A Catalyst

Growing up with family in Asia, I grew up spending weeks abroad each year. But, my interest in the world and social impact / development work was sparked during the summer of 2008. I was lucky enough to be part of the pilot of an annual program my high school was launching in partnership with another San Francisco high school. It's awesome to see that this service learning trip is still occuring each summer

A group of about 20 of us traveled to Senegal for two weeks. We spent most of our time Keur Sadaro, a small village outside Thies. This was truly an immersive experience - each student stayed with a different host family, most of us couldn't communicate verbally with our hosts, and we ate, slept, and worked as our host families did. This trip instilled a confidence in me - I learned that I found it exciting to immerse myself in and learn about other cultures. I knew that having gone through this experience, I would be able to travel elsewhere more comfortably. 

The Homestay

The family I stayed with gave me their only bedroom with a bed. The first night, my host mom was so concerned about my comfort and safety, she slept in the bed with me. From my experience, the Senegalese are incredibly hospitable. I wasn't able to communicate much in Wolof and my family didn't speak French, but through hand gestures and drawings, we were able to develop relationships. Having grown up surrounded by my many cousin, having this many children around was incredibly comforting because it reminded me of my family back home.

All meals are eaten family style - the women and men eat from separate bowls. Most of our meals consisted of rice with some sort of fish paste, small fish, and some vegetables. Other meats tend to be really expensive and are only for special occasions (a cow is typically killed for a wedding). I tried to eat as soon as possible because the older women would push food towards me and tell me to "lekk!" (eat!) which was nice but also not the most sanitary.

As someone who usually has no trouble sleeping, the heat combined with the mule that lived by the outhouse made it really difficult to sleep at night. Eventually, I started sleeping with the bedroom door open. At night, the outhouse, which is also where we took our bucket showers was filled with cockroaches so I decided, with no lights around, the sand would do just fine. 

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Our Work

Our main objective was developing relationships with the village leadership and understanding how we could make this a sustainable partnership.

We also had three tactical goals:

1. Clear out an existing building (thought to have asbestos) so that it could be repurposed into a health clinic
2. Repair the desks and tables used in the school
3. Patch the roofs of the school buildings - a key reason the desks and tables were in poor shape was because they would get wet when it rained, rotting the wood.

We repaired the roofs by having a group working inside the school buildings. They would look for areas where sunlight leaked in and call to us up top to make sure we applied tar to close the holes. They would also let us know if there were any wooden beams that didn't look stable so that we could avoid walking there. I worked on top of the roofs because i wasn't tall enough to reach the roof but also because I'm small. As you can imagine, corrugated metal isn't the sturdiest, so we had to be really careful. For the areas that were really damaged, we used new sheets of metal to patch them up.

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Tourism

We also spent some time visiting other parts of Senegal. We spent two days in M'Bour during the middle of our time in Keur Sadaro - it was nice to have a little break because I think everyone was incredibly exhausted and drained. M'Bour, is a fishing town, that is also home to a pretty well known French orphanage which we visited.

Joal-Fadiouth, "shell island," was also really fascinating. Based on my notebook (which may or may not be accurate), the population is 95% Christian (usually the minority elsewhere in the country)  and 5% Muslim. There are no motorized vehicles on the island and everyone shares their crops to help one another. 

We also visited Île de Gorée, near Dakar, where the "Maison des esclaves" is located. While its role in the slave trade has been disputed, visiting this island was a really powerful and reflective experience.