Home.

We are home safely. I've spent the last day and a half sleeping and being with my friends. I also saw Harry Potter... I was really looking forward to it.

Coming home brings a host of mixed feelings. The biggest one is relief.

I am taking a much needed break with my love in Lewiston over the next few days... still trying to figure out how to articulate everything I want to say.



Peace and Love,
Jen

Examining the End from the Beginning

I hate goodbyes. Because we need to be at the airport at 6 am tomorrow morning, yesterday was day full of goodbyes to the students of Mame Yelli Badiane. All of us have developed such great relationships with these students in such a short time. It is not easy to leave them.

I suppose I'll start addressing all of the goodbyes by talking about the beginning of the trip. On our second day in Senegal, before all of the kids knew each other, we decided to take them all to Toubab Dialaw, a small seaside town on the coast. It looked like a place where you might spend your honeymoon.

Seriously beautiful

We got a bunch of bungalows and spent the next day and half getting to know each other. This was the night I stayed up with the students and teachers from Mame Yelli Badiane making lists of words in Wolof and English. We told traditional stories and laughed and sang... it was definitely key in my getting to know everyone. There was one point in the night where all of the students were together in one room dancing, singing, yelling, screaming... you could hear them all over the complex where we were staying. Part of me wanted to get up and join them, but another part of me just wanted to leave them together and let them have their time. It was a strong start.

Toubab Dialaw... beach paradise

It was a stretch for our students to share a space with people and a culture they weren't comfortable with. In some ways I believe the students were asked to do more mentally and emotionally than they've ever been asked to do. Some responded to these requests in negative ways, but if asked to explain why they were acting the way they were, they had no words. I don't know if they'll ever find the words, but I hope that one day they'll understand this whole experience and be able to articulate it more deeply than just saying, "Man, Africa is crazy!"

Saying goodbye to the students from Mame Yelli Badiane

Despite my annoyances with the students throughout this trip, I know that they have grown and will continue to grow when we get home. I'll do the same thing. I talked to Matador during our first week about all of my frustrations and he said that this is just the beginning for all of the students, Senegalese and American alike. I've repeated that mantra over the last two weeks like my life has depended on it. I'm not going to compare neighborhoods in Kalamazoo to neighborhoods in Dakar because that is truly impossible. However, I know that if we were to take the students and teachers from Mame Yelli Badiane and throw them into life in Kalamazoo, they would struggle too. Their struggles would be different, completely different, for completely different reasons, but they would struggle too.

Amari's first time climbing a rock in the ocean. He did a lot of things he's never done on this trip. I'm super proud of him.

When I got home from traveling internationally for the first time (last year, in Senegal), it was easy to set aside everything I'd read, seen, and heard in the country and just sleep. Cleaning the house, getting lesson plans ready, signing up for classes at WMU... everything took over and it was easy to forget that life is still going on here in Senegal. People are still hand washing their clothes, cooking on a propane tank, walking on sandy streets. This is their life.

Sidi. He called me his mother today and told me not to forget him.

It is so easy to tell the students from Mame Yelli Badiane that we'll see them again, or that they should come to the Michigan... but words are easier than actions. Our students have plans to fundraise and bring some of the students to the United States in the next few years. I like the way they've started thinking. They keep saying that a true exchange should go both ways and I agree. I don't know what is going to happen with that, but I hope the ideas don't fly away with us on our way back to the U.S.

At the top of the African Renaissance Monument looking over Dakar

I'm a pretty emotional person, so I thought I'd be crying a lot yesterday. I only cried once. I wrote Binetou a note thanking her for bringing me into her home and telling her that she will always have a family in Michigan. The Heymoss house is definitely open to her at any time. She walked over, gave me a hug and said, "Thank you." I thought it wasn't a big deal, but then she leaned over and started sobbing. I automatically put my sunglasses on and tried not to cry but was unsuccessful. Being a woman in this country can be really difficult and I'm glad I was able to connect with a female student here.

Binetou and me (with my sunglasses on and trying not to cry)

I wonder where all of these students will be on July 14, 2012. I wonder what they'll be doing, what they'll be working on, what they'll be thinking. I have the highest hopes for all of them.

I can't wait to get home to my family. I love it here, but I'm not fully happy without Nate and the dogs. I'll be doing lots of relaxing with half of the responsibility. 

At home I'll be acting like this for longer than a half hour. 

Love,

Jen

Exiled: Kalamazoo Teenagers Edition

If you have never seen or heard of the show Exiled on MTV, watch this:

MTV Shows

If it doesn't work, click here: Exiled... the most annoying show in history.

Every experience with students involved comes with its ups and downs. I've talked about the many ups, but now I'm going to talk honestly about a huge down for me: Sometimes I feel like I am living with the kids from the show Exiled. Here are some of the things I hear every day at least once and my usual response:

Student: It's SO hot here! UGHHHH!
Me: I know, and it's because we're in Senegal, which is a country in West Africa. It's usually pretty hot when you are by the equator.
Student: What?! Why is there no microwave? I wanna heat up my food!
Me: It's probably because we're in Senegal, which a developing country in West Africa. There aren't any microwaves in our neighborhood.
Student: What?!? There is no stove! How are we supposed to cook!?
Me: Well, we cook on a propane tank, which is what happens in Senegal.
Student: Why does this restaurant only have six things on the menu?!? Why is it taking so long? I'm hungry now!!
Me: That is what happens when you don't have industrial sized everything in your restaurant, which is usually what happens in Senegal.
Student: Where is the McDonalds?
Me: There is no McDonalds here.
Student: There are so many bugs here! Ugh, I'm gonna die!!!
Me: Yes, and that is because we're in Senegal, which is in West Africa. If there weren't bugs I'd be worried. You're not going to die. Calm down.
Student: Ugh, the power is always going out! I want to charge my iPod!
Me: It's probably because we're in Senegal, where the electricity is often going in and out. That can happen in a developing country.
Student: Why do we have to eat fish and rice every day for lunch!?! It makes me wanna throw up!
Me: Well, in Senegal, you have to eat something that will sustain you. That can happen in a developing country.
Student: Ew, your feet are dirty. Ugh, why are all the roads made of sand?!
Me: Well, it's probably because only a few of the roads are paved, like many of the places in countries like Senegal, which is in West Africa.
Student: It smells here!! Why is there trash everywhere?
Me: Well, who would pick it up? The Senegalese government can't pay for that.
And on, and on, and on. There are some things I can't type here.

Understandable the first two days. But now it is occurring every day. Every. Day. Thank goodness it is not from every student at the same time.

And the reason I keep saying Senegal is a country in West Africa to the students is because many of them are constantly referring to Senegal as "Africa" when Senegal is one of 54 countries on the continent of Africa. Note: Africa is not a country.

We'll get it some day. Until then, here is one of the many moments when I haven't wanted to shake a student by the shoulders until they understand what I'm talking about :)

Cooking together... I was just watching and then eating.

Cleaning up our wall so we could cover it after the graffiti workshop.

Troubleshooting the installation of the water purification system.

Being silly at Mame Yelli Badiane

Overlooking Dakar from the African Renaissance Monument

Drinking Baobab juice... mmmmmm

I'm telling you, I'm going to sleep for days when I get home. 

Love,

Jen

P.S. What? You wanna hear about my personal Exiled moment? Here ya go... it's my calf:

Wahhhhh, why do the mosquitoes like me so much?

We're Here and Safe

After 17 hours of travel, we made it and we are safe. We are getting our bearings. I will write a longer post once we are more settled in. Until then, some pictures:

After two layovers, we were on the plane! Only 8 hours in the air to go. It was the most uncomfortable international flight ever. 

Students meeting Matador at Africulturban for the first time. So tired!

Cebu Djen at Africulturban. Delicious!

Amelia figuring out how to communicate with her counterparts. 

Urban Youth for Africa and the students at Mame Yelli Badiane School

The view of the street from our house.

Stairs... we've got three stories here.

James sleeping in one of the common areas.

Where I slept this afternoon. Breezy. 

The view from the top of our house. 

Our common eating and study area. 

It's nice to be back here with such great people. My stomach and my internal clock will be more on point by Sunday. I'm going to go memorize some Wolof.

Jamm (Peace),

Jen

The Dakar Diaries: Thoughts of Motherhood

The owner of this image can be found here.

If you know me, you know that I always say I don't want children. And I really don't want them right now. There are a few things I'd like to do before I decide to devote my life to a child. Selfish? Maybe. True? Yes.

That being said, there were days in Dakar when I started to feel something welling up inside of me. It was an emotion that I've never felt before. Maybe it was because I was lonely and in a foreign country or maybe it was because I was overwhelmed by everything around me, but around week three of the trip I started to feel like maybe I should talk to Nate about having a baby. Everything inside of my head screamed, "Ew, why are you thinking this?! Why are you even running this thought through your mind right now?!" I still can't really say what the deal was.

The day I first started to experience The Nameless Emotion was when I saw a mother bend over, untie the cloth that was holding her sleeping toddler to her back with one arm and take her other arm to expertly swoop the child from her back to a mat in the cool shade in just one smooth and practiced motion. The child just sighed and kept sleeping, despite the all of the action on the street. I saw it happen with a another toddler that wasn't wearing diapers. The mother just set the child down and he went to the bathroom. She just knew. I thought about what it would be like to be so close to another human being; to just know when he or she needed to sleep in a motionless place or had to go to bathroom. I couldn't help thinking that if it were me, pee would just run down my back.

Another time, I was hanging out with Bira, a friend I made. He asked why we didn't have any children yet. He couldn't believe that we were almost thirty and we hadn't started a family. The way he said it made so much sense. The conversation went something like this:
Bira: You love your husband?
Me: Yes, very much.
Bira: And you haven't had children yet?
Me: No, we're definitely not ready.
Bira: But you are together and you love each other. Why have you not wanted to continue your family?

I really didn't have an answer.

Of course, there are countless hardships for children growing up in Senegal. There is no denying that. I don't mean to make this entry sound like I am simplifying motherhood in the country to just women who carry kids on their backs. The image is just one that stood out to me (and it brought out The Nameless Emotion). It was people carrying on with day to day life. It was a really tender thing and for some reason, I found a lot comfort in the image. I've always felt like having a child would mean that everything stops. It took being in Senegal to see that things would keep going because they just have to.

Of course, when we got to Paris and I saw a toddler sitting at a cafe on her own iPhone, I started to think that maybe I wasn't ready for the motherhood thing and the thought of talking to Nate retreated back inside of me to wherever it came from. The thought continued to retreat when I returned home and got stuck in the checkout line at the grocery store behind a family where the child kept grabbing trivial things  like dental floss off of the rack and saying, "Please will you get this for me? PUH-LEAZE? If you don't buy this for me, I'm going to SCREAM." Scary.

Who knows though? Maybe someday I will just know to not to let the pee run down my back. :)

Really Trying...

... to understand the culture of polygamy and a woman's role here.

Wolof language lesson for the day:
Jekker- Husband. Jek= Front of, or head. Ker= House (some may argue heart)
Jabar- Wife. Ja= Keeping your eyes forward or locked onto something. Bar= Following fast or running fast.

Not cool.

As a loudly opinionated and fiery woman, I get pretty fired up at some of the ways women are treated in this country. When I first got here one of the men at our orientation told us that men will frequently ask you to marry them and it's just part of the culture and to not take it too seriously. So I didn't... for the first two weeks. But every time a meet a man over here, I usually catch the word "jekker" in his first through fifth sentences usually leading up to a very irritating question.

I've got some issues with this. I'm so glad that the first thing men think when they look at me is that I have a neon sign hanging around my neck that says, "HEY, I'm just a Western gal who wants to come here and marry the first dude who asks!" A male colleague of mine put it into perspective for me... I am a woman traveling without a husband. It's not common for women in this country to just leave their husband for a month to do research, hence, I must be single. Okay. Understandable.

Issue number two. Getting asked to be a wife or second wife isn't something that happens once a week. It happens almost every day and it is wearing on me, even though I try to joke about it. I bought a fatter silver ring than the one I was wearing and I carry a dogeared picture of Nate and I around in my pocket that I frequently whip out and show pretty much everyone and they STILL ask. Someone even asked if Nate wouldn't mind if I was his wife in the United States and the other dude's wife here. Excuse me?! Why is it such a casual thing to ask someone to marry you? Seriously, instead of saying, "Hey lady whose name I don't know, how is the weather," I hear, "Hey. Are you married? Be my wife."

This all leads me to ask: How many women from out of the country come around here looking for a husband? Also, why do men here have all of this control? It is a part of the culture that I cannot get used to. I've really been trying to do some reading on this to understand the male behaviors here but I still can't wrap my head around it. I even had a discussion about polygamy with a university professor at UCAD to understand all of this. His basic answer? Men are weak and need more wives so they don't cheat. Also what if a man marries a woman who doesn't have a strong sexual drive? Then he'll need another wife to satisfy that. Also, women are stronger and can handle all of that. Um, really?

And yes, there is class to consider and race and religion and... the list goes on. I still get mad.

I miss my guy friends because I know that they just like to hang out because they are awesome and have no ulterior motives.

And I miss Nate even more because I know he doesn't run around asking random women to be his wife and he is cool with being married to a loudly opinionated and fiery woman.

From Dakar 2010

Peace,
Jen, who is still having a blast, but trying to learn about the context of these gender issues and the struggles women my age and younger are having in Dakar with blurring cultural lines (believe me, they are trying)

Yoff, Kids, and Mangoes

Jamm nga yendoo. I made a decision and joined the French Cultural Institute today. I've found this place to be a quiet oasis in the middle of this bustling metropolis. They also have a nice computer lab, which is appealing to me. :)

Dakar 2010

New pictures uploaded today... check them out if you want a better idea of some of what I am talking about!

While I could spend at least two paragraphs commenting on the heat of this sticky Tuesday, I want to write about my Monday, which was eye-opening to say the least. This post will be divided into three sections with pictures to follow... someday: Yoff, kids, and mangoes.

Yoff
The Lonley Planet guide to Senegal (which has become our bible) says this about Yoff: "Yoff is Dakar's most independent zone, where the Lebou village ties and traditions continue to dominate life and even local governance; the community is self-administering, with no government officials, no police force, and, apparently, no crime. The Lebou of Yoff are nearly all members of the Layen, one of the brotherhoods that dominate life in Senegal. The Muslim faith of Yoff's residents strongly colors life in this community."

I was simply amazed by the people in Yoff. We were shown around the community by Ibrahim, our breakfast waiter on most mornings who tries his hardest to teach us Wolof. He brought us to the Layen Mausoleum, which was built in the 1950s to honor Saidi Limamou Laye, the founder of the brotherhood. The mausoleum was the most peaceful place we've been so far. It is gated on the beach next to the ocean:

From Dakar 2010

The halls of the mausoleum are the sand of the beach:

From Dakar 2010

The smell of incense and the muted silence of the inside of the structure made it truly feel like a sacred place. Many members of this brotherhood will make a pilgrimage to Yoff to see this place and I understand why. Everything about it made me feel calm and centered.

From Dakar 2010

I felt closer to my own spirituality there than I did at the Catholic cathedral last Sunday. I've been finding that I feel very connected to Islam and I have a lot of respect for those who practice this faith.

Afterwards, we went to the Khalif's home and were invited in. He is the current leader of the brotherhood. We met his wives and his eldest son (the next in line). This was kind of big deal and involved me kneeling in front of the Khalif and taking his hand.

I am not the type of lady who kneels in front of a man, but this seemed important. It was like meeting the equivalent of the pope in this brotherhood. Then I saw some business man take the Khalif's hand and slide a gold watch over his wrist. I left feeling honored to have met this man, but also confused because the Layen speak of equality between everyone, but their leader lives in a house filled with leather couches, air conditioning, and gold watches. As my student's would say, he was ballin'. There was a bit of a disconnect for me.

Kids
The disconnect that I speak of was lifted when I walked through the streets of Yoff and saw the way the community and its children operated. When we were at the mausoleum, music was broadcast over the loudspeakers. The streets became crowded with children of all ages carrying wire baskets. Believe it or not, they were going to clean the sand around the mausoleum. If you look at my pictures, you'll see that there is A LOT of sand. They just went up to the gate, took off their shoes, and started cleaning the sand from one corner of this immense space to the other. I can't imagine that most kids in the U.S. would be willing to put down their Wii remotes and clean sand around a holy place for the pure purpose of respect.

Afterwards, we hung out with Ibrahim in the street and the kids came up to us and just wanted to be around us. They were so sweet; I couldn't get enough of them. At one point in our visit, we got into a kind of sing-off. The kids would sing a song in French or Wolof and we would sing one back. Once again, music united people despite language barriers.

From Dakar 2010

What has really got me is that these kids are just living life. While we observed the village and masoleum, the kids were wrestling in the sand and joking around. They were play fighting and getting into silly arguments. They were turning away from us and putting their faces in their mother's leg because they were shy. Sometimes Westerners come in and want to fix everything in third world countries. While I admit that there are many, many hardships (mostly caused by the consequences of actions by westerners), I see most of these children just living and they don't think there is anything "wrong" with their lives. It was really powerful for me and I hope to hang with the kids of Yoff again.

Last, but certainly not least, MANGOES
Yesterday I ate the best piece of fruit I've ever had in my life. It was a mango as big as my head and it was amazing. The process of preparing this mango was quite the experience. Let me lay it out for you.

Katie, my roomie, and I were hungry for dinner, so we made the decision to cut up this mango. This has to be a cooperative decision because the process of preparing a mango takes a few minutes and you need two people. We washed our hands with bottled water and soap and then washed the mango the same way. Then, we took a knife and I peeled the mango into the sink. Katie then help a ziploc bag open while I diced the mango into the bag. There was so much meat on this thing that is was ridiculous... it filled the bag to the top! While I diced the mango, juice ran down my hands and arms. That has never happened while I cut a mango at home.

From Dakar 2010

If you were sitting outside of our hotel room while we ate this ridiculously juicy mango, you would have thought something mind blowing was happening in there. And something was. We were eating the best morsels of fruit I have ever had in my life. I will never taste anything the same in the U.S. If that means I have to come back here just to taste this mango, so be it.

Wow, all of that happened on a Monday. I will tell you about my language difficulties and our visit to the school for children with hearing and speaking disabilities tomorrow. AHHH! I am learning so much every day that I'm afraid I will forget something.

What up, French Keyboard!

Found an internet cafe today, but the computers are from 1998 so they don't recognize my camera software. It is very frustrating not having a computer here! The Lonley Planet guide says that internet cafes are becoming sparse here in Dakar because of wireless. I am a pretty resourceful gal, so I will make this work!

The flight was long, but uneventful. When I stepped off the plane in Dakar, I was hit with a wave of warm and heavy air. It's nothing I can't handle... I am from Michigan after all and we don't like to run our air conditioner so it feels like a normal Michigan summer day.

Yesterday we had lunch at Chez Loutcha and it was freaking awesome. I wish I could eat like that every day. Dinner was at Cafe di Roma and I will not eat there again. There wasn't anything wrong with it, but if I want pizza, I'll go to Little Caesar's when I get home. :)

Today we are visiting Goree Island. I didn't have as much time as I would have liked to prepare for this trip to Goree, so I will have more to say on it after our lecture and visit. We are taking the ferry, which will be interesting to say the least because I have never taken a ferry on the ocean before! This is a big tourist spot so I won't feel like such a toubab when I'm taking pictures. Oh yes, a toubab, by the way is what people say to me as I walk down Dakar's winding streets. It pretty much means white traveler with money. Sometimes someone comes up and says, "Hola," which I take as a compliment!

I will find a way to post pictures soon!