Tag Archives: study abroad

Three Weeks Left

Posted on by

1

IMG 0379

Three weeks left in Senegal, which is terrifying and wonderful all at once. It’s put me in a weird place, because I have to deal in earnest with arrangements for the summer/rest of my life, and that’s always troublesome.

Also, over my lunch break, I launched a new business venture. (I also learned about setting a static homepage in WordPress! It was an exciting day.) I’m hoping to make some money by editing folks’ cover letters for them, so if that interests you/some recent college grad in your life, please get in touch. I work quickly, edit this particular kind of copy very well, and enjoy helping other people get really cool jobs. thousand.words.consulting@gmail.com

/selfpromotion

I’m not particularly interested in going into my conflicting emotions (they’re easy-enough to imagine–I will miss people here and yet I want to go home, which is the plight of everyone who has ever moved temporarily).

What I am interested in talking about is the obligation to feel.

Continue reading →

Going to the Delta

Posted on by

0

Hanging with the termites.

I’m officially back from the Sine Saloum delta, ie your friendly reminder that everywhere in Senegal that is not Dakar is staggeringly beautiful.

This was a whole program trip, so all 60 of us rolled up after a three-hour bus ride on Friday. We then took pirogues (think 30-person canoes) over to our campment, which was composed mostly of thatched-roof, solar-powered cottages and hammocks. It was populated by increasingly ridiculous birds–think two-foot-long irridescent blue things, and songbird-sized hummingbirds.

While settling in the first night, I bought some jewelry from a Tuarag silversmith. The man was six feet tall and all done up in blue robes (the Serer women next to him were not thrilled, as no one looked at their wares). The jewelry is lovely and, you know, desert nomad.

Continue reading →

Let’s Talk About Higher Ed.

Posted on by

3

So, lately I’ve been thinking about study abroad, and about how the ways in which higher ed institutions approach it is kind of profoundly broken.

At most universities, once a student applies to and is accepted to their program, their university piles them into a room with all of the other study abroad students and everyone has a nice chat about how to not get murdered. Culture shock is discussed. Personal boundaries are tested. Slideshows are played.

Sometimes discussed in the meeting is the graph charting students’ study abroad experiences. At the beginning, the student is in a honeymoon period. Life is great! Locals are just like me! Then, reality sets in and the student is bummed out for a while about cultural differences or loneliness or whatever. Then, there’s a spiky bit on the line that trends generally upward, and by the time the student finishes their time abroad they don’t want to go home, they feel like they are one with their new countrymen, etc. etc.

Study Abroad Model

Both of these are really stupid ways to prepare folks for the study abroad experience.

Because here’s the thing–both the meetings and the graph treat study abroad students as one group. And, for university insurance purposes, they are. But I think there are actually at least three distinct subgroups within study abroad students that need different information, have different goals, and will have profoundly different experiences during their time abroad.

Continue reading →

Spring Breakdown

Posted on by

0

So, remember that time when I went to Barcelona for spring break, but then it wasn’t spring break at all and I just bailed on a week of classes? Well, fun fact, it’s actually spring break now! I have elected to stick it out in Dakar because a) I hate sept places and b) I’m saving up my broke-being for my trip to Paris in May. So, I’ve been kicking around with a group of girls in Dakar, instead.

We started the week off on Tuesday (Monday, being the day after Easter, is a national holiday, and so was dedicated to writing papers) with a trip to the West African Research Center. While there, I took advantage of the sweet, sweet wifi and copy edited a friend’s cover letter to Linden Labs. I also managed to obtain the first of the approximately 87 blisters I from this week on the walk over to WARC.

After we finished researching/creeping on Paris housing rentals, we walked to a nearby pizza place. They were having their fabulous Tuesday promotion, in which you could get two large pizzas for $12. We ordered that, and so were surprised when they brought us four pizzas. We waited for a few minutes to see if they were going to come back for them, but they didn’t. Being unethical and also hungry, we chowed down, and each managed to eat pretty much an entire three dollar pizza. Fulfilling American stereotypes is delicious.

During lunch, a man selling pirated DVDs came by. Several were purchased, including American Terrorist Film and Time Cop. We attempted to watch these in the evening, but eventually gave up for the wiles of French-language Titanic (which I have still never seen in English). Weeping and Celine Dion were had.

Continue reading →

I Don’t Hate it Here.

Posted on by

0

So tonight I Skyped my sister. Which was great, because I haven’t actually spoken to her since… oh, I left the country. Talking to her is always so great because whenever she’s freaked out about something, I can be like, “I remember that being terrifying! It turned out to be in no way a big deal.” And then, if I’m feeling perspective-havey, I realize that there is some two-years-older me doing exactly the same thing to my own at-the-moment all-consuming problems. Then I calm down.

But anyway, after we chatted about our linguistic failures (me and Wolof, her and Ancient Greek), she said, “You know, [our mutually-shared, fabulous undergrad adviser] reads your blog.” Which I was sort of aware of, but had filed away along with the information that my parents have had sex and that somewhere out there my LiveJournal still exists as best not to think about ever.

“Yeah,” she continued, “She thinks you hate it there.” I spluttered. “Well, except for your tailor.” I stopped spluttering, because once again, my tailor is the greatest, she is correct.* But she is also correct about this blog sounding like I hate it here. And, to be fair, I’m still not sold on this experience as a pleasant one. I am not ashamed to say that my friends and I spent an hour at the weird expat mall this afternoon pointing out that, for a few hundred dollars, we could go home tomorrow. We all kind of wanted to.

The truth is, Dakar is not beautiful. It is not particularly comfortable. Living in a family is hard, and made harder when they’re not yours and you don’t understand half the conversations going on around you. Though I am fully aware that this experience is going to be a valuable one in terms of forcing me to realize that—though I could have left, because I am holy-shit-an-adult now—I didn’t, and that that is a good thing, I make no pretenses about this being a fun experience in the way that studying in Europe probably would have been. (Not to say that Europe can’t be difficult—I have friends there now and have had friends there in the past, and it can certainly be a head trip in a lot of the same ways just because you are far away from home and lonely and also broke.)

But I don’t hate it here. If I really, truly did, I probably would have left by now, because this is not an academically-valuable-enough experience for me to stick it out if I hated it. So, here’s a list of things that I am legitimately tickled with about my time in Dakar.

My host nieces: Today my oldest niece spent ten minutes constructing an elaborate crash scene using a toy boat, a miniature car rapide, and a makeup brush she found in my room. She narrated the whole thing in Frolof. It was adorable. Continue reading →

Dance the Night Away

Posted on by

1

This weekend marked the end of rural visits and the beginning of spring break, so it was somewhat obligatory that it be ridiculous. It started simply enough–a program friend suggested that, instead of going to the monthly ex-pat party (ridiculous in its own way) we go to the party that a fellow student’s host brother’s youth group was throwing to raise money for those unable to afford medical bills. We figured that if it was terrible, we could always cab over to the expat party nearby.

So, off we trekked in a couple of cabs. The group consisted of several program girls and a friend’s lone, male language partner (who, ironically, is actually from Chad and so does not speak Wolof). The language partner is good people–at pre-party drinks, he talked about not knowing what he wanted to do once he finishes law school, given that his parents already want him to settle down and get married. His mom wants grandkids. I made a Jewish mother joke, he laughed politely (if uncomprehendingly) and all was well.

Once we got to the party, the first of many confusing but delightful realizations was had–namely, that the party was being held on the top floor of a bakery. We said hello to the host brother (who promptly retreated with his program girlfriend for canoodling) and–since it was midnight and we were the first to arrive–set about interpretive dancing. Continue reading →

I Performed a Pelvic Exam. Yeah.

Posted on by

1

So, at the end of five days and a very bumpy four-hour ride in a sept-place, I am officially back from Ndaufanne. Huzzah!

As per the last post, I was in Ndaufanne (about an hour outside of Kaolack) in order to look at health care in Senegal, mostly due to the fact that I checked the “healthcare” box on the placement form because it looked interesting. Let it never be said that my decision process is a great one.

The story of what happened in Kaolack is a boring one (short hour: ungodly early sept-place ride, a lot of waiting, really good chebu jen at APROFES). However, on Tuesday I was sent away with a clump of girls to go be village-placed. We were all under the impression that we would be dropped off together, which made it somewhat startling when there was about an hour of savanna between each of us. Everyone else in the group was in an electricity-less village where no one spoke French.

However, I unintentionally placed out of that experience with my choice of area–pretty much all of the health care providers in Senegal speak French, since they’re university-educated. Though a lot of the conversations around me during the week were going on in Wolof, I was never more than two feet away from an obliging translator. Everyone was incredibly nice. In addition, because I was living with the clinic’s doctor, I had electricity to spare. It was pretty sweet.

Continue reading →

NGO Yenta

Posted on by

0

It is Friday morning here, which means that I do not have classes. Permenant three-day weekends are both great (free time!) and terrible (boredom, probable hatred of my host siblings with school on Friday). But on this particular week I am very, very glad for this setup because it allowed me to sleep off the remainders of a disgusting intestinal ailment that struck Thursday morning.

I do not know what I ate that disagreed with me, but it did so with gusto. As a result, after coming home from school yesterday, I had a four-hour nap. Then I was back in bed at 10:30 and slept for another 12 hours. I was awake for maybe 12 hours of yesterday. I feel better, though still not up for competitive eating.

(As an aside, I learned this week that if I am in my room with my lights off, my host mother just assumes I am not home. She didn’t realize I was in the house for the four hours that I was asleep yesterday. Whoops.)

I leave Monday for my rural visit. I’ll be staying with some employees of APROFES, an organization that works on women’s empowerment in a way that’s less development-cheese than that sounds. In particular, I’m interested in their role as a facilitator of that process–most of what they do is talk to women who would like funds/assistance of the NGO variety, find an NGO that is equipped to provide those funds/assistance, and put them in touch with each other. They’re like a development yenta.

Continue reading →

Updatestravaganza!

Posted on by

4

Have been in one of those funks where rather than write, or read, or be productive, I nap for six hours a day and try not to be hit in the face by the children who live in my house. So that’s been fun. (Study abroad: I am the worst at it.) So, in lieu of actual, structured post, here’s some interesting things that have happened recently:

Thesis, oh god why: So my thesis adviser’s suggestions and my wordiness led to a thesis proposal that was roughly twice the length it was supposed to be. Whoops. Hatcheted it down, and the entire time I wept for killing my babies. (“Don’t you want to know about theoretical frameworks for death? Or blogging? Or my love for danah boyd? No? Okay.”) Need to get it sent in by the end of the week. Am somewhat terrified. Then realized that I would happily not do a thesis if it wasn’t a Prudent Thing to Do, and stopped caring as much. (Also, did you know that GDocs now has MWord comment support? It does! This is the best thing ever.)

Senegal has a new president: So that’s pretty neat! The night he was elected there was a spontaneous parade in the street near my house. It was pretty fantastic. This also means that a) we’re not going to be like Mali and b) I can stay in the country without fearsome emails from the embassy. Yay! Continue reading →

On Cultural Stress

Posted on by

0

So for class (“Seminar on Living and Learning in Dakar,” which is equal parts wonderful group therapy and headdeskingly awful) I had to write about what cultural intensity factors (which used to be “stress” factors, but we don’t like that word) have been the biggest for me. The cultural intensity factors we were able to reference–things like language, cultural expectations, visibility/invisibility–are basically a pared-down list of Why Field Work is Hard. If you’re interested, consult the second part of the first chapter of every ethnography I’ve read in my undergraduate career. But basically, they’re all the things you think would make living abroad difficult.

So, while thinking about that, I realized that my biggest stress factor right now (and the one that directly leads to like 90% of the stories on this blog) is that I possess a complete inability to figure out why people want me to do things now.

Do you know how difficult it is to respond to other people without the ability to predict why they’re talking to you and what their requests are leading up to? Turns out, it’s really difficult. I can no longer filter what parts of requests are really important and what aren’t. Operating in a second language, in an environment I’m unfamiliar with, has given me a mild filtering disorder. It’s disconcerting.

It’s less bad now, but I remember a particular moment about a month after I moved in to my host family, which I now think of as the Worst Dinner Ever. I had spent all day being told to move chairs and plates and bowls of rice in ways that were never fully explained because—to my host parents—they were obvious.

(Of course the rice goes in the living room and not in the dining room—we don’t eat in the dining room, and we need to eat the rice. For dinner. Which we are having now, because it’s 9 pm and that’s when dinner happens.)

Continue reading →