This one’s for you, Covey
If you look at the history of the world, it’s all been kind of random, and following the path of human nature. The advention of institutionalized religion, the human conquest of the world, slavery. Even now we think we are advanced. Think about how far we’ve come. Think about how much left we have to go.
Even “Angry Birds” is over here. This is not the Africa we all imagine, grass skirts and tongue clicks with bad guys hanging in every shadow. Senegal is plugged into the world, it is connected. Senegal is connected enough…

When I woke up in Dindefello, a quaint village littered with tourists in Kedougou, I felt for the first time since my arrival I was living the “authentic African experience” foreigners seek when they come to this country. A hut over my head and a digital camera full of pictures of wildlife and women with eccentric piercings, in this setting I couldn’t help but remark my overwhelming and obvious American origin. Compared to my experience in my village of Sandiara, this reality was a closer fit to the concept of Africa I had in mind. How could it be that…

There are nights where I wake up in a lukewarm sweat, still saturated with the dream that doesn’t let me sleep. In this nocturnal vision, I am back at home in my room, or somewhere in San Jose, California, and I am looking for a way to charge credit on my Senegalese phone to make a call and get back to Sandiara. It is always a desperate attempt to come back to this point in my life, to my room here overlooking the lettuce patch, a comfortable substitution for home. When I sit up, the mosquito net brushes against my…

My greatest insights are revealed to me in the tomato field. Knee to chest, hands to ground, root to soil, I spend my mornings alongside what I confidently call my friends, sixteen Senegalese seeds themselves that, through struggle and effort, now bear the fruits of laughter and companionship. Together we plant row after row of cucumbers, lettuce, carrots, and the grand surface of tomatoes, which has come to consume most of our efforts. At this agricultural training center, we learn not with pencil and paper- all but a few of my peers are illiterate. Rather, we learn with hands and…

Words here in Senegal are a valuable commodity. The wisest people string the neatest webs of words, and a new word learned in Wolof is a new tool to use. However, since the beginning of my time here, one word in particular has followed me wherever I go: Toubab.
As you walk down the road to work, a group of teenagers snickers, “Toubab, ana sa xaalis? Doo nu ko may?” (Toubab, where’s your money? Aren’t you going to give us some?) Later at the market, the merchant tells you the price of a piece of clothing you know is three…

It’s funny how we look at things over the passing of time, the way our minds once saw something a certain way but one day see it again, as something else completely different. How what was once a judgment becomes an understanding, how insecurities turn into pride, and so on. I came to find this adaptation in perspective a necessary trait when living in Senegal, even from the very beginning of my stay. How your point of view must always have room for improvement and shifts. But now, after being here for six months, I can see how my own…

I can become fluent in Wolof, I can wear the exotic clothes, I can cook ceebu gen bu suff (rice and fish that is tasty), and I can get myself a Senegalese husband, but there is one thing I cannot do.
I cannot change the color of my skin.
I’ve even asked if there are blackening lotions instead of the many xeesal products (skin bleaching), but surprisingly those do not exist in Senegal.
So here I am; white as ever.
If I wasn’t aware of color status before I came to Senegal, there are now constant reminders.  From being called…