population or a community dependent on an inflow of donated goods and volunteers, rather than sustainably self-sufficient; or when projects are abandoned before they can be properly concluded…

Arriving in Senegal in October, and finally to our apprenticeship placements in November, our powerlessness as young, foreign individuals certainly became more apparent to us, and for a time we even felt more like burdens to our hosts than helpers. But I think we all passed this stage pretty quickly and soon found ways to be of use whether by simply lending a hand in the every day tasks and chores of the schools, farms and health posts to which we were assigned, or by coming up with a few supplementary projects to support the general activities.

Now already in March, as time has started ticking away much faster than it should, I find myself thinking back to all these important lessons and questions about impact, and thinking critically about my own apprenticeship activities.

For though I still fully stand by this idea that we are here to learn, study and grow, more than to ‘make a mark,’ I am all too aware, especially as the ‘when I leave’ question has started to come up, that I am an exception to my own belief. I would never claim that I have in five months done anything that constitutes ‘making a real difference,’ because we all know that that sort of thing takes years, even decades, and involves addressing the root of a problem rather than trimming its leaves…But in a totally practical, superficial, everyday way, in certain domains of the school community in which I am a volunteer, I know that my absence will be felt.

For it just so happened that the school in which I ended up is lucky enough to have both a computer lab and a library, both of which were out of use when I arrived. Now, five months later I have somehow become the résponsable for these two places. I open and close the doors every day. I make sure that the rooms get cleaned; that books are returned to their proper sections; that Seneclic gets called to come repair misbehaving computers and remove the dust from infested mouses. I am the only one who brings students into the library, and for a time I even took it upon myself to spend three hours on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday afternoons introducing the students to the computer lab, group by group, following the schedule that the director had put together. All of this is of course a wonderful service for me to have been able to give the school for the time being, and for me to have carried out for my own personal growth, but then comes the obvious, inescapable question: what’s going to happen when I leave? For if my departure means that the doors will once again be left closed and that the computers and books will once again fall to dust, have I really helped them in the long run, or have I just ‘mixed things up’ for a short while? Is this the simple reality of a six month apprenticeship – that nothing of true, lasting value can realistically be accomplished? That only short-lived, “token” services can be given? Or do I still have time to turn things around, to prepare the school for my departure, and to make my efforts sustainable?

These are all questions that I am in the process of answering. A few weeks ago I asked the school director to call a “réunion pédagogique” of all the teachers (a faculty meeting) during which I expressed to them my worries that the computer classes that I had been giving the students would cease immediately following my departure.

The idea had been, when we first created the schedule, that each teacher would lead his or her class in the lab during the allotted time, and that I would “assist” them so that they would be capable of leading the classes alone before the time I left. Clearly however the initiative had quickly turned from a team-project to a Mademoiselle Gaya-project as, day after the next I found myself deciding to somehow rally the students for their first every computer lessons despite the absense or tardiness of their teachers. And so by this point, the day of the réunion pédagogique, I felt that the first question to ask was simply: do you want the computer classes to continue? Unfortunately this was somewhat of a rhetorical question considering that everyone knew that the computer lab had been donated by the Senegalese government for the sole purpose of training the students. For I think it would be interesting to ask them at some point, considering all the challenges that they face (simply getting kids to learn how to read and write for example), minus the presence of the school director and the Senegalese government, would they really consider “computering” a priority or something at all worth their time and effort? But at least this question raised the point that truly integrating the computer lab into school activities really depends more on them than on me.

And so it was decided then and there that that the only way for the classes to continue would be for the teachers themselves to be properly trained in ‘informatique.’ Their immediate solution was for me to revert back to the private lessons that I had tried giving during my first two months at the school. But thinking back to how tedious and ineffective that was, and how I am now more focused on the library activities during the mornings, I proposed the idea that it would be more effective and efficient for me to teach them all at once, in just a few pre-planned sessions. I would do these on Tuesdays and Thursdays, in the place of the classes I had been giving the students. They all agreed, and so after a few last motivational speeches, complements on my hard work in the library, and prayers, the meeting was ajdourned.

Since then, this is the plan that I have been attempting to carry out. Sounds like a simple enough solution right? Well… there is only so much I can do, with the few Tuesdays and Thursdays I have left. I handed out a schedule, planning each lesson and each topic for each lesson on specific days – introduction, word, excell, internet, email, games etc. – but already we’ve fallen behind. Sometimes it truly feels like the forces are against us: power cuts, unexpected cultural events, the general tardiness and forgetfulness of human beings, the incredible amounts of sand and dust that manage to leak through the cracks of the windows, carried by the winter wind. Sometimes I wonder if all of this is some sort of sign that computers are just not meant to be used in Africa… The hardest part is constantly, gently reminding and trying to motivate the teachers to show up, making my rounds to each classroom to chat almost every day. For they are all adults, and I’m just a kid trying to help them. Sometimes Monsieur Hanne jokes that I’ll be calling them from the United States, reminding them to unplug the computers over-night, or that the library needs to be swept on Mondays… and I’m sure I will want to keep in touch, to see what the long term effects of my efforts might be. If any. Its just a computer lab, its just one part of one school, and sometimes I have to remind myself: you don’t even like computers, remember? But the exercise in itself, of trying to solve this problem of twenty unused computers, has somehow become important to me.

As for the library? Well, that space will always hold a closer place to my heart, despite the fact that I know, two months from now, no one will be here to lead story-time, to tell the kids to sit in a circle on the carpet, pass around a tennis ball, pretend to climb onto the roof like the Grand Méchant Loup (the big bad wolf), taste the soup like Boucle D’or (Goldylocks), pull the rope like Monsieur Elephant and Madame Baleine… but the books will all be there and chances are, at the very least, they will read them again some day.

The lesson was an ‘initiation scientifique,’ and having sat in on a few of these before I can say that these constitute one of the most fascinating parts of Madame Diatta’s government-designed curriculum to observe from a cross-cultural perspective. It might sound pretty ridiculous to say that kids who can barely hold a pen or pencil are subjected to science lectures, but that’s the truth. The seeds of scientific knowledge are planted at this age. It is true that often times Madame Diatta finds the government-outlined lessons to be ridiculously advanced or simply irrelevant to her massive hoard of fifty-plus children, but she does her best to translate the scientific concepts into French-Wolof shouting matches with the little ones that will make them understand. I once sat in on a lesson malaria in which Madame Diatta taught them that people who don’t sleep under mosquito nets will get bitten by the female mosquitos (I didn’t even know it is the female ones!), the ones that buzz in your ear, and catch malaria.

This time, I happened to walk in on a lesson on “different types of people.” Mme Jiata had already been through the whole thing once and so she shoved me in front of the class and told me what questions to ask. First question: what did God create on earth? The kids already knew what to say and all thrust their little hands into the air, snapping their fingers and bouncing out of their seets, shouting the familiar chorus of madame! madame! L’EAU, they all said, LES ARBRES…. ET LES PERSONNES! How many different types of people are there? I was then told to ask. DEUX! they all answered. LES GARCONS ET LES FILLES! Then came the interesting question. How many different colors of people are there? I asked the children. It took them a few moments as they counted the little circles of color that Madame Diatta had drawn on the board behind me. CINQ! they all said. Black, white, brown, yellow and red. What color am I? Madame Diatta asked. NOIRE! they all shouted. And what color is she? Madame Diatta asked coming over to put her arm around my shoulders. BLANCHE! they all screamed. Who are the black people? Madame Diatta asked. Ce sont les afri…. CAINS! And who are the white people? She asked. Ce sont les…. TUBABS!

This word, I know for a fact, is one that every little kid in that classroom knew (while I would have some doubts that they all knew the word ‘africain’) as I have yet to be able to walk the streets of Sebikotane without be greeted by a chorus of “tubab! tubab!” I have racked and racked my brains trying to understand exactly it is that makes shouting tubab! a never-ending, irresistible source of entertainment for little kids here, and even some adults. And also what exactly the cultural difference is that makes this phenomenon totally OK to the Senegalese, but somehow deeply bothersome and even offensive to me.

I tried to explain it to my host sister once, when we were sent one evening to the tailor to get measured for the matching outfits that my host mother had ordered for us. Out in the streets I was obviously met by the same never ending chorus as usual: tubab! tubab! And from the kids who knew me from school Gaya! Gaya! And the occasional Mademoiselle Gaya! As usual I did my best to ignore all the calling and Adja asked me: aren’t you going to respond to them?

Answer them?! Tubab! Or even Gaya! Gaya! is not a question, nor is it a greeting. And its not like I’m a walking puppet trained to do a little dance or something ever time I’m poked. I obviously couldn’t say all of that in Wolof but what I did say was: Adja, duma animal. I am not an animal. I am a person. Which sent Adja into fits of laughter.

Now I know that just because people call to me in this way doesn’t mean that they equivocate white people with animals. It’s not racism. They are just some bored little kids who have an amazing capacity for repetition and for copying each other, and who probably find the sight of a real live white person to be one of the more exciting parts of their day. So if I know its not badly meant, why does it bother me so? I think it goes back to when I was a kid and when I learned that pointing out differences, or labeling people by their physical appearances is not a good thing. Everyone could see that Johnny was fat, that Michelle was skinny, that Tom had freckles and that Sarah had big teeth, but no one needed to point these things out. And then when it came to designating skin color differences, you had to be extra careful about how you phrased it.

The Senegalese on the other hand, talk about appearances a lot, and openly. Moussa who? Oh, the fat one. Fatou who? Not Fatou Diop, its Fatou Ndiaye, the super dark one. And then women never hesitate to tease each other: sa doom naaw na de! Jeez, your baby is ugly! Any of these phrases would obviously not be socially acceptable in the US… America, the melting pot, the land of tolerance and diversity. Comparatively, American society is certainly more diverse. Or perhaps more interesting to say is that the ‘ideal American society’ is extremely diverse, make up of people of all sizes, shapes and colors. And yet while we pride ourselves in respecting and valuing differences, we don’t talk about them much – whether differences in appearance or racial or socio-economic background. Its as though we try to soften, blur and ‘forget’ the differences so that everyone can live in peaceful, harmonious, equality. Hence the often discomfort when designating people by their skin color. All of this heightened of course by our recent history of slavery, racism and the civil rights movement.

The Senegalese do not strive for the same equality that we do. Those of “lower social status” aren’t shunned or discriminated against (laundresses, maids, street children) – they would be welcomed around the bowl in my host-house just as well as any one else. But just as with gender and age roles, everyone has “their place.” There are inevitably limits to what is given and what certain people are allowed to do. As for ethnic differences, comparatively to the US Senegal is not very diverse, but if you look more closely from within you”ll find that people come from all sorts of different ethnic backgrounds – pulaar, wolof, seerer, joola, mandingue – and that people take these differences quite seriously. Different ethnic groups have ‘joking relationships’ which give the Senegalese license to tease and insult complete strangers. Peuls and Seerers for example and Seerers and Joola will automatically tease each other anytime they meet. I’ve noticed this a lot amongst teachers at school. For some reason the Seerer teachers are in the minority and so are always picked on by their colleagues. He’s just a Seerer, that’s why he can’t write properly… Another funny story is when M. Diaham, one of our GCY instructors, stole the shoes belonging to Oumoul, one of our language teachers from the Baobab Center, and refused to give them back to her unless she paid him (all because M. Diaham is a serrer and Oumoul is a Peul and because apparently stealing something that the other leaves behind at one’s home is a joke that is traditional between the two). The result of all this is obviously that ethnic differences, and everything that comes along with them, are always known and talked about openly.

We “tubabs” obviously are excluded from this anciently founded web of ethnic relationships and joking traditions that allow people of different backgrounds to relate from the moment they meet. And people just wouldn’t understand the sensitivity that a westerner might have about “being different” or the respect that one would consequently expect. I can spin myself in circles trying to figure out who is right and who is wrong: am I just being oversensitive or are they really just that rude?

Well, on the spur of the moment, back in Madame Diatta’s classroom, I decided to try to teach the kids an extra little lesson.

And who are the white people? Madame Diatta asked. TUBABS! they all roared. Yes, that’s correct, I said, but when you see a tubab out in the streets, its impolite to yell tubab. You can say Bonjour madame or Bonjour Monsieur, comment ça va madame? But saying tubab is bad. Dengeen? (do you understand)

Luckily Madame Diatta seemed to support my idea enough to translate for the kids what I had said in wolof. I’m not sure how well they absorbed the message but, at least I gave it a try.

After that Madame Diatta needed my help figuring out where all the other colors of people are supposed to come from. Who do you think are the yellow people? She asked me. And the red people? Well, I’ve never seen a red or yellow person in my life, I felt like saying. But then again, I’m not exactly white am I? So I helped her reach the conclusion that yellow people come from Asia and red people from India. And she announced it to the squirming, wandering, barely attentive by now, little students.

Five months ago this lesson might have seemed very wrong to me, just backwards, even borderline racist. To reduce entire continents of people to little circles of color on the chalk board. But I’ve been here long enough now to know its totally benign, and just the reality of people’s understanding of race and the world here. India and Asia are places that are only known of in name. And I guess you could even say so about Europe and America. At the very least the kids went home that day knowing that other colors of people exist in the world, even if they think they come in all the colors of the rainbow.

Reading the writing on people’s t-shirts here can be quite entertaining in general, or at least a good way to spark conversation or fill awkward silences when sitting around in someone’s living room with nothing to do. Most of the inscriptions are in English, and sometimes involve a random mix of words that together make absolutely no sense. Others, like the girl scout t-shirts (of which I have now seen two – Pape Jamm’s and another reading ‘cool, hip and happening’) are obviously bits of clothing that once upon a time belonged to Americans, were donated to charity organizations, and somehow washed up on the shores of this continent, and ended up in the hands of these Senegalese people.

The elderly man photographed above is the ‘gardien’ at l’Ecole Sebiroute who happens to own, and wear every morning between about eight and nine thirty before the sun breaks through the haze, a heavy winter coat with a badge that contains the words “Cambridge, Massachusetts,” a place very, very close to home for me. The discovery of this article of clothing also excited me greatly one morning, as I stood with the usual group of teachers in the school yard, listening to the usual morning chatter before the start of classes. Mbaye Ba, the gardien, kindly, somewhat nervously, allowed me to take a picture.

Noticing these intriguing articles of clothing had made me wonder about how exactly they had been distributed. Where and when? Had they been sold or given out for free? I wondered about this in particular becuase most of the people who I had seen with these clothes were not exactly those whom I would have described as ‘in need of charity’: people living in comfortable houses containing broad selections of intricate Senegalese boubous and ‘trendy’ western clothing alike. Just this past Tuesday, I had the chance to witness the distribution of donated clothing. Observing this process as someone who had only ever donated or seen clothing donated, this was certainly an interesting experience.

The boxes arrived sometime on Sunday, for I found them stacked in the school library when I arrived on Monday morning. Thanks to Rudolphe no doubt, I thought as I started opening windows and turning on the lights. Rudolphe, the Frenchman who had passed through the school a few weeks ago with his clip-board, apparently representing a little village in southern France that is somehow ‘in relation’ with Sebikotane and which donates books, computers, clothing and medical equipment from time to time. Many different institutions in Sebikotane benefited from Rudolphe’s visit: schools, the maternity, women’s organizations, the town hall, health posts. The school director had called for more computers and books (even though we already have plenty, that, hem hem, weren’t even being used just a few months ago) but I wasn’t expecting all the clothing. Speaking with my host mother, who had been involved in the reception of the goods, later that evening I learned that the clothing had indeed been given to the school for the students. But apparently the director, or whoever was in charge, misunderstood or overlooked this particular detail, for only a scarce handful of students went home with new clothes that day. Instead, a few teachers (for most of the teachers were away on pilgrimage to Touba for the Grand Magal, a Mouride festival) went home with large cardboard boxes full of clothing, for them and their kids.

Being in the room as all the clothing was distributed, or taken I guess would be a better word, was rather frustrating. The director called me into the library to test out the computers (new computers? Just give them to mademoiselle Gaya, she’ll know what to do…) and so while I fiddled with these ancient machines, trying to figure out where to connect the various cables and which buttons to push first, the men started to sort through the clothing. It was kind of amusing I guess to see them examine all the ‘tubab’ clothing, trying on everything, asking each other for suggestions and advice. And I guess things just went from there. People who happened to pass by the door would be invited in and soon there was a small crowd of adults around the boxes, with maybe a few of the director’s children (but all the other kids had to stay outside – and soon the door was filled with little faces peaking inside). People would reach into the boxes, pick up an article of clothing, give it a quick glance and, if satisfactory, add it to the pile in their arms. Some people started filling empty boxes with their own personal stashes. Eventually the teachers who were still in their classrooms were sent for, but no one thought about those who were away in Touba. Too bad for them I guess.

I pretty much stood to the side throughout the process instinctively distancing myself from the free-for-all. I contented myself with folding some of the clothing tossed onto the tables and as I did so I noticed the fine quality of most of it. Jeans, intricately decorated sweaters, silky dresses, cute little baby t-shirts. I could help thinking that the school could even be selling the clothes, at very low prices of course, to at least raise a little money. But it was all just disappearing so quickly…. Some of the teachers asked me why I wasn’t taking any. I did think about taking a few outfits home for my host siblings (and now I kind of regret not having done so) but the problem was that I knew for a fact that my host siblings already had plenty of clothing, and I could not escape the notion that these clothes had been donated for people who really need them. I was clearly observing the process from the perspective of the donors, and I even tried to explain to a few of the teachers who would listen that when those people back in France boxed up their hand-me-downs to be shipped off the Africa, this was surely not the scene that they had imagined. Which was maybe a sort of round about way of saying that this was not the sort of scene that I had always imagined. Well what exactly had I imagined? Its a fair question, and to tell you the truth, I don’t think I ever really gave it much thought.

But we need it too, the teachers responded simply, and sure, their budgets are certainly a lot tighter than those of the donors back in France, but the essential issue remained that in my mind, donated clothing should always destined to people who don’t have much clothing – the desperately needy, the “poor.” And somehow the people around me did not fit the stereotype/concept/notion of “poor” that I had always gone by, and that I guess I still retain. They were just some very lucky teachers… And this is not the first time that I have been presented with a Senegalese notion of poor and not accepted it into my own. Ask any average well-dressed, well-fed, fairly-educated young person in Sebikotane what their definition of poverty is and they will probably respond poverty? Well, that’s me.

And finally, a last interesting observation to make, is how little thought the people in that room seemed to put into the whole process. It was almost like they didn’t even consider where all the clothes had come from, or why they were there. The only fact to be considered was that the clothes were there and they were for free. And so why not take as much as you can? There was no shame whatsoever in just taking, and I can’t really explain why I think there should have been, but it kind of reminded me of the day when Rudolphe came to visit with his clipboard. Rudolphe took a peak inside our pretty full, nicely organized library and seemed ready to check-off books on his list as ‘already has some’ when the director insisted that we need more. Yes, yes, more books would help us a lot, he said. It could be just a reflex, I guess, that when you are used to lacking something you take as much of it as you can when it comes your way. But I couldn’t help thinking of all the other schools, in Sebikotane and in Senegal, that surely didn’t have any books at all. And where on earth are we going to put all of these new books? I wanted to ask. But like I have observed of other receptions of donations – whether of books, medicine, computers from the government, even the services that I have given to the school – the goods were received without much thought about their past or future, how or why, or if the flow would be sustained. The Senegalese are a people used to receiving, used to moving from one day, week, month, year to the next pulled along by bouts of luck. And I wonder if this isn’t a habit that hinders the true, sustainable development of their community.

*** I thought I should just quickly add that I learned later on that other boxes or clothing had indeed reached the ‘more needy’ of Sebikotane, as they were sent to the koranic schools where the talibe children received some: the children who live and work for their religious instructor, begging in the streets.