Fellow Stories
True gap year stories from Fellows abroad!
Check out the latest blogs from Global Citizen Year Fellows in Brazil, Ecuador, and India!
Category
Class Year
Country
This thing called our world.
Albamarina Nahar
2011-11-28
It really amazes me how the poorest of the world can create these beautiful things, surviving methods that are so valuable and rich of soul. Living in the states I was never blind of the rest of the world. But growing up forgetting my parent roots and forgetting the sacrifices–them, my grandparents. My ancestors have...
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Tabaski Week Recap
Russell Bollag-Miller
2011-11-23
This was the week of the Senegalese holiday Tabaski. At a glance, the week fostered an absurd amount of new experiences for me. Ram slaughtering, wrestling matches, onion farming, Islamic praying, hitchhiking with Moroccan legume salesmen, African dance parties, outrageous fun. Enough cultural exploits for at least five separate blog posts. I’m going to talk...
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My New Skills
Charlotte Benishek
2011-11-23
Before I left for Senegal, I expected to learn most through my apprenticeship. However, much to my surprise, I have gained numerous skills and insights from just participating in everyday life in a rural village in Senegal for a month. Although I haven’t done much formal work for my apprenticeship yet, I acquire new skills...
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Sinchi Aqua Center
Mitchell Mankin
2011-11-22
The pickup truck turns off the wide gravel road from Misahualli and onto a narrower track, carrying you and four members of your new family in the back. Thirty feet above your head, the trees nearly touch. You’re headed into the jungle. Then, to your right appears a half-constructed house, and chickens scatter back towards...
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Power
Michael Winfield
2011-11-22
Never underestimate the things you can do the stars above the sky is underneath your feet, can’t you see You can leave them breathless Only if you try All your mistakes turn into gold this very moment you’re king When you conquer you shall feast too. You can’t tell them what it is Only what...
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Estou Aprendendo A Cozinhar
Sarah Coyne
2011-11-19
A quick excerpt from a typical day in the life of Igatu, Bahia: After spending two hours in Centro Cultural sorting out books and organizing them into their respective genres (Romance, Idiomas, Módulos Pré Vestibular) I head home, starving for some almoço (lunch). I find my host dad Neu working on some home improvement project,...
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Requiem
Andre Olden
2011-11-17
Let me start by saying that I’ve had the displeasure of attending my fair share of funerals, but few things have touched me deeply as an Ecuadorian funeral. Subsequently, I’ve seldom been more mortified by the measures that must be taken to accommodate the departed. On a Tuesday morning the service was to be held...
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Under Her Wing
Molly Owens
2011-11-17
Sometimes I look around and I can’t believe where I am. When I first moved to Zuleta, a small indigenous community in the Andes Mountains, I experienced a shock like nothing I had felt before. I couldn’t imagine how I could live for six more months with a shower that consisted of heating up water...
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A New Approach
Charlotte Benishek
2011-11-16
Four weeks ago I was dropped off in Lèona, energetic, optimistic and above all impatient to begin my apprenticeship. The only problem was the vagueness of my assignment of “working with the Millennium Villages Project.” There is no central office here in Lèona, but the effects of the project are clearly visible – a new...
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Does Social Change Need God?
Michael Ratliff
2011-11-16
It would be naïve to discount the influence of religion on social change. Civil disobedience movements, from Leo Tolstoy’s communes in Russia to Gandhi’s civil disobedience to Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights marches, all shared a strong grounding in religious teachings. And with good reason; the Gospels offer an inspirational example of how to...
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Dance, Tubab, Dance
Emily Hanna
2011-11-15
I will never be able to dance like a Senegalese woman. This rueful and self-defeating axiom runs through my mind over and over, growing steadily more certain the longer my friend – and fellow Fellow – Fatima Ndiaye (Natalie Davidson), her host sister Fatou, and I watch the sabat (drumming-and-dancing ceremony) the inhabitants of our...
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The Calm During the Storm
Joan Hanawi
2011-11-15
I don’t think I fully understood the definition of the word “rainforest” until I moved here. I’ve quickly learned that the rainforest is aptly named because it does, in fact, rain every day. As a Southern California native, my idea of rain is a ten minute drizzle storm that stops traffic and makes the top...
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