I still have a couple posts to write with pictures and all that good stuff, but I've been doing a lot of writing and thinking today, so I wanted to share it.
The 5 Things I Enjoyed Most About Going Abroad:
1. The people I have met at Centre Derklé (and elsewhere) with the biggest hearts, inspiring generosity, and incredible minds. Nothing but patience, humor, and love with these guys.
2. Sunshine. All day, every day.
3. Learning to take the time to sit and talk to people and get to know them, because it matters. I had to really push myself through my lack of confidence in my language skills for this one, but it was worth it in so many ways.
4. Learning a little bit about how to play djembe and getting to jam with professional musicians on the regular.
5. Having the opportunity to see places, people, things, etc in a country halfway across the world. I know there's a lot of people who will never get an opportunity like this, and I'm just very grateful for the experience as a whole.
5 Things That Were Difficult or Bothered Me The Most While I Have Been Abroad:
1. Being sick here was stressful and complicated on too many levels. Medications you're used to aren't available, the language barrier becomes extreme when you're trying to express very specific ideas, healthcare here in general is sub-par, and most locals don't know a whole lot about doctors/medicine because they prefer home remedies and more cost-effective solutions. Not to mention the fact that this country and continent are filled with unusual diseases, many of which could kill me. Very stressful situation.
2. At orientation I was the only person that said the number one thing I was worried about was the food-- and I was dead-on with that concern. The majority of Senegalese food has been a huge struggle for me, and people here enjoy eating the same things over and over-- not much variety from meal to meal. I'm proud of myself for the things that I did manage to learn to eat, and the fact that I never refused a meal entirely, I always ate at least a little bit. But being hungry 24/7 on top of all the other stress has been difficult. Positive side: I'm coming back to the states with a bangin' new bod hahaha.
3. This city needs to decide on some street names and addresses-- and then actually use them. Not only was this really confusing for me, but locals waste a lot of time and energy explaining complicated directions and asking a bunch of people where things are located. It becomes an issue of safety as well-- it's not good to be wandering around lost here at night.
4. The language thing was difficult. Senegalese French is NOT the same as the French taught in US classrooms!!! I cannot stress that one enough. The pronunciation and sentence structures took some time to get used to, and my speaking skills in general needed some serious improvement. Then there's Wolof. I am SO proud of myself for the greetings and simple phrases that I learned to say while I was here and the fact that I can understand at least the subject of most conversations I hear. But for many people, the fact that I did not become fluent in 10 weeks is totally unacceptable. I was actually yelled at last week for "not making an effort" to learn Wolof. The majority of people here speak at least 2 languages (if not 3, 4, 5...) so it's hard for them to understand how difficult it is for me to accomplish the same thing.
5. Not having a lot of work to do at my internship was a bummer. And yeah, that's all I'm going to say about that.
The 5 Things I Missed Most About Home While I've Been Abroad:
1. Food. Especially the easily-accessible variety of food and the freedom I have to buy groceries and cook meals that I like.
2. My family and our dogs.
3. My bed, comforter, and pillows.
4. Oregon beer culture. It's a part of me, I can't help it.
5. The freedom I have at home to come and go as I please without worrying about safety, getting lost, paying for taxis, bothering my host family if I come back late, etc.
The 5 Things I Have Missed Least Since I've Been Abroad:
1. The rain and the cold.
2. The lack of genuine, person-to-person interaction.
3. The go-go-go, do-do-do, hurry up, be on time, meet this deadline, mentality.
4. Eugene in general. I just don't fit in with that city and its culture.
5. People who have no idea how lucky they are and how good their lives are.
My Greatest Single Challenge While I've Been Abroad:
Finding a balance. Integrating into the culture vs. being comfortable with being myself. Being polite vs. asking for the things/help that I need. Learning and doing as much as I possibly can vs. trying not to kill myself and destroy my body in the process. Trying to effectively communicate with people vs. getting comfortable making mistakes. Expressing my frustrations vs. being offensive. Every day here is a serious give and take, push and pull--- it's been a struggle. But the fact that I don't want to leave tells me that it was worth it.
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Inchallah
When deciding where to study abroad, there were many factors that influenced my decision. Based on my major and concentrations I knew that I had to go to Africa, and I also wanted to do an internship rather than study abroad because working has always been my thing more so than school. So based on my skill set and potential internship sites, I eventually narrowed down my top two choices to either South Africa or Senegal. I chose Senegal because I thought it would be much more worth-while and a nice personal challenge to live in a French-speaking country. I could not have been more right about that! Haha.... challenging indeed! But there was another aspect of life in Senegal that I thought might be equally challenging--and that was the fact that Senegal is "a Muslim country."
Coming from the US, it's pretty hard not to be influenced, even in some small way, by anti-Islam sentiments. That being said, I'm a very open-minded person and I'm definitely alright with people practicing their own religions and doing their own cultural thing. But something inside me was still a little nervous, or maybe even scared, to be so fully-surrounded by this religion. This also stemmed from the fact that before I left, I definitely would not say that I was religious at all, and I would even go as far as to say that I wasn't sure if there really was a God. My predictions about feeling uncomfortable in this religious setting couldn't have been further from the truth.
When I started preparing for this trip, that's when I began to notice a change in my life. I'm the type of person where usually, if something can go wrong, it most certainly will, and then on top of that, it will be way more expensive than I had planned for it to be, and then a chain reaction of bad things that I didn't even know could be potential consequences will ensue. This is how the majority of my life has been, I'm pretty used to it by now, and I fully expected my preparations to go abroad to follow suit.
But they didn't. Every phone call I made, every interview I went to, every favor I asked for-- everything just fell into place exactly as planned. I received a $4500 scholarship, the first scholarship of my life, and then a second scholarship directly from my school quickly followed that one. I went to the pharmacy to get hundreds of dollars worth of prescriptions and vaccines, only to find out that my insurance was going to cover everything except a comparatively small administration fee. I went back two weeks later for a second round of vaccines, and not only were those covered, but the pharmacist informed me that my insurance ended up covering the administration fee as well and I was given a refund. The pharmacy paid me, while I sat there and got $200+ worth of vaccines for free. Not normal. Every day was like this, and it freaked me out, and I started to think that this was all because going to Africa was my calling-- finally, this is what I'm supposed to be doing with my life. (Not like I didn't already know that haha...)
Life is not easy, and not everything in Senegal has been peachy, but the number of happy accidents that have occurred and the fabulous decisions I've made cannot merely be a sequence of coincidences. Usually I lean on the phrase, "Everything happens for a reason," but that doesn't even cut it anymore. When I told my host mom the other day that I had met Ibou's family and I found out his cousin and I share the same Senegalese name and we decided that we're now sisters.... she said, "Can you imagine what you would have been doing this entire time if you hadn't met Ibou when you first got here?" And I told her that I probably would have been miserable and lonely, and that everything happens for a reason. She said, "You know........ that's God who did that for you." And for the first time in a very long time, I honestly and genuinely agreed that yes, God has helped me a lot on this trip.
That conversation got me thinking about the fact that I totally forgot about being nervous to live in a Muslim-majority country, and that very, very few times during this trip has this country's religion made me feel uncomfortable. In fact, I've grown to like it very much. The call to prayer now seems soothing and beautiful, everyone modestly covers their bodies in brightly colored fabrics, women (for the most part) respect their bodies and in turn, demand respect from the men as well, and everyone thanks God profusely each day for the things that they have. Each "See you tomorrow" is followed by "Inchallah," (God willing) because nobody here takes life for granted and they know (all too well, unfortunately) that God can take it all away in a matter of seconds. It would be pretty difficult to live here and completely deny the fact that there is a God and he does some pretty cool things.
I'm not saying that I'm about to convert to Islam or anything, and of course I still have my doubts and reservations. But the point is, this is an area of extreme personal growth that I had absolutely no idea would be occurring, and that's awesome. Thank God I didn't go to South Africa!!!
Coming from the US, it's pretty hard not to be influenced, even in some small way, by anti-Islam sentiments. That being said, I'm a very open-minded person and I'm definitely alright with people practicing their own religions and doing their own cultural thing. But something inside me was still a little nervous, or maybe even scared, to be so fully-surrounded by this religion. This also stemmed from the fact that before I left, I definitely would not say that I was religious at all, and I would even go as far as to say that I wasn't sure if there really was a God. My predictions about feeling uncomfortable in this religious setting couldn't have been further from the truth.
When I started preparing for this trip, that's when I began to notice a change in my life. I'm the type of person where usually, if something can go wrong, it most certainly will, and then on top of that, it will be way more expensive than I had planned for it to be, and then a chain reaction of bad things that I didn't even know could be potential consequences will ensue. This is how the majority of my life has been, I'm pretty used to it by now, and I fully expected my preparations to go abroad to follow suit.
But they didn't. Every phone call I made, every interview I went to, every favor I asked for-- everything just fell into place exactly as planned. I received a $4500 scholarship, the first scholarship of my life, and then a second scholarship directly from my school quickly followed that one. I went to the pharmacy to get hundreds of dollars worth of prescriptions and vaccines, only to find out that my insurance was going to cover everything except a comparatively small administration fee. I went back two weeks later for a second round of vaccines, and not only were those covered, but the pharmacist informed me that my insurance ended up covering the administration fee as well and I was given a refund. The pharmacy paid me, while I sat there and got $200+ worth of vaccines for free. Not normal. Every day was like this, and it freaked me out, and I started to think that this was all because going to Africa was my calling-- finally, this is what I'm supposed to be doing with my life. (Not like I didn't already know that haha...)
Life is not easy, and not everything in Senegal has been peachy, but the number of happy accidents that have occurred and the fabulous decisions I've made cannot merely be a sequence of coincidences. Usually I lean on the phrase, "Everything happens for a reason," but that doesn't even cut it anymore. When I told my host mom the other day that I had met Ibou's family and I found out his cousin and I share the same Senegalese name and we decided that we're now sisters.... she said, "Can you imagine what you would have been doing this entire time if you hadn't met Ibou when you first got here?" And I told her that I probably would have been miserable and lonely, and that everything happens for a reason. She said, "You know........ that's God who did that for you." And for the first time in a very long time, I honestly and genuinely agreed that yes, God has helped me a lot on this trip.
That conversation got me thinking about the fact that I totally forgot about being nervous to live in a Muslim-majority country, and that very, very few times during this trip has this country's religion made me feel uncomfortable. In fact, I've grown to like it very much. The call to prayer now seems soothing and beautiful, everyone modestly covers their bodies in brightly colored fabrics, women (for the most part) respect their bodies and in turn, demand respect from the men as well, and everyone thanks God profusely each day for the things that they have. Each "See you tomorrow" is followed by "Inchallah," (God willing) because nobody here takes life for granted and they know (all too well, unfortunately) that God can take it all away in a matter of seconds. It would be pretty difficult to live here and completely deny the fact that there is a God and he does some pretty cool things.
I'm not saying that I'm about to convert to Islam or anything, and of course I still have my doubts and reservations. But the point is, this is an area of extreme personal growth that I had absolutely no idea would be occurring, and that's awesome. Thank God I didn't go to South Africa!!!
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