Tea time here in Ataya from two shot glasses.

I have a love hate relationship with Ataya. People love inviting me to drink Ataya and I hate drinking it! I’ve burned off taste buds, ruined taste buds, and lost too many hours of sleep because of it. My French teacher is perhaps the only Senegalese that I’ve encountered who shares my sentiments about Ataya. Our conversation went something like this:

P: what did you do last night?

A: Not much, I had some Ataya with your son and his friends.

P: Me, I don’t like Ataya. I don’t drink alcohol, some cigarettes, or make tea.

A: Did you just compare a 25cent box to tobacco and alcohol?

P: Hahahaha! Yes, it’s the same thing, you lose all your time doing nothing! Just sitting around for hours just to have a couple sips of tea.

In Senegal, Ataya is not just a drink – it’s an activity, particularly popular among teen-aged boys. As for me, my first Ataya experience set the tone for our volatile relationship. It was probably one of the hottest days in Joal and I was invited to go to the beach with one of the other fellows and her host family. I was excited because it was hot beyond belief and it would be my first time at the beach. What I thought was going to be a beach turned out to be a large pool of lukewarm water. To my right a man was bathing his donkey and to my left was a woman doing her laundry. Nevertheless I went in, optimistically hoping for some refreshing waster and was met with the contrary. It was dirty and salty and had a slew of clams and seaweed on the ground. After about 20 minutes in the water my everything started to itch and burn and I was deathly thirsty. It was clearly time to go. After I got out of the water I was greeted by laughter as the others jeered at my expression.

Stephanie’s older brother asked me if I was thirsty and when I answered yes I saw him reach for his man purse (I had been curious as to what he could possibly have in there, he had it on all day) and pulled out a tea kettle and two shot glasses. My mouth gaped open! He could not possibly be serious! I was hot, covered in sand and salt, and thirsty and he was going to give me tea! There was not a boutique in sight so I had no choice but to smile and say thank you when he offered to make it. Little did I know that this would not be a five minute job, he took about 15 minutes to dig a hole and gather twigs and other flammable apparatus to aide the two pieces of coal. After about another 15 minutes of boiling he poured what I thought was the first cup of tea (it wasn’t). He proceeded in pouring the tea back and forth into two glasses, creating a thick white foam in each glass(this took about 7 minutes). We then waited what seemed like another ten minutes and then tea was finally served! I was the first to drink, being so thirsty I didn’t think that it could possibly be hot. Without hesitation I grabbed the glass and started drinking in one swift motion. To say I blistered my tongue was an understatement! I couldn’t feel the tip of my tongue, and I fumbled the glass and spilled the tea on my white t-shirt. I wasn’t able to taste anything, ruined my shirt and was STILL thirsty. I was then notified that it wasn’t done. The 9 other people with us had to drink and he had to start the process all over again two more times because there are three rounds in Ataya.

Every experience since then hasn’t been much better, but the other night I decided that I wasn’t going to let Ataya win, and I made Ataya for the first time! Granted it was just for me and my friend Samba and I didn’t drink any of it, but I still made it and felt very proud!

We make our way through the village, buckets and scarves in hand. People are sitting out talking, laughing. Children are playing. Upon seeing our baggage one man wishes us luck.

“Search in peace,” he tells us.

Upon arrival at the water spigot, we find a small group of women, girls really, waiting. They sit on their buckets, laughing, talking, watching as the water level in the bucket under the spigot slowly rises. When full, a quick exchange is made, and the now full bucket is lifted onto a woman’s head, to be carried back to her home: to wash, cook, bathe, and drink.

After we’ve been waiting about twenty minutes, one girl anxiously calls our attention to the spigot.

“Look,” she says, “it’s slowing.”

We all take in a collective breath of anxiety. We watch as the stream of water slows to a trickle . . . and dies. A sigh is heard around the group.

“That’s bad luck,” my sister tells me. That’s an understatement, I sourly think to myself.

We pick up our buckets, empty as drums. We hang our head scarves over our shoulders, protecting us a little from the cold evening air. The other women talk of going to a farm down the road, where water might not have been turned off yet.

“It’s too far,” my sister says. The other women mutter in agreement. But for some of them, what choice do they have? If I don’t walk the extra kilometer, it means I don’t shower today. If some of the others choose not to, it means no food tomorrow.

We take leave of the group, still joking and laughing, and head back to our house. On our way we meet a woman walking towards the spigot.

“It’s been turned off,” we tell her. She lets out a sigh of exasperation. Then she asks my sister, “Can’t you wait until tomorrow? Don’t you have a reserve?”

My sister shakes her head. “I was working,” she explains. “I couldn’t call to tell them to start filling buckets.”

We arrive home to find my younger brother, Mohammed, with a bucket of water, taken from a nearby well. Without a word, we walk out again, buckets in hand. Each step I take I know I’ll be making it again, this time with fifteen liters of water on my head.

We make it to the well, a deep one, and fill our buckets. My sister tells me to stand back from the edge while she hoists the water, and I willingly comply. This is something I don’t really want to chance.

I help my sister hoist her bucket onto her head, and we call a girl walking by to lift mine. Within the first two steps water sloshes around in the bucket and over the sides, drenching the back of my t-shirt. My sister laughs and tells me to take it slow.

My mom greets outside the house, chuckles and says, “We should take a photo.” More water falls, this time soaking my skirt.

“Now I don’t need to shower,” I joke. “I just did.”

In our house, the unpredictable water cuts are obnoxious. It takes time and energy to fetch good, clean water. It hurts the top of your head, even with a scarf to cushion it. For others in the village, it is an everyday, sometimes all day occurence. It takes away from school, at least for Oumi and Hadi, twin girls about thirteen that live down the street. And the search is always the women’s job, or perhaps the girl’s. I dread the sound of the empty gurgle of the pipe as I turn the spigot, expecting water and receiving none. I now try to be grateful every time I fill my bucket, knowing that for an unbelievable number of people the search is constant and sometimes frightening. For me, the worst that could happen is I stay a little dirty.

Today started just like another day; it was laundry day, midway through my second bucket of clothes I heard what sounded like a stampede of children charging down the streets. I ran out to see the streets flooded with over 300 students yelling, waving signs, chanting, and blocking traffic. My house is directly opposite St. Thomas primary school, the crowd stopped there and began chanting for the students to be released, and two minutes later about 150 children came pouring out of the school.

Confused, excited, and curious I ran inside, put on my shoes, grabbed my  camera, and joined the protest.
We went to every school in the Joal-Fadiouth area and released the children then marched to the Mayor’s office.

A group of 9 or 10 year old boys started chanting “nous voulons tieb-bu-jen” aka “we want rice and fish”. Caught up in the mix of over 1,000 students, all the frustration, and excitement I looked down and realised that I had left my scattered piles of laundry unattended in the middle of the court yard. There was my dilemma, was I going to go home and finish my laundry or stay and see what was going to happen next? After about a half hour of waiting the crowd began to disperse, many going home for lunch. As I turned to leave in came this luxury SUV with tinted windows. It was the mayor and the local news station WALF TV.

The student leaders went inside and talked and negotiated with the local officials while the others impatiently anticipated a report. When they exited there were two speakers, one in French the other in Wolof. They stated that the students were on strike today and would be on strike everyday until they get what they want. Since the beginning of the school year in November the teachers have gone on strike multiple times because they are not being paid by the government, therefore the students do not have regular classes and this is especially detrimental to those that are in an exam year. The students are also outraged by the poor quality infrastructure and substandard learning environment, citing lack of water and electricity as their main complaints. After talking  to the local officials they decided that if their complaints were not addressed by Monday, they would resort to violence.

After the protest I went home, finished my laundry and watched TV. On the news it was announced that the President would release all the female prisoners for one day. They will charter a bus a travel around the country for a Rendezvous of sorts. Yes, I’m serious! Imagine a government that fails to pay its public servants and provide for the common good and educative needs of its people and somehow finds the means to take female prisoners on a country wide fun day.

When I first started at Le Verger, I thought I had found an apprenticeship in paradise. My original placement in the school system turned out to be stressful and blinding, exactly what I didn’t want; the only direction I could see was OUT. I asked my host dad and fairy godfather if he could find me a job related to agriculture, and two days after that conversation I was working at Le Verger, the tropical tree and plant orchard just down the road. It felt like my secret garden; with over ten hectares of land and only a handful of employees, alone time was plentiful and I had the space to think. I was constantly finding new overgrown nooks within dilapidated walls, turning a corner to find the resident peacock preening himself, finding new exotic fruit to taste fresh off the tree.

Then, reality caught up with me.

One day I was lying in the branch of a mango tree in a haze of happiness, the next I sat in the same tree crying with frustration. The challenges that come with being a young, white female volunteer in Senegal caught up with me in my hiding place.

I knew things weren’t perfectly perfect from the get-go, but I attributed the problems to communication. My French has become passable and that’s what I am using to communicate with my boss, but at the start of every day he would ask me “what would you like to do today?” Seeing as how I have never been exposed to anything agricultural besides corn, I was at a loss for what work I could create for myself. I lacked both the vocabulary and the background knowledge to be able to dictate my own tasks. The awkward struggle for work went on for too long, so I asked my host father to help me and started a project of my own.

I cleared some land and planted 118 bell pepper plants, and did all the work myself. They have not yet been harvested, but besides watering, the work I need to do for them is clearly over. Again, I have found myself back to the beginning, but this time I have been trying to take matters into my own hands. I have raked, weeded, spent time in the plant nurseries, I have searched high and low for tasks to do. But one day, I made a very grave mistake: picking up a shovel and trying to continue the work of the others; specifically, filling in a hole in the ground with the surrounding sand.

I had the shovel in my hands and was just about to start when my boss rushed over out of nowhere looking highly amused.

“What do you think you are doing?” he laughed.

“I was just going to continue what I saw Abdoulaye doing yesterday. I finished everything else there is to do.”

“No no, you can’t do that. Il faut pas toucher le travail des autres. Le travail des hommes. C’est le travail dur. You cannot touch the work of the others; the men’s work, the hard work.”

“But it’s not hard for me, and I don’t see any men around here. I see me only, and I have no other work to do.”

“Why don’t you go take a nap instead? Or rest? You’ve worked so hard on your peppers, don’t you see how pretty they are? How they are thanking you? Why don’t you see if there are any weeds to pull over there? That is the work of Mame Diarra.”

And that is when I realized that my work there is a joke; my boss tries to humor me with petty projects and at the same time keep me as far away as possible from the real work that needs to be done. Though I cannot figure for which reason I am the laughing stock of the orchard: because I am a woman and therefore weak, because I am white and therefore unused to using my hands instead of machines and gizmos, because I am eighteen and have no expertise in anything besides high school, or because I am a volunteer and therefore robbing the other salaried workers of their jobs (which I have never seen them doing anyway).

All I know is that it is now up to me to move forward or move out, because I refuse to waste any more time. I have three months left in Senegal and they are not going to be spent napping. All my life I have been careful to pick my battles and so far have never chosen any, but now is the time to roll out the big guns (and I’m talking about the ones hidden underneath the sleeves of my t-shirt). I know I can help the orchard progress without robbing the others of the work and salaries that they are there for, but I am now standing up against a barrier built by hundreds of years of sexism and a culture where everything has its hierarchy.

But just because I have lily white skin does not mean that I am lily-livered. I am going to show those gents what I am made of, or my name isn’t Mame Diarra Erica Anderson Diagne.

No one has ever called the mosque in Potou graceful.  Maybe when it was first built, maybe then they said that it was a good mosque: a clunky, stumpy tower which served to regularly pierce heaven with forceful cries of God’s goodness.  Potou, the town of a thousand Allahu Akbars before dawn.

She sat looking at it from a wiggly wooden bench that stretched the length of a pickup truck that had recently held the entire town’s breakfast.  She was still half asleep.

“Où vas-tu?” the driver greeted her, a white girl in Africa-land, “Léona?”

“Waaw,” she replied in his language, yes.

He lit his cigarette and walked around the truck.  They weren’t going anywhere just then.  She smelled tobacco and dirt and adjusted her full and heavy canvas tote beside her.

As though the bread truck were attractive, several young men and their embroidered jeans appeared where there had been no men before.  When only one climbed in the back with her, she was surprised; she had never traveled in a nearly empty truck before.

She and this man exchanged muttered courtesies and nothing more.  She felt they shared the complicity of those who travel together late at night or early (so early!) in the morning.

Lucky, she thought, lucky.  Lucky that this truck agreed to take her.  As the rattling of the rusty engine  finally got underway, one of the young men, who had been holding on his tongue those foreign syllables that were just beginning to taste familiar to her also, turned his eyes on hers.

“Aujourd’hui c’est la grève,” he said animatedly.  Whether he was angry that the driver had taken on two paying passengers during the strike under cover of blue-black pre-dawn or whether he was merely informing her of the day’s lack of further transportation, it didn’t matter.  They were pulling away from that town of palm trees and streets littered with plastic wrappers, fantastically colored fabric scraps and the occasional dead rodent.

Flying down the broken road, she clutched the two coins she would use to pay and kept her balance as best she could, the only way she knew how.  That way being, of course, the same way she avoided being thrown backwards when a New York subway train awoke from its sleek, 30 second repose at any given Manhattan station.

Forward they drove.  Drove into the long day that, inshallah, would see her to a village past Potou, past Léona.  A village of concrete rooms and grass huts.  A village of timeless peace.

Up to this point my blogs have focused on specific experiences or “ponderings” about Senegalese culture and international development.  I designed this first video blog to portray a more macroscopic view of my bridge year experience.  I also wanted to showcase the variety of skills I’ve acquired and things I’ve learned in Senegal.  Enjoy the different perspective!

From Here to There: A Global Citizen Year in Senegal

The endless dunes and savanna scrub pass by, as we rumble down winding, dirt roads. Yet I’m hardly aware of the landscape’s warming morning orange and spotty green; rather, I sense only the rhythmic pounding of the rocky road beneath our aging vehicle. Most of all I feel the tranquil pulse of life in the people between whom I am wedged: women wrapped in elaborate shawls, yawning men heading to work, and timid adolescent boys commuting to school.

Lulled into a daze by the movement of the van, I begin to contemplate and to daydream. If I ignore the environment that I see through the cracked windshield, I can visualize we are someplace else.  I’m tempted to envision that we’re heading towards a border, migrant workers being smuggled to plantations in a neighboring country; or we’re racing through a conflict zone, attempting to escape ongoing oppression in a province gripped by the stranglehold of martial law. Still, that would be letting my imagination run too wild. Nonetheless, besides the fact that I recognize the sporadic exchanges in Pulaar and Wolof, we could be anywhere, in a “developing” country in any corner of the globe.

Despite the distinctive customs and languages that I’ve encountered, there exists – I’m coming to believe – a certain commonality and universality to the way “impoverished” communities are coping and slowly modernizing, and to the way “poor” people make due with simplicity. Of course, there is no single story of poverty or a developing nation that can accurately speak for all the rest – which are undeniably diverse and complex. Yet to completely isolate one community’s story, would be to ignore the intrinsic threads that by now bind our stories together.

And, truth be told, I realize that rural Senegal is indeed far less of an oasis than I had previously expected. Clearly mislead by stereotypes and, more fundamentally, my lack of firsthand experience in such an environment, I have frankly been astonished by the extent to which the Senegalese community is connected to the globe. Thus, though surrounded by signs of poverty marked by meager sanitation, malnourished children, and purely-manual farming, I have a growing awareness of the individual stories that demonstrate how enwoven Senegalese society is with other nations, and how influenced by the Western- and Muslim spheres.

For one, people’s t-shirts – many of which flaunt American sports teams, catchy yet often outrageous English slogans, or bootlegged designer labels – are blatant evidence of globalization. They, like the aging Toyotas, Peugeots, and Mercedes, remind me of the cycle of exchange that brings these products to gritty coastal towns and secluded villages in West Africa – their last stop. On a daily basis, the various imported brands stacked sky-high on the shelves of vibrant boutiques, show me that I have not left one “world” for another.

Hence, when I speak with friends and family from back home, I hesitate to say, “Oh yeah, it’s a whole other world out here,” no matter how tempting it may be to simplify the diversity and new-ness of my experience in a single phrase.  The sort of poverty I see or the vivacious blend of African culture may seem far away from the United States, but my Senegalese host community is by no means separated or disconnected to the point of being a different world.

In fact, as the weeks have passed, more and more concrete examples have appeared of economic, political, and cultural links. Walking into one of Potou’s roadside kitchens one evening, I bump into a Senegalese man who normally lives in Holland, having returned to contribute to an agricultural project. Driving along the region’s crumbling roads, I glance at the rusting signs of various bilateral development projects, their white surfaces emblazoned with the names of European nations, from Luxembourg to Italy. And, on New Year’s Day during an annual cultural festival, a dozen Belgian and Italian guests are in the spotlight as ambassadors of cultural exchange and financial support for the flamboyant social gathering.  On a daily basis, my family members listen intently to le journal, the news, as French International Radio (RFI) informs them about the latest events in Syria or economic updates from debt-ridden Europe.  Lastly, a young man – an emigrant to Spain who was recently deported – who in fact often sits across from me on the morning commute, reminds me of the dozens of youth who leave on the treacherous voyage over the Atlantic, hoping to find a better life in the warehouses or tomato fields of Europe.

However, most obvious of all is the freight port project which has threatened to invade my immediate environment, to bulldoze the land that my host family currently lives on.  In fact, I’d witnessed the parade of air-conditioned SUVs that rushed through Potou, carrying representatives of a Spanish company surveying the sight of a port they potentially intend to build, displacing much of my village and tearing up its pristine beaches. For me, as my community rallies to protest and appeal to the government to halt the project, this is the ultimate sign that we are in an interconnected world.  At a recent village gathering, I was even asked to contribute my opinion, and I choose – in a gesture of solidarity – to encourage them to raise their voices because, as I phrased it, they are not alone in their struggle against invasive, large-scale industrial development projects; rural, impoverished citizens the world over are fighting similar battles.

All in all, I’m caused to contemplate how the poverty the Senegalese face is at least partially based in issues of trade, politics, finance, and development that stretch across the globe and are far outside of an individual community’s power to change. Take, for example, my particular family that grows onions in a region that supplies about one third of all the onions in Senegal. What if they could compete in a global market and thereby make a greater profit, while retaining the dignity of their work and not overexploiting the environment? Unfortunately, such potential is out of their direct control. Therefore, as my peers and I continue our pursuit of global development solutions through college – and beyond – we have to realize how many factors are at play and which systemic prejudices poor communities are struggling against. We might have to critically – yet constructively – assess our approaches and inherent impacts, before rushing to blame the lack of development on the poor communities we intend to support.

For those who know me, they know Hip-Hop is my life. I listen to music more hours then I sleep. When I’m bored I write graffiti pieces on sheets of paper. Occasionally I would go to a Turf dancing battle. You could imagine my joy to see the Hip-Hop scene present in Senegal.

I remember the first hint of Hip-Hop I saw was aerosol painting on the walls in Mermoz, a neighborhood in Dakar. It wasn’t anything fancy but I knew Hip-Hop was the culprit. Later on that day when I got to know some people my age, I found out that Hip-Hop was very alive in Senegal.  Every concert a known artist has in Senegal gets sold out instantaneously (likely American artists?). Even in the Senegalese dance classes I saw elements similar to our dances in America. The best Hip-Hip influence I’ve seen is when my brother rapped a freestyle verse in Wolof, a major language of Senegambia. This energy made a big part of me feel at home.

Little did I know I was going to feel even more at home; although, this time it wasn’t heart warming. I was having a conversation with a good friend I made about the kind of wives we wanted. He asked me what race and I said, “I don’t even care I don’t discriminate”. He started to laugh and at the end of his laugh he responded, “My n*gga” in a laughing voice. The first reaction I had was complete confusion as if I had never heard that word in my life. The second reaction I had was to just ignore it as I do on a regular basis. The third reaction that came out of my mouth because I was sick of that words pollution. I explained to him the history of the word and how some people take offense. After that he never said it again. On a separate altercation, I was talking with another fellow host brother and he told how he was a gangster and all the bad things he did.
He was dressed like 50cent and used all of the destructive diction there is in rap music. I thought I would never witness this in Africa.

Everything in the above paragraphs is an influence of the Hip-Hop Culture. That’s why I call it a gift and a curse. Hip-Hop today has the power to influence the world. It’s up to the Hip-Hop generation to choose what that influence will be. We can influence people to be prisoners or politicians, Hate speakers or revolutionary public speakers, gangsters or Panthers. Above all Hip-Hip artist must decide between making money or positive change.

Whenever people ask me how I’m enjoying Senegal, I unfailingly respond that taking a bridge year was the best decision I’ve ever made. And I stand by that statement. But, I’ll admit, over the past four months, I’ve occasionally lost sight of the bigger picture and instead focused in on the things that make life in Sebikotane so different from life in Seattle.

Ideally, when things get tough, I should step back and calmly take stock of my situation. I should try to be magnanimous and understanding and noble. The Dalai Lama of gap years, a Senegalese Gandhi. However, it’s hard to be all Zen about a fist-sized cockroach in your bedspread or while you’re shivering violently from an early morning, ice-cold bucket shower. It can be difficult to turn the other cheek whilst being hit on mercilessly by strange men simply because of your skin color. Sometimes, I’m convinced that the entire nation of Senegal is playing a game called Embarrass Emily, in which they score points by testing me constantly on my Wolof, tricking me into saying impolite words, telling me to dance and then making fun of my moves, and informing me how fat or skinny I look on any given day.

I know I’m here for reasons that transcend the petty, everyday concerns that bother me. And it’s true that I can match every minor annoyance with an equally beautiful moment: a breakthrough with my preschoolers, a successful conversation in Wolof, and a meaningful discussion with my host mother. But even so, I still sometimes miss the baobab forest for the trees. So when it all gets to be a little too much, I go into my room, take a deep breath, and look at my manifesto:

From age 8 until age 17, I spent an increasingly greater portion of every summer at YMCA Camp Orkila, a sprawling old sleep away camp on Orcas Island, tucked in the Northwestern corner of Washington State. My Orkila summers, experienced first as a camper, then a counselor-in -training, and finally as a volunteer counselor, were essential in shaping who I am and what I believe in. I met my best friend there when I was 9. And it was there that I first discovered the manifesto.

In the teen lodge, where older campers convene for mealtimes, hangs a huge, butcher-paper version of the list above. Each statement is a response to the prompt “Why and How We Lead” – the aforementioned best friend took a photo of the original paper, copied it by hand, and presented me with my very own pocket-sized version. It’s been hanging on my wall ever since. And while these phrases were first conceived as motivation for leadership, I’ve come to see them as a how-to guide for living a healthy, meaningful, productive life.

It’s a new year, and all the fellows are approaching the most critical months of our gap years. We’ve learned the languages, formed the relationships, and firmly rooted ourselves in our communities. Now it’s time to work hard, fill needs as best we can, and attempt to create positive and lasting impressions from our time in country. I don’t want to leave Senegal with regrets. I want to come away feeling that I took full advantage of this privileged opportunity, and starting today, I’m going to try and use my manifesto in a new way: to help me remember what I’m doing here and why.

These are my New (Gap) Year’s Resolutions:

This year, I promise to experience and facilitate growth, to help create golden spokes*, to inspire self-reflection, to challenge through honesty in words and actions. To share experiences and communities, to share myself and this place with others, and to facilitate the realization of truth. To lead by example and to have fun! To make people feel comfortable in their own skin, to bring out strength that lays dormant, to connect who I am with where I am, wherever that may be. I promise to do the best I can this year for self-love, and the love of others, and to feel like a part of something bigger. To be (a little) crazy, and to be totally down with it. To do my best to inspire while welcoming everyone with open arms, heart, and mind. To fall in love with Senegal. To fall in love with my life.

*The Story of the Golden Spokes:
It’s a camp thing. All the counselors-in-training sat in a circle, listening to our director, Colin. He told a familiar old fable, the one about the boy who would walk along the beach at low tide, picking up stranded, dried-out starfish, and throwing them back, one by one, into the sea. One day, an older man happened to see the boy at his work and thought it was his duty to point out the futility of this task.  ”You can’t save all the starfish. There’s too many. You’re foolish to keep this up. You’ll never make a difference.”  The boy simply picked up another starfish and threw it into the ocean. “I made a difference to that one,” he said.

Colin went on to explain the significance of this tale. When you’re a camp counselor (or, indeed, a gap year student doing volunteer work in Africa), you will be faced with many challenges, many problems, and more issues than you can possibly work through in a summer (or eight months). But you can affect change on a small scale – even if you help one person, that’s one more life that has been changed for the better, and one more person who will have the capacity to help others in turn. Picture your life as a great wheel. Every occurrence, every choice, is a spoke extending outward from the axis of yourself. The landmark moments of your life, the experiences that have shaped and inspired you beyond all others, are spokes as well – but they glow brighter than the others, and as the wheel of your life rolls towards the future, these golden spokes will flash by again and again, reminding you what you live for and why. It’s important to recognize and appreciate the golden spokes in your life. But it’s also important to create them in the lives of others. If I return to the States in April knowing that I’ve saved just one starfish, I will consider my gap year a total success.

If you give way to the mind’s stream of flowing consciousness, then you’ll surf through to the waters of enlightenment.

I really love to write because writing is in many ways and for many reasons, a great form of expression. So on this day I sat with my laptop while snacking on some peanuts and wondered,  ”What will my next blog post be about? Man Sam, this breeze feels so nice,” one peanut fell down into the sand beneath my feet. Not wanting to waste one grain of alimentation, I picked it up, brushed off the sand and ate it. Amazing right? Well after my next handful of peanuts another one fell out of my hand into the sand (again!). It was then that I decided that I should make sure I ate the second peanut so as to make sure that the effort of going after the first peanut would be made worth the work. It’s like making sure I take every step forward without taking any steps back. Immediately I thought of a game of chess, where you take your opponent’s bishop, in knowing sacrifice of your own knight in order to progress towards the final capture of the king.

These two things are only indirectly related, but both can sum up a good deal of what my apprenticeship here in Beutlamine has taught me.  Though I have learned some skills in the time I’ve spent here, most of my actual work with my apprenticeship has been all observation. I go around to other villages with my older brother who distributes UN Millennium Goals health information, and sometimes I watch as he and his colleagues weigh babies to check for malnutrition. I even sit front-row at big inter-village meetings to inform the villagers on new and improved ways to store beans and grains over the seasons of work and rest, or watch as they give speeches on why high levels of sanitation really matter. The opportunity is fine but I’m not yet satisfied, so when the peanuts sang out to me, I realized what I have been doing and that I really need to keep persevering.

I think of how my health grows when I eat every peanut possible, and the risk it takes to win a game of chess with strategic elegance. Yes, I have taken every possible chance in my path that has shown itself in order to gain some work experience, but I’ve not yet found any big jobs or projects like I expected to find. I have of course tried to take some potential risk in trying to create my own ‘apprenticeship’ in Senegal; I have not yet been able to, like in chess, trap the king and earn his throne and crown.

Still, I have begun a project on the education and planting of a tree called ‘Moringa,’ which has tremendous health benefits. The tree actually grows Vitamin A, Vitamin C, potassium, calcium, and protein in it’s leaves. With malnutrition being one of the Africa’s largest health problems, this project has serious potential for growth in the field of agriculture, fruiting out into the sector of health. I just wish my villagers shared the same amount of enthusiasm for the project, because the men I work with keep telling me that we will start next week and then in another 10 days. Wish me luck with that one, will you?

Well whether or not those rebellious peanuts that rolled down into the sand did so because of some divine force compelled by fate, and whether or not the question of eating them all was a test driven by my will power embodied by a supernatural light, I am really beginning to see that there most definitely are as many opportunities to grow within yourself, as there are peanuts in this world. Who knows, maybe I was just hungry, but lucky for me I’m literally up to my head in peanuts here in Senegal, so I for sure have a lot of growing to do, for my soul, mind and belly (and hopefully Moringa tree’s too)!