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!!!