Friday the 15th marked the halfway point of our stay in Senegal. I’ve been keeping close track of the days, and feeling the halfway mark looming upon me was, frankly, kind of depressing.  A month ago, I had written a proposal detailing all the activities I wanted to initiate at the preschool. The director approved it the day I submitted it, and said he would explain it to the preschool teacher. After a week, I tried to organize a meeting between the three of us. While I waited for that meeting to take place, I continued what I’d been doing at the school – helping the kids color, opening snacks, handing out materials, and drawing the curricula on the boards. A month passed while I waited, and I decided to just explain it to the teacher myself on Wednesday. I launched into a long, painful speech in my stunted French, and she listened and nodded. Then she brought me a stack of 50 notebooks and told me to copy the same picture into all of them (I’ve been designated official artist, because they somehow think my atrocious drawing skills are fabulous) so that the kids in my group could color the next day. She had obviously missed my entire point – that coloring every day was getting them nowhere, that I was tired of being forced to draw pictures and make endless paper chains, that I was not accomplishing anything at this apprenticeship. As I sat there, drowning in a sea of empty, waiting notebooks, I could feel a scream rising rapidly inside my throat. I was perilously close to either letting it out or bursting into an absolute torrent of tears.

That was and will undoubtedly be my lowest point throughout this bridge year. That Saturday, there had been an extremely uncomfortable situation with my host family. Sunday, I got the news that my aunt had just succumbed to her fight with pancreatic cancer. I took some time off work to cry and calm myself down and when I returned, I was still pretty high-strung. When that conversation happened, the frustration and feeling of helplessness that had been building up over the past week completely took over. Luckily, I refrained from exploding, knowing that would distress the teachers to no end, and that moment became a pivotal one for me.

I truly love GCY. I think the program is absolutely phenomenal and plan on being one of the loudest, most enthusiastic voices promoting the GCY experience when I return to the States. Read more…

For our first monthly meeting in Dakar, the Fellows celebrated a late Thanksgiving at Rachel’s house. I was averse to having a “traditional” Thanksgiving dinner, but tried not to dampen everyone else’s holiday spirits. It just struck me as rather America-centric to feel the need to celebrate traditional holidays while abroad, especially while in an immersion program, and especially when the holiday is one as distinctively American as Thanksgiving. (Yes, I am aware that Canadians also celebrate Thanksgiving, but it’s really not quite the same.) Thanksgiving admittedly doesn’t hold much importance with me anyways. First of all, there are far too many questions about the cruelty of the colonizing Europeans and the resulting plight of the natives for me to give thanks for this national holiday. Secondly, Thanksgiving isn’t that much fun for me as a vegan. So right off the bat, my desire to celebrate Thanksgiving was probably less than that of the other Fellows.

However, once all the traditional fare was prepared (we actually had chicken and one symbolic turkey leg), my idealistic-youthful-activist cynicism melted away like butter in mashed potatoes. Read more…

Before I left Boston, my mother warned me not to argue with people if I disagreed with their cultural beliefs. It’s better to bite my tongue, she said, to avoid creating problems for myself. Before in-country arrival, GCY gave us instructions to steer clear of discussing controversial topics with our host families and newfound friends. I understand this. I may be a girl of strong convictions, but I would like to think that when GCY chose me, they saw some semblance of cultural sensitivity. I know how to pick my battles, and I know that as a Founding Fellow, I shouldn’t really pick any at all.

Nevertheless, keeping my opinions to myself is becoming difficult, especially with my host father constantly telling me “we’re your family now, I’m your father now, you should behave as if this were your house in America!” Well, if my real dad and I were sitting on the couch, watching TV, and he loudly announced “I’m thirsty!” I would probably say something along the lines of “oh.” I would not take that as a cue to run to the kitchen, pour him a glass of water, hand it to him while dropping a curtsy, stand there waiting for him to finish, and take the glass back to the kitchen. I have a lot of respect my father, and as a normally nice person, I would gladly get him a drink if he asked for one. But saying “I’m thirsty” is not akin to asking for a drink, especially not asking with a please. Read more…

Before I left Boston, my mother warned me not to argue with people if I disagreed with their cultural beliefs. It’s better to bite my tongue, she said, to avoid creating problems for myself. Before in-country arrival, GCY gave us instructions to steer clear of discussing controversial topics with our host families and newfound friends. I understand this. I may be a girl of strong convictions, but I would like to think that when GCY chose me, they saw some semblance of cultural sensitivity. I know how to pick my battles, and I know that as a Founding Fellow, I shouldn’t really pick any at all.

Nevertheless, keeping my opinions to myself is becoming difficult, especially with my host father constantly telling me “we’re your family now, I’m your father now, you should behave as if this were your house in America!” Well, if my real dad and I were sitting on the couch, watching TV, and he loudly announced “I’m thirsty!” I would probably say something along the lines of “oh.” I would not take that as a cue to run to the kitchen, pour him a glass of water, hand it to him while dropping a curtsy, stand there waiting for him to finish, and take the glass back to the kitchen. I have a lot of respect my father, and as a normally nice person, I would gladly get him a drink if he asked for one. But saying “I’m thirsty” is not akin to asking for a drink, especially not asking with a please. Read more…

My apprenticeship is with the PDEF – an organization (funded by the international NGO ChildFund) that runs many things in the community, including a preschool which I am supposed to “help,” or really just study. After a week of sitting in the secretary’s office with my friendly mentor – she is the secretary – typing lengthy Excel spreadsheets, I have finally commenced inside an actual classroom. Until this week, I literally had not even seen a child. Read more…