…Like Senegalese tea

So, let me tell you all a little story – the story of Julia Rabbit’s African escapades over the course of the last month and the reasons why she has saved it until exactly two weeks before her departure to update her blog…

So, the story begins, as all good stories do, with a dilemma – Julia didn’t like Senegal that much. It was a combination of things, none of which your travel-weary adventuress would like to elaborate on at present, but to make a long story short, Rabbit was not a happy camper for three or four weeks.

I suppose it’s worthwhile to break out of third person to tell you all that I think most of my problems were ones of my own making. I missed India to an extreme, I didn’t feel like I had a lot of responsibility at the school where I work and found it hard to be motivated each day. Even now that I really feel like I’ve acclimated, my stay in Senegal is a mixed bag; a really mixed bag. I was convinced three weeks in that I was going to leave early – a debilitating cold, a strange and painful rash on my face, culture conflicts (I’ll elaborate on that in a moment), and clean-cut fatigue (don’t forget that I’ve been on the road for eight months) all culminated to create a few hellish weeks.

OK, so before y’all get antsy, let me elaborate a bit on Senegalese culture and why exactly I had so many problems adjusting. Life as a toubab (or a white person) in this country poses many problems on a daily basis, namely that the snap judgment made upon seeing the color of your skin is, “THEY HAVE MONEY”. Each time I step out the door in the morning I can expect at least a dozen cat calls along the lines of, “Toubab! Donne-moi mille francs!” or “White! Give me 1,000 francs!” during the course of the day. At the start, I felt like I was being treated like a malfunctioning ATM.

The work at school is tiring, to say the least, sometimes infuriating. The students, at the best of times, are disrespectful, particularly to me. The worst, for me, however, is seeing the lack of motivation in so many of them. They all come from some of the most underprivileged families in Dakar, if not all of Senegal, and yet I sometimes feel as though they’re laughing in my face when I ask them to sit still and work. What remains my biggest dilemma to this day is finding the motivation to give all my energy to kids who seem to not care at all. I ask myself on a daily basis, “Do they get it? Do they get how big the world is outside of Senegal? Do they get how hard it will be to pull themselves up and what a huge helping hand this school is?” The helping hand, namely, is Mr. Abdoulaye, the director, and his wife, Katy, who are also my host parents. I can’t tell you how inspiring these people are – everytime I feel discouraged or tired, I look at the fatigue in their eyes and the amount of work they put into the school each day and I put an extra spring in my step.

As of late, I’ve had a sobering realization – I’ve discovered my true passion for humanitarian work and have come to see it as a kind of guiding light for the rest of my college education, if not the rest of my life, but working at this school has made me realize how taxing it can be to work with all your heart. In some ways I feel very selfish for my sentiments at the start, because I was looking for something to gain for myself – I wanted to come back from each day feeling like I’d done something for those less fortunate, and instead I came back feeling tired, drained, and disheartened. My efforts seemed to be in vain.

The past days, however, have seen me a happier and more worldly Julia – despite the fact that I usually get stuck teaching math and science ( I KNOW RIGHT??!!) because the teacher hasn’t shown up for weeks, I’m there. Mr. Abdoulaye confided the other day, “Sometimes it feels like we’re alone in our struggle.” These are not happy days for Enfance et Paix. There was a fund-raising party at the school this week, and next to none of the large companies that the school asked for donations followed through with their pledges. There aren’t nearly as many students enrolled as their were when Mr. Abdoulaye opened the school in 1986, and many of the students’ families can’t afford to pay the already obscenely low monthly school fees. I, however, can be there – I can tell them that they are not alone. When I feel discouraged now, I tell myself that its not for me – it’s not my place to be discouraged, because there’s already plenty of that. I’m here to provide hope and follow through with my promises.

I’m temped to say that the world is big, but I’ve come to realize that that is simply not the case. Suffering is what makes the world small. A child in Senegal who can’t afford schooling, not to mention three square meals a day, a Tibetan refugee in India recovering from torture inflicted by the Chinese government after a month-long journey across the one of the most dangerous mountain ranges in the world – these are my problems, these are your problems, these are everyone’s problems.

I’ll leave it at that for this particular tirade, but this really is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the enlightening things I see each day. I don’t want to be a pain, and if you don’t share my opinion then you are more than welcome to respond with yours.

As you can see, there’s been a massive shift of gears here, and all I can really attribute it to is a five-day respit in the city of St. Louis over the course of my birthday weekend. Sophie, another volunteer, and I endured the six-hour car ride north to what used to be Senegal’s capital with a teacher of geography and history at Enfance et Paix named Mr. Thiam who grew up there. We had a wonderful stay with Mr. Thiam’s family, attended the St. Louis jazz festival, and basked in the glory of the old French architecture and the culture of a much smaller city than Dakar. I don’t really know what happened in St. Louis, but I returned to Dakar feeling ready to fully embrace the challenges I had found so hard to face before. I was happy to return to my family and friends in Parcelles (the quartier I live in).

Since the beginning of this month, things have been going really well. Senegal really is one big family. Everything is shared, from the small plastic cups of cafe touba – a sweet and strong brewed black coffee that I can’t go a day without – to the heaping trays of chebugen – the national dish of the country, some variation of fish, rice, and veggies. You can be expected to be greeted upon entry in each household at mealtimes, “Kai leckel! Viens manger! Come eat!”. While it can get a little wearisome when it comes to the sharing of personal space (i.e. my bedroom), its become a really endearing part of Senegal to me, and whenever I go to buy a snack, I make sure to buy enough to offer around.

The music permeates the air here. For all the difficulties I’ve faced with the culture, the music has made up for in spades. Its like there’s this rhythm, constant and strong, that everyone can kind of tap into. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like seeing my djembe teacher, Amadou, play a solo. Sometimes his face doesn’t seem big enough for his smile! That rhythm isn’t just a trickling stream, it’s like white water rapids just itching to break out of every gorgeous Senegalese body (and trust me – they’re all GORGEOUS).

In the evenings, I either go to a djembe lesson or give a guitar lesson to a friend who works at the clinic a block away. In short, I always end up playing the sun down drumming on the beach or strumming on a rooftop sipping Senegalese tea, sweet and strong. Before bed, I head up to my rooftop to chat with Mr. Thiam and go to bed with my head full of new ideas, the cool, African night breeze having cooled the day’s sweat from my face.

So there you have it – in the end, the hardship lead to learning, and the learning lead to growth. I’m actually really glad I saved posting until now – I don’t think I could have accurately conveyed the spectrum of emotions until this moment.

One of my favorite parts of each day is sipping the daily brew of Senegalese tea, taken fresh off the fire, made from strong Chinese green tea leaves, and sipped quickly from small glass cups. There are three cups, – the first is brewed until the water is brown and brackish and very little sugar is added; the second (all are brewed with the same tea leaves) is sweeter and made with mint and lighter in color; the third is the sweetest and the lightest. I don’t think it’s unfair to draw a comparison between my life in Senegal and those three cups of tea. It went from bitter to sweet, but it took time.