If you haven’t yet read the first part of this adventure, be sure to do so before reading this blog. It might make a bit more sense! http://globalcitizenyear.org/2011/12/39-hours-pt-1/

Thursday, 7:00 p.m., the abandoned ranchito

Wilson and I wake to the roof being violently blown off the lean-to. The world is a whirlwind of insanity; my clothes have blown into the field nearby and the rain is pounding us with a fury.

“The blankets!” he yells, and takes off after the plastic “roof.” I grab our sleeping materials, stuff them into bunches, and put them under my backpack so they don’t fly into the maelstrom.

The pots and pans are whisked off the board where they sat next to the fire in the fury of the storm. Wilson returns a moment later with the plastic and begins re-tying it. Every few seconds the wind rips it from his hands and he starts over. As I start to help him, he shouts “We should wait for the storm to pass! We can’t do it now!”

We sit down, soaked to the bone, and wait.

Thursday, 7:30 p.m., the abandoned ranchito

The wind relents. The rain is still pounding, but the break in the fury allows Wilson and I to tie down the plastic.

Exhausted, grumpy, water permeating everything I can feel, smell, see, and touch, we unwrap our blankets, squeeze out as much water as we can, and collapse into sleep.

Every sound jolts me awake, but Wilson sleeps like a rock. Around midnight, I finally pass out into a deep sleep.

Friday, 5:30 a.m., the abandoned ranchito

We wake up and finally see the damage. The ranchito is completely trashed. Pots and pans litter a six-foot radius around the firepit. I plod into the field, locate my change of clothes (so much for having clean, dry clothes for today), and come back to the ranchito to find Wilson making a batch of chicha.

Chicha is a fermented beverage, often made from yuca, which the Kichwa and many other indigenous groups drink on a regular basis in the Andes and Amazon regions of Latin America.

I can’t stand the taste of chicha, but I choke down a few mouthfuls for whatever strength it may offer. We pack our things, thank the heaven’s above that our GPS devices weren’t destroyed, and set out for the unknown.

Friday, 8:30 a.m., a small river deep in Bosque Colonso

The waterfall.

Wilson tells me that we’re coming up to a waterfall soon. Apparently among his family and Santa Rita, this waterfall is legendary for the huge numbers of small fish that congregate near the bottom. Hunting expeditions a few times a year harvest as many as they’re able to bring back to the village.

We emerge from under the canopy into the sunlight. Already sweating and soaked from trudging through a half dozen streams, I rub my eyes until they adjust to the sudden brilliance.

It’s stunning. A huge volume of water crashes over two massive rocks into a deep pool below. Wilson tells me it’s about three meters, or almost ten feet deep. I peek over the edge and sure enough, see a plethora of fish congregating in the pool.

He snaps a picture of me in front of the waterfall and we continue.

Friday, 9:00 a.m., the side of a mountain in Bosque Colonso

We run into a man, maybe 70 years old, chiseled by years of physical labor and dressed simply, working on a new trail with a machete and nothing more. He hammers away at the underbrush with precision, but jolts to attention when Wilson greets him with “Alli puncha!” (Kichwa for “good morning” or “good day”)

He and Wilson talk in Kichwa for several minutes, and I’m reminded of how annoying it is to be unable to understand a conversation happening right next to you. I vow to myself to approach speaking English the same way: if there are people in the group that can’t understand, make the effort to speak Spanish around my Ecuadorian friends and co-workers.

A few minutes later, Wilson comes over to me perched on a downed log and says “It is much farther than I expected. We will not make it back until this afternoon. We have much walking to do.”

We thank the man, Wilson in Kichwa and me in “Spanwa,” and at his biddance, take his new directions and go off further into the unknown.

Me in front of the waterfall.

Friday, 10:15 a.m., a small creek

We’ve been walking up another creek for over an hour. Wilson says it’s easier than trying to break trail in the jungle, and I grumpily follow him, soaked to my waist from slipping into the water so many times.

As we round a corner in the creek, Wilson suddenly says “STOP! Do not move.”

I don’t know what’s going on, but I stop nonetheless.

He takes his walking stick, thrusts it into the water in front of me, and flicks a three-foot purple and white striped snake into the brush on the side of the water.

“What was that?” I ask, paralyzed in fear.

“Bad snake. Can kill man. It is good you did not walk into it.”

We keep walking.

Friday, 11:00 a.m., a few kilometers farther up the creek

I’m starting to tire. Not having eaten since dinner the night before, my stomach was rumbling like a ’77 Camaro and my feet wouldn’t move as fast as I wanted them to. I found myself losing sight of Wilson every five minutes and hurrying to catch up with him, only to lose sight again within a few minutes.

I call ahead that I need to take a break.

“A break? Why?” He stops and turns back to me curiously, but obliges, whistling to himself and humming a tune I don’t recognize.

Three minutes later, we set off again.

Friday, 11:45 a.m., underneath a waterfall 25 or 30 feet high

We come up to a waterfall towering over us. We obviously can’t go over it. Unfazed, Wilson pulls out his machete and we start to carve a path up and around the mountain. The exhaustion is really catching up with me, and I take out my water bottle and drain the last of my Dasani. Chuta. (“chuta!” is the Spanish equivalent of “shoot!”)

Ten minutes of trailblazing later, we emerge over the waterfall. 

“It’s beautiful!” Wilson exclaims, and I earnestly nod my head in agreement, thinking that this event might warrant a break.

Not the case.

“Let’s go!” he says enthusiastically. I grunt in reluctant agreement.

We keep walking.

Friday, 12:30 p.m., once again trudging through a creek somewhere deep in Bosque Colonso

I have no idea where we are. I ask Wilson, and he says “I don’t either, but according to the GPS, we are three kilometers from the edge of the forest.”

How inspiring, I think to myself. The exhaustion is making me sarcastic, and I scold myself.

“One hour more,” he reassures me from ahead on the “trail” we are creating.

Relieved, senses somewhat dulled by the never-ending stimulation of the forest, I take a deep breath and put one foot in front of the other once again.

Friday, 2:00 p.m., on a small mountain in the forest

After an hour and a half pass without us reaching the edge of the forest, Wilson adjusts his estimation again.

“We will be there by 3:00.”

My feet don’t want to move anymore, and neither do I. My breath scrapes against the back of my throat like sandpaper, and my stomach has given up rumbling in place of dull throbbing in time with my steps, which grow slower every minute. Even Wilson has noticed my decline in my already-slow pace, and asks if I’m okay.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just a little tired.” I ask if he has any water left, but he too ran out several hours ago.

“We cannot take a break. We must get back to Santa Rita before dark.”

I hadn’t thought of that. Several choice words run through my head, and I tell him I’m ready.

We walk.

Friday, 3:00 p.m., coming down another mountain into a clearing

I can’t go any farther. I’m walking about at about a quarter the rate as when I first started, and Wilson is growing somewhat impatient with me.

I abruptly lose footing coming down a slope and slide uncontrollably 20 feet through the mud before coming to an abrupt halt with my thumb jammed against a rock and an inch-long piece of bark sticking out of one of my fingernails.

Agony washes over me, my vision blurs, and I yank the wood out from my ring finger. Blood spurts in a disgusting arc and I jam my finger into the cloth of my shirt to try and stem the bleeding.

Only then do I notice my thumb: already purple, nearly twice the size it should be, and completely immobile. More choice words fly through my head, and I let out a howl of pain.

Although I once broke my pinky finger during a football match gone bad, I’ve never actually broken any other bones. The pain radiating from my thumb was excruciating. I lose my footing again and fall onto my hand.

Tears streaming down my cheeks (even at the writing of this blog, I can still remember how embarrassed I felt for crying in front of Wilson), heart beating like I had just run a 100-meter dash, I plant myself on a log next to the trail as Wilson makes his way carefully back up the trail to where I sit.

“Chuta!” he exclaims.

“Chuta,” I agree weakly. I feel wretched.

Miles from any village, my thumb possibly broken, a hole in the bottom of my left foot, three wasp stings that have evolved into red bumps on my chest and shoulder, not having eaten for almost 24 hours, sweating out the last of my water, and in a race against time to get to the edge of Bosque Colonso and back to Santa Rita before dark, the gravity of what’s happening hits me.

I start to get scared.

Stay tuned for the third and final part of this adventure, coming in my next blog post. It should be up within the next week. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to this blog by clicking the green button next to my name in the right-hand column!

My most recent project at my internship site, Runa Amazon Guayusa, is creating a GPS map of Bosque Colonso, a 22,000 acre rainforest preserve stretching from my village of Santa Rita, past the towns of Archidona and Tena, and through a number of other Kichwa villages. All conversations within the story took place in Spanish and/or Kichwa and has been translated for your reading pleasure.

The 39 hours between 11 a.m. on Thursday, December 1^st and 2 a.m. on Saturday, December 3^rd were, without exaggeration, the scariest and yet most transformative day and a half of my life. Let’s start at the beginning.

Thursday, 10:30 a.m., Santa Rita

I’m with Alexandra, an Ecuadorian woman working in the Runa office. We arrive in Santa Rita in order to mosey up to the edge of Bosque Colonso, two kilometers to the west of Santa Rita through the forest. However, neither of us know the way to the edge of Santa Rita, so we enlist the help of Wilson, a neighbor of mine and the Santa Rita representative on Runa’s farmers association.

When he lets us know we can’t go directly to the edge of Colonso, it will be a six-hour hike to get there, and that we will have to spend the night on the mountain, Alexandra says she absolutely cannot go because she needs to be in the office early tomorrow. I volunteer to go.

“Great. You’ll need plastic to sleep on, a blanket, and enough food to last until 10 a.m. tomorrow. Can you be ready in a half hour? We need to leave soon to make it there by dark.” says Wilson.

Not even knowing what “there” is and far from worrying about it, I say, “yes” and practically run to my room in excitement. I throw my things together: the GPS to take the Colonso points, a change of clothes, plastic and a blanket, a clipboard for notes, a bar of soap, and some snacks: two bottles of water, a Nestea, crackers, three pieces of bread, and some fruit.

We meet outside his house at 11 and depart.

 Thursday, 1:00 p.m., far up the mountain next to Santa Rita

I’m tired, but excited. This is going to be an adventure to remember forever. I’m going to be living like a true Kichwa. Just me, Wilson, and the forest. Little did I know how many times my life would be in the hands of this man over the next 37 hours.

I put one foot in front of the other and keep walking.

 Thursday, 1:30 p.m., a steep ridge over a straight shot into a river 300 feet below

My first near-death experience. Normally, Wilson walks in front of me and I follow, but for some reason (thank the heavens above), he decides to let me break trail for an hour or so. I lose my footing and tip over the 75-degree ledge toward the trees, thinking to myself “Chacho, this is a really sad way to die…” But Wilson catches me. Hanging over the edge of a ridge, arms flailing, being held up by my backpack straps by a Kichwa man who could probably beat Brock Lesner in a wrestling match, I start to laugh. I can’t explain why, it just falls out. Gringos and the rainforest just don’t mix.

He hauls me back up.

“What would have happened if I fell?” I ask him.

“You would have died or broken a leg, or both.” he responds.

I should probably let the reader know, in case you can’t already tell, that Wilson is a man of few words.

Thursday, 2:30 p.m., somewhere in Bosque Colonso

Cell phone service is officially gone. This was also my first encounter with unhappy insects. Walking by a large tree with a hole full of Amazonian wasps, Wilson says “Bees. Move quickly.” He runs past the tree and looks back at me. I do the same.

I start to run by the tree, but a wasp lodges itself under my right backpack strap. Another flies down through my undone top button. The first sting comes from the one in my shirt, and I screamed and tried to frantically beat it out of my flannel. The next two come from the one under my backpack strap, twice in a row in the same place. We run for about 30 meters and I collapse on the side of the trail, two massive bumps already forming on my blanched Irish skin. I can’t lift my right arm, and Wilson says “Wait. I will return.” I sit on the side of the trail, crawling with ants and unable to think, and he returns ten minutes later with several large green leaves.

“Chew,” he orders.

I chew.

“Good. Let’s go. You will be better in a half hour, but we must walk.”

A half hour later, most of the pain from the stings is gone. I ask him what the leaves did.

“Nothing. But you thought they were medicine, didn’t you?”

We keep walking.

 Thursday, 3:15 p.m., somewhere in Bosque Colonso

My first of many foot injuries. A small stick about as big around as a pencil slams through the bottom of my boot and into the arch of my left foot. It makes it about a quarter of an inch into my foot before I can adjust my weight to my other foot, and I fall on the ground with a yelp. Wilson sees the stick, pulls it out, and says “Are you okay?”

I say that I’ll be fine.

“Good. We have many more kilometers to go.”

Blood seeping through my sock and into my boot, I stand back up and keep walking.

 Thursday, 3:16 p.m., somewhere in Bosque Colonso

“Wilson, where are we going tonight?” I ask the man.

“A small lean-to on an abandoned ranch. There is a river next to it.”

“How long ago did you last visit this place?” I ask, suddenly worried.

“Two years ago,” he responds.

“And if it’s not there?” I press.

“We will sleep in the forest.”

 Thursday, 3:25 p.m., a small river in Bosque Colonso

“Over that cliff is the lean-to,” Wilson informs me.

We try to cross the river, but the current is too strong. Neither of us can afford to get our things wet, because we each have several-hundred-dollar GPS devices in our backpacks.

“We must strip down and carry our things over our head,” he says. He strips down to nothing but his rubber boots and puts everything in his bag. I do the same.

He walks into the current, backpack over his head. He nearly falls several times, but makes it safely across with only one major loss of footing near the other bank.

I come next. I slip on the very first touch of current, but steady myself. I take a step, then another.

The current is too strong. “I can’t do it!” I yell to Wilson.

“Try harder!” he responds.

I take another step, lose the footing of my right foot, but catch a lucky rock and remain upright.

“It’s too strong!” I holler over the roar of the water.

“You must! FUERTE, CHACHO! FUERTE!” he yells back over the roar of the water.

I hoist my bag higher, dig my boots into the river bottom, and walk. Fuerte.

 Thursday, 3:30 p.m., an abandoned ranch on the northern border of Bosque Colonso

When I see the lean-to, I practically squeal with delight. Half-dragging my left foot and my right arm throbbing, I forget my pain and run the rest of the way there. Wilson arrives a moment later and we both take short naps.

A half hour later, we wake up to make dinner. I unpack the yuca and my bread, go to the river to fetch water for chicha, and lay out our beds while Wilson gathers wood and makes the fire.

Two minutes later, Wilson has a fire roaring outside the lean-to and the bugs have evacuated the premises. We roast the yuca, eat, laugh about my misfortune thus far, and end up eating all of the food that I brought. In retrospect, it was not the smartest move I’ve ever done.

Thursday, 6:00 p.m., the abandoned ranchito

We go to bed at 6:00 as the sun goes down. A drop of water hits my face as I lay down my head, and the clouds start to rumble.

Stay tuned for the second part of this adventure, coming in my next blog post. It should be up within the next week. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to this blog by clicking the green button next to my name in the right column!

It’s 5 a.m. and the cacophony has started. I hear the thump of music in the neighbor’s house, dogs barking, a mother hen ushering her chickens around like a drill sergeant, my younger brothers laughing as they get ready for school, and the insistent honk of the first bus leaving for Archidona.

My first response is, as always, to turn over, jam the pillow over my ears, and attempt to limp through another hour and a half of sleep before my designated wake-up time of 6:30. After five minutes with less success than usual, I get up, throw on some clothes and my rubber boots to combat the morning mist, and set out for a walk.

I don’t make it far before I hear “Chacho! Venga!” coming through the river of mist in front of my neighbor Vicente’s house. Vicente, sixty-three, hard as a rock from years of physical labor, with an easy smile and even easier laugh, rarely seen without his yellow rubber boots, has become one of my best friends in Santa Rita. I respond to his call by joining him on his front porch.

He bids me good morning and pours me a cup of guayusa. Thank goodness. My eyes are sewn shut like a newborn puppy’s and I am asking myself why I hadn’t persevered harder in the pillow-against-the-ear strategy. Guayusa is a holly plant consumed almost exclusively in Ecuador (my apprenticeship is with Runa, a company trying to bring guayusa to the States).  It is similar to yerba mate. More caffeine than yerba mate but less than coffee, guayusa’s advantage is that it has many of the same relaxing alkaloids as dark chocolate. It’s a miracle drink, and the Quichua call it the “Night Watchman” because it’s often drunk in ceremonies in the wee hours of the morning that have been passed from generation to generation, decade upon decade, and century upon century.

The following conversation was translated from Spanish, but at this point my vocabulary isn’t exactly complex so this transcript is relatively accurate.

Vicente and I drank, felt the warmth spread through our chests, and watched the morning begin. The first tendrils of the sun had begun to sneak over the horizon. Vicente doesn’t feel the need to fill silence with sound, so when I visit him our conversations are often broken up by long minutes of silence.

Silence as we drink. Another glass of guayusa is poured and passed.

“Are you going to Archidona today?” he begins.

“Yes, I need to work at the Runa office. My supervisor is returning from Quito and we are going to discuss some projects.” I respond.

“Good, good,” he nods with approval.

“And you?” I quip. “Any plans for today?”

“Not many. I don’t have to work today, but I’ll probably go to Archidona to buy some things to re-stock the store.” he says. Vicente owns a small store in Santa Rita (one of two), and he sells small items like batteries and nails to the villagers.

Silence fills the space again. A quick look at my watch tells me that 15 minutes has passed. I decide to go back to the house to crash until 6:30.

“Well, thank you for the guayusa. I think I need to sleep a bit more, however.” I say, standing up and brushing the dirt off my trousers. “Be well.”

As I start to walk away, he calls after me and I swivel to listen.

“Chacho! We’re glad that you’re here. Keep doing what you’re doing.”

I nod, smile, and continue on my way, with a newfound confidence and the Night Watchman running through my veins.

At the Fall Training Send-Off Reception, 2010 Fellow Hilary Brown meets the latest Fellows and reflects on how it felt to stand in their shoes a mere two years ago.   Watch this short video to hear her thoughts:

Hilary Brown, two years later

A few nights ago, after accompanying Victoria to her host house, I walked the twenty minutes back on the route nationale with two Senegalese friends. While it was dark, it was only about eight thirty and we could see by the car lights streaming past us. Randomly, a shiny new truck pulled off the road. A middle aged white man, cigarette in hand, leaned out the window and called to us. We walked over and my friend whose French is the best out of the three of us stepped forward. He quickly indicated, however, that he wanted to speak with me. He told me he had seen me on the road before and wanted to make my acquaintance. Not wanting to be rude but feeling like this very forward man was being inappropriate and knowing that it would probably not be a good idea, I quickly searched for a way to kindly get rid of him. Before I could say anything my friend was already giving him my number. At that point there was nothing I could do but stand there. As I was walking away quickly as possible I realized my friend was still talking to him. A few minutes later she came running up clutching 4,000 CFA he had just given her.

When we returned to the house my two friends recounted the whole event to another friend as if we were freshmen in high school and I had just been asked to homecoming. The next day the usual “nanga deff” was replaced with “did he call?” He had but I decided not to answer. This news was met with shocked faces and exclamations of “why not!?” I tried to explain my reasoning to them but from the beginning I knew it would be difficult for them to understand since relationships are different in Senegal. Many women marry in their late teens and early twenties, often to men much older than them who already have money to support a family. In addition, Senegalese women tend to be open and flirtatious, so one of the most challenging things for many of my friends here to understand is that when I say I don’t want a boyfriend I mean it. Somewhere in the middle of all of this I realized that if any of my friends in the U.S had given my number to a complete stranger I would have been mad at them and thought they were crazy. But here, the culture and relationships between men and women are just different.

When we arrived in our rural locations, all of the Senegal fellows were given an assigned friend. This was a person outside of our home stay families who could show us around the community and introduce us to more people. I was lucky to be assigned a friendly, intelligent girl my age with a big, welcoming family. Having never been assigned a friend before at first I think we were both a little uncertain of our roles, but with similar personalities after sharing many meals, holidays and celebrations by now the friendship is much more genuine than assigned. Living across the street we see each other almost every day. Usually we sit in front of her mother’s boutique and watch people go by on the route nationale, or she will teach me something such as how to braid African hair or cook beignets. Often we talk about events taking place in the community or I ask her questions about Senegal. Sometimes we just sit in a comfortable silence and hang out, which has been difficult for me to learn how to do but necessary in Senegal.

Until this point, I have felt like I am comfortable with my Senegalese friends and act like myself around them. However, this recent situation made me aware that I have unconsciously been acting different with them than I do with my friends at home. I am not sure if this means that while I think I am my self around them I am really not or if I have just adapted to the cultural differences but what ever it is it has made me more conscious of how, while it may not be noticeable to others, throughout the past two months my actions, attitudes and even thoughts have slowly changed hopefully for the better.

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

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

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

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

I spent the first month, November, basically getting oriented – sitting in on classes, talking to teachers and observing the general goings on within and without the school walls. During this time I also started tutoring the teachers in their computer lab, which had basically been untouched until my arrival. Even though this might not have been my job of choice, I was glad and lucky to have found some way to have been of use so early on; to temporarily validate my presence. Also significant of my first month in my apprenticeship were the few times when, while sitting in on classes, the teachers would suddenly hand me the ruler and the rubber whip and send me to stand at the front of the class while they ‘went to toilet’ for sometimes up to a half hour. These first few failed attempts to control boisterous classes of forty to fifty little Wolof-speaking kids were a little discouraging to say the least. After having my fill of ‘observation’ I gradually retreated from the classrooms, thinking to myself that if I ever wanted to have a role teaching in this school, the typical classroom setting was not going to be the place for me. Teachers need to be loud and fierce, and to have a strong command of the local native language, Wolof, in order to have any authority. Loud and fierce would probably be the last words I would have used to describe myself, and I barely spoke a word of Wolof. To have proposed alternative methods would have just confused the kids and frustrated the teachers.

So I spent more and more time in the computer lab and in the library, and as time went on, especially in the library. This space, like the computer lab, had been out of use until one day, as though on a whim, the school director decided to let me peak inside. The library consisted basically of a roomful of dusty books all donated from France, stacked in what seemed like random piles on tables and shelves. Put a hand down on any flat surface and it would be covered in a reddish brown dust. There were ant hills clumping in the cracks of the floor, cobwebs dangling from the ceiling and the windows, and the skeletons of lizards and other crawly things lurking in corners. Many of the books were crawling with insects, the edges of their pages already eaten away.

Discovering the old registries of take-outs I saw that the library had indeed been in use for several years, from 2004 to 2007. Only a few take-outs in 2008 and I was literally the first for 2009. Apparently the story was that there used to be a librarian, but that two years ago she had been summoned to supervise the high school students, who had come to occupy the first two rows of classrooms belonging to this elementary school, when they ran out of space up at the middle school. (Sebikotane doesn’t have a high school, although according to my host mother they have already received a grant to build one and are merely in the process of choosing a site). Besides the strain imposed by the invasion of the high school students taking their classrooms and their librarian, the past two years were particularly hard on l’Ecole Sebiroute due to all the teacher strikes. Their salaries must have truly been abysmal, for the teachers to have justified abandoning their students for as long as they did. For although this school year has been relatively steady so far, the consequences of the past two are still felt. Students in the higher grades (4th -5th graders) are weak in essential skills they need to proceed in their education, and most evident among these, the ability to read.

Convincing the director to one day let me ‘move things around a little’ I soon set to the task of transforming the room full of dust and books into a library. This task occupied me for most of December and was very satisfying: both the physical labor of scrubbing and dusting and lifting, and the intellectual one of sorting each book into its appropriate section: reference, novels, classics and children’s sections. The children’s books interested me most, and I put a little extra care into the creation of a sort of ‘children’s corner,’ le coin des enfants, and from this you might be able to guess where my thoughts were headed, right from the very start. I have always been fond of children’s literature, and unlike all my friends who always changed their minds, when I was young (up until about high school when things got more complicated) I would tell anyone who asked me that my dream profession was to become an author and illustrator of children’s books. This is probably because the books and stories of my child hood, which my parents would read to me every night before bed, certainly had a profound impact on me – on the development of my imagination, my character, my ability to discern right from wrong.

And so as I scrubbed, dusted and sorted, sifting through what felt like a mysterious treasure vault of precious materials that I felt strangely fortunate to have stumbled upon (I mean really, how many volunteers are lucky enough to have a whole, untouched roomful of books at their disposal?), I had a lot of time to think – about the ability of books to expand one’s perspective on life, and about reading as the essential basis of a young person’s education. About my own personal experiences with books, and about the scarcity/nonexistence of books in Senegalese households. And then finally, about the widespread difficulties teachers were having with teaching kids how to read. Gradually each of these pieces slid into place, and by mid December seemed to fit together and solidify into one, simple, beautiful idea: why not introduce library activities?

A wonderful idea, yes, but the difficult part was of course going to be realizing it: all the practical details of precisely who, what, when, where, why and how. I started mentioning the idea to a few teachers here and there, and most responses were vaguely encouraging. Although, I realize now, most of them probably didn’t quite understand what I was talking about, or didn’t expect me to actually pursue the idea. For the teachers of l’Ecole Sebiroute have no shortage of good intentions; its just the step of actually starting things that is so easily pushed away, especially by people who are already ‘exhausted’ with their work and who frankly care more about their personal lives beyond school. How else could one explain how they managed to leave both a computer lab and a library locked up for over a year?

So I think it took everyone a little bit by surprise, when, one day in early January, I showed up at the doorstep of each classroom with a five page long letter and project proposal. I had spent a few days during the December vacation preparing this letter, in the wonderfully quiet, deserted computer lab. After spending a week gently pestering a bed-ridden M. Faye (the school director had fallen ill) to give his approval, we had the letter sent to Rufisque to have copies made. In the letter, I thanked the teachers for having welcomed me so graciously among them and then went on to explain that I had some ideas of projects that I would like to try with them, but that I needed their input, feedback and support in order to proceed. The two projects that I outlined were to a) start the computer classes for the students and b) to introduce the students to the freshly opened library with reading activities, ‘à la modele of what ‘we do in school libraries in the United States.’ I explained why these activities could be of value to them and their students and also to me personally. They’re not going to read your letter, M. Faye had warned me, trust me, I know them… But I had insisted that this was the best way I could think of to proceed.

The computer classes were relatively easy to get started considering everyone knew that these had been, after all, the whole purpose of the lab ever since the day it had been installed. The director himself made a schedule and all I had to do was hand it out and tell the teachers who had sent it. And then one day, one of the teachers decided to send all the girls in his class, into the lab to clean (boys never partake in ‘feminine’ tasks such as cleaning). Huge piles of dust were swept out the door, table tops were wiped down, and the plastic was finally removed from the fancy, extra-comfy black chairs. It was like a present finally unwrapped, and I felt that the day was a significant beginning. During the three weeks since, by following the schedule and dividing each class into groups, I have managed to teach six classes of forty to fifty kids the first most essential step in computering: how to use the mouse.

The library activities on the other hand, I knew, were going to be more difficult to get started. To hand out another schedule to ensure each class a slot during the week would have been too much, not just for the teachers, but for me as well. The idea, as outlined in my letter, was that those teachers who thought the activities I had described could be beneficial for their students, would approach me individually, to organize a specific time. Almost a week went by, and having yet to receive a single response or comment, I was starting to feel a little stupid, and to think I should have listened more carefully to M. Faye’s advice. The news from the other fellows, related to me through Victoria, the master-texter, was that we were all facing similar frustrations at this particular stage in our bridge years. The halfway point was approaching and we were each struggling with the same transition in our apprenticeships: the transition from passive observers to active members of our work-places, pursuing individually crafted projects.

And then suddenly, one day as I was preparing to leave for Dakar for our monthly meeting, a teacher called me over to her classroom as I passed. It was, I dare to say, the most unlikely teacher of all – Mme Lo, a young teacher who, after her first two years in the profession, visibly despises her job. ‘So when are you going to start the activities in the library?’ she asked me. ‘Well how about next Monday?’ I asked. ‘I’ll spend some time observing your class and then I’ll take the first small group out whenever it won’t be too disruptive.’

And, simple as cake, that was how my ‘idea’ finally, miraculously, two and a half months since my arrival in Sebikotane, came to life. I hope to write more about this soon – about collecting hay, sticks and bricks, and learning how to say ‘who’s afraid of the big bad wolf’ in Wolof – but that will have to wait until after I have sufficiently recovered from this epic post. I hope at the very least, this clears things up a little bit.

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

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

The topic of interest for this monthly meeting was Islam, an extremely relevent topic here in Senegal, and one that I knew surprisingly very little about considering I am exposed to concrete manifestations of this religion every hour of every day here in Senegal (including when I’m lying in my bed at ten o’clock in evening, trying to get some sleep, and it feels like someone is standing right behind me singing into a microphone). If anything, the information that I have gathered from our discussions this weekend, on the history, the structure, and the theory of Islam, has reinforced my understanding of how incredibly powerful religious figures and beliefs are in Senegalese society. I’ve always kind of thought of religion as something supplementary to one’s life, just a part of the whole, and its fascinating to start to think of religion as the basis for one’s life. Fascinating to think about the ability of human beings to cultivate and spread faith, and the depth of this faith.

Last night I left the school a little later than usual, having stayed to write this blog post. It was almost seven oclock and the sun was setting and so, sure enough, the call to prayer rang out just as I exited to school gates: timis. The path leading from l’ecole sebiroute to my house was darkening and nearly deserted, and as I walked home, feeling a little uneasy and perhaps guitly, to be out at this sacred hour, it suddenly occurred to me how incredible it is to imagine just how many people in Senegal, and in West Africa, were standing at the borders of their prayer mats at that very moment. And how millions of others had done the same only hours before, assembling like fields of dominos facing Mecca, in the shadow left by the setting sun. I thought about the few times back in the US when somehow a national “moment of silence” would be organized, to acknowledge a tragedy involving many deaths, and how significant those few moments were for us. September eleventh, for example. And here that sort of thing happens every day. Every day, five times a day, the Muslims of Senegal are united in their thoughts, in silent contemplation of God. I thought about faith and doubt, about order and society, solidarity and unity. I thought about how big the world is, and how distant the sun…

And if religious ideas and faith can cross borders, can span continents and can connect people of different ethnicities, nationalities and races, why not others?

The morning is still dark as I sit in my Ndiaga Ndiaye on the way to Rufisque. The single light bulb hanging from a failing red wire illuminates me, casting a grand silhouette, maybe four times my size, on the passing scenery.

The past few weeks I have been getting a wealth of opinions on aid projects in Senegal from different people. Always associated with the white foreigner, the missions seems to be like my shadow-bloated, by inefficiencies and lack of follow up. There is plenty of money being thrown into the aid pot. For if you have a cause, there is likely to be someone supporting it, from environmental protection to helping school children to mental illness. The main difference seems to come from what creates the shadow. Is there something concrete behind it, or is it just the wind?

The first popular path is the politicians route where one procures the aid funding (from the government or an aid organization), creates a project that is usually focused around “sensiblisation” (informing part of the population), obtains volunteers, feeds and gives shirts to these volunteers with half of the funding, and finally keeps the last half of the funding to fill up the coffers. Corruption is rampant in almost all developing countries and on the rise in Senegal specifically. However, there are some projects where only the government can sufficiently address the problem. As private organizations who give to the campaigns though, NGOs have the opportunity to see exactly where their money is going and what it is doing.  For their caused can be worthy, but if the money and effort do nothing but further a fraudulent system, what is the point?

The next path is a half support system, represented perfectly in my apprenticeship site of the Village des Tortues. It was created with the help of SOPTCOM, the European Union, the Senegalese government, and other donators. Currently my host father acts as the representative of SOPTCOM for the Village, working there around twice a week. The major issue within the Village itself is the structure that now exists. It was started, and can now subsist and function by itself, but there is no real room for improvement. Every now and then the government will give money if there is not enough to feed the turtles, or SOPTCOM will donate something or other to help update the Village, like a computer. Both resources give the Village a bigger safety net up to a certain point, allowing it to beg at both ends when there is some dire need, but never really let it progressively function independently. Just like this confused system, the actual impact of the Village des Tortues is buried underneath possibilities and dead ends.

Then there is the rare path of possible success, where there is a solid impact behind that wispy shadow of promotion. Hilary and I recently started working at L’Ecole la Sagesse, a private school helped along by a Canadian group that emphasizes teaching methods other than repetition. While their upper levels have not reached their potential yet, the lower schools have an unheard of near perfect success rate. Besides test scores, you can see the impact by just talking to a child and hearing something in return that is less of a parakeet, and more of an honest answer. Yet we still must wait and see what will happen in the future with the students, if they in fact will grow up to look outside of the “normal Senegalese box,” which is literally full of the same material it was when their grandparents were in school.

These routes of aid offer much hope, for in any case they show that people still care-  that we have not settled into a normalcy alongside travesties. Though these Senegalese exhibits of aid do present a dire need, that being for the organizations and people to take a complete stake in the ownership and the impact of what they do. For the most part, there is no lack of ideas, just a lack in seeing that some things need the new dreams.

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. However, if there is one flaw in GCY’s modus operandi, I think it’s an overemphasis on the “changing the world” aspect of the bridge year. Discussion with the other Fellows revealed that they felt the same way – we all applied for this eager to run off and “save” a Third World village. But having those expectations made us all start feeling discouraged once the halfway point approached, and I’m now glad I had that near-breakdown because it prompted an invaluable conversation with Rachel and the other Fellows.

Thank goodness that the monthly meeting fell on the halfway day, because we all needed to remind each other of our “meaning” here. Every Fellow is, of course, making a difference just by being here, living in these communities, but I think we were still clinging to a certain vision of “making a difference,” in a semi-unrealistic way. We are supposed to be training ourselves to help “save the world” once we have a college education and some more life experiences under our belts. I’ve been saying this whole time that this GCY bridge year is more about me than the people of Senegal – after all, I was just a 17-year-old high school grad when I got here, what could I really offer them? I often repeated that I was going to learn much more than I could ever teach. There is no doubt that I am learning more about social development and different cultures this year than I have throughout my entire life. I am learning mostly, however, about myself – where my limits lie, how I best fit into the social work scene, and what genuinely makes me happy. I’ve been saying all along that was the point of taking this bridge year, but I guess I had kind of forgotten.

For the meeting, Rachel had us all write project plans for the remainder of our time here. We are so lucky to have that woman with us – she has been essential both to saving our sanity and pushing us to think critically and academically about everything we’re going through. I poured myself into that paper, reflecting on things I have already learned and setting realistic goals that will help me learn more. I’ve totally refocused on learning, learning, learning, so that I can be 100% better prepared for college and, hopefully, be able to come back after college and actually facilitate some of these great changes. Now that I’ve fully reminded myself of my reasons for taking this bridge year, I am so incredibly happy I have the next three and a half months to throw myself fully into the experience.

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

Mame Ami stands with her head cocked to the right and a loosely clenched left hand nestled in the crook of her lower back, the same way she would stand while stirring a pot of Ceebujeen, or while pounding spices in her wooden mortar and pestle. She hesitates as she struggles to remember to next stroke and she looks to the teacher, the ‘animatrice’ for support. Another half bracelet opened to the ground, Ramatoulaye calls out. These women are learning how to write their names for the first time not from letters but from a list of symbols described as objects they would recognize: sleeping and standing branches, bracelets and dots. The letters will come later.

This is only the second session of the ‘alphabetization,’ or literacy classes, this year. The ages of the women attending vary from late twenties to late fourties and fifties but the majority I’d say are ‘middle aged,’ which means they are all working housewives. For ten months starting this week they will meet in this classroom Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays for two and a half hours. Besides learning how to read and write in their native language, Wolof, they will be educated on health (various maladies such as AIDS and Malaria which are often known of but misunderstood) and will also conduct some sort of money-making project by selling as a team a product of their choice. These literacy classes are a part of a government program called PIEA, Programme Integré d’Education d’Adultes. Ramatoulaye Fall, the ‘animatrice’ is the cornerstone for this program in Sebikotane, although she is supported and often checked up on by various important individuals including the mayor and various imams. The attendance rate is pretty low so far as Ramatoulaye still makes her rounds, talking to women and trying to interest them and encourage them to make the effort to show up, but eventually she hopes, even expects, that she will be regularly be teaching to a group of thirty. But of course I have shown up at three o’clock sharp every day so far, eager for the chance to practice my Wolof in a more focused setting, and to experience this fascinating mechanism of development.

Already I have many questions, first and foremost of which is: what are these women’s motivations for taking nine hours out of their week to attend these classes? Are they mostly just in it for the money or are they actually determined to know how to read and write, and if yes, why? Although I haven’t asked, I would highly doubt they are learning to make some sort of radical change in their lifestyles, that would take them away from their home and family – but more to enable them more in their current activities. The two younger women who do all the work back at my house, Kine and Ami Ndoye, have never expressed any sort of regret for dropping out of school early and not learning how to read or write or speak French. Seeing me writing in my journal, they’ve each mentioned to me a few times, casually, you should teach me how to do that sometime, as though talking about some interesting skill that would be cool to learn, just for the sake of it; for even they seem to share the common assumption that knowing how to read and write is important.

For, next question, how would knowing how to read and write practically apply to their lives? Their lives, which consist of waking up early every morning to sweep, wash their kids, then do laundry and cook lunch until noon, then start to cook dinner and so on. I don’t mean to be critical at all, for if anything I have been struck by the how settled and content women seem in their roles – in what I learned to call, back in sophomore year AP European History, their ‘sphere.’ The fact that reading and writing is such an essential part of my life, and such a trivial skill to Kine and Ami NDoye, at once reveals the distance between us: the fact that I’ll learn how to scrub my clothes in a bucket for fun, while Mame Ami will giggle and smile abashedly as she learns to write her name for the first time at the age of forty (that’s an estimate).

Making her way back to her seat, the task complete, she’ll do a little jig, like she would when exiting the center of a Sabar dance floor. There is a smattering of clapping and laughter, and in this way, this classroom and this task, at first foreign and awkward to these women just out of their kitchens and bedrooms, becomes their own.