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
Jigeen Jambar
Madeleine Balchan
2010-11-29
Suma yaay (my mom), Ndiy, tried to escape to the field without me, but I was ready: lathered in sunscreen and wearing my capris and bandana. Even as Ndiy protested I’d be hungry and tired, I hopped on the crowded carriage at 9AM – a wooden slab laden with ten women and their large buckets...
Read MoreTabaski: In Pictures
Gus Ruchman
2010-11-29
Tabaski celebration in pictures: [slidepress gallery=’gus-ruchman-3′] Note: Move your mouse over each photo to see the captions!
Read MoreTo Be Here is Enough
Tess Langan
2010-11-29
Today I met a new host cousin, who asked me what I was doing here in Senegal. It is a question I am well-versed in answering on American soil– but my gift-wrapped why-gap-year-spiel only comes in English. For a foggy moment it seemed that there was no answer and maybe I should just pack up...
Read MoreEchoes Past and Future
Gus Ruchman
2010-11-27
Dear Grandma and Grandpa, Don’t worry about me. I’m doing more than okay. I know that wherever you are in the limitless beyond you are finding a way to worry while you watch over the family, but you don’t have to. I think about you quite a bit. In fact, I think about you quite...
Read MoreDakar on Five West African Francs a Day
Johannes Raatz
2010-11-22
As I close out the month of October I will try to summarize all that I have done and experienced during my first four weeks in Senegal. My month in Dakar was loaded with cultural excursions, many language challenges and the occasional conversational victory. So, here’s my list: Received around 125 hours of language training...
Read MoreDarkness
Madeleine Balchan
2010-11-22
I’m in the dark. Neither of my two “moms” speak French. My Wolof is improving drastically but I feel I’m always in the darkness that descends on Leona, our village, at eight when the sun sets. A car ran into an electrical pole in Potou, so we were without power for 36 hours. At 9PM...
Read MoreThe silver lining of my inhibitions
Erin Lang
2010-11-21
I’m living in a world I never thought was real. I’m surrounded by things that once were inhibitions in my life. I’m passing people on the street every day that you hear about on the news. I’m sitting on a crowded bus behind the boy having a seizure, next to the father holding rosary beads...
Read MoreVideo: afternoon of soccer in Senegal
Madeleine Balchan
2010-11-17
A Sunday afternoon of soccer that I wanted to share with you guys:
Read MoreCrossing Borders
Kedisha Samuels
2010-11-15
I don’t think that van would have passed a car inspection back in the states. In fact I know it wouldn’t have. Not with the door constantly flying open during the drive. The seats were unsteady and the glass in the window was cracked. The busboy poking me in my back repeatedly urging me to...
Read MoreDarwin’s White Moth
Clara Sekowski
2010-11-12
I am Darwin’s white moth against a forest of soot-covered trees, and I am evolving. Individualism is a strangely defined term, and as I learn three new languages, more and more definitions become difficult to understand. Los Angeles has a tendency to idealize individualism, with an extreme focus on breeding the independent self. To that I...
Read MoreHair! A Barbershop Blog
Gus Ruchman
2010-11-12
So, it was not quite a barbershop. It was more of a decrepit barber-shack on the side of the road, huddled among the other barely-standing, hand-built structures under which people house their livelihoods, selling fruit by the kilo and plastic bags full of sugar to saturate morning coffee and the grotesquely sweet third cup of...
Read MoreWorking Hard or Hardly Working
Clara Sekowski
2010-11-11
My second day here, I was pushed onto the lap of a woman who sat in the front seat of a neon green ambulance. I watched the bumpy drive through the spiderweb of a cracked window, and the seat vibrated so violently that my ears tickled. We drove for about an hour, and it was...
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