Dindefelo, Reflections: Part I
11.05.09
I really enjoyed my rural visit. It was a good experience to stay with a Peace Corps Volunteer. Daniel has been in Senegal for over a year and a half. He leaves at the end of March. He was honest and sincere about everything we asked him. I was able to spend the week really thinking about my time here. Despite how much down time I have in Dakar, I hadn’t spent time thinking about my experience as a whole. Being at the source of the waterfall that Thursday morning, it all just kind of rushed to me.
I don’t like thinking that I change. I know I do change and I know things change me, but I don’t like thinking about it. Sitting at the waterfall that morning, I admitted to myself for the first time that this experience I have now—being in Senegal—has changed my life. That isn’t to say that I’m drastically different, or even that I’m noticeably different. It’s just that I know that had I stayed at Wellesley this semester, or had I studied abroad in France (like I had come into college thinking), I wouldn’t be the same person. I just feel that I’ve grown so much here. And yes, I would have grown at Wellesley and I would have grown had I studied elsewhere, but it would have been different. I would have been different. I don’t know how to explain it at all. But that morning, sitting on the ledge with Kate and Ellen, I said to them, “Fuck, guys. We’re in Senegal.” It just hit me how different the day I was having was from the day everybody else was having back home. It hit me how incredibly lucky I was to have the experience I was having. And how nobody outside the 50 other students on the program would fully understand my four months here.
People are going to ask me how my study abroad experience was. People are going to ask me about Senegal, about Africa. People have asked me these things on Skype and through emails. My answers are brief now—vague. But when I get back to the states, I’m going to see people in person. They’re going to expect real answers. What the fuck am I going to say?
