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
Home
Rayla Freeman
2014-12-23
Home. “Everyone in the world was programmed by the place they were born, hemmed in by their beliefs, but you had to at least try to grow your own brain. Otherwise, you might as well be living on a reservation, worshipping a bunch of bogus gods.” – Scott Westerfield, Pretties. I grew up in funny...
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Learning To Let Go
Rabi Ibrahim
2014-12-20
I have been very late with uploading blogs so I want to firstly apologize to those who have been waiting for an update from me. So much has happened between August and now that I myself do know how to decipher the different, completely opposite , emotions that sometimes intertwine at the same moment. I...
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Rabi Ibrahim
2014-12-20
I have been very late with uploading blogs so I want to firstly apologize to those who have been waiting for an update from me. So much has happened between August and now that I myself do know how to decipher the different, completely opposite , emotions that sometimes intertwine at the same moment. I...
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Just Breathe
Rachel Schrattenholzer
2014-12-17
October 28, 2014 I wake to hear the crickets still softly chirping, donkeys wailing in the distance, and horse carts galloping by the compound. It’s 7:00am, when people are working in the fields, taking advantage of what’s left of the coolness of the night, and my brothers are taking the horses and sheep out by...
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The Long Road Ahead
Andrea Snyder
2014-12-17
Directed to my fellow Fellows: I’ve been contemplating whether or not I should post this but I finally decided that I would be limiting my readers from a very important part of my experience if I didn’t. ___________________________________________________________________________________________ August 30, 2014 I was waiting until I had felt pens to write in this journal, pretty ironic...
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In Dependence
Elizabeth Schmidt
2014-12-12
The following is an excerpt from my college essay, finalized on October 30th: “When I arrived, I could barely speak, and I still cannot cook or tie my wrap-skirt without help. Nothing has been harder than loneliness and helplessness as I struggle to communicate in French or Wolof or when my mom’s friends laugh after...
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This Exists Too
Alice Brower
2014-12-10
When CNN ran the headline “Muslims: We’re not all extremists” I was incredulous. “How is that news?!” I said to my friend Rachel who’s furrowed brow and crinkled nose betrayed the same confusion I felt. She replied “that’s like a headline saying Cats: We’re not all female.” When I try to carry in water for...
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Washing the Day Away
Kyra Halpenny
2014-12-09
Here in Ndande, showers are a fickle thing. For starters if you want to have an ‘actual’ shower with water pressure you must to wake up between 5:30 and 6:45 in the morning. After 6:55 almost everyone in Ndande is using their faucets and spigots – if not for filling the large water barrels –...
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Functionality
Kyra Halpenny
2014-12-09
Dakar, Senegal – September 29, 2014 Something another Fellow said during In-Country Orientation has stuck with me. It was while we were riding snugly fit in a taxi, driving down the multi-lane highway that runs along the beaches of Dakar into downtown. We passed another taxi – not an uncommon thing, however, it looked incredibly...
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The Watermelon Complex
Kyra Halpenny
2014-12-09
Ndande, Senegal – October 20, 2014 A note to all those who love watermelon: Fruit here is a luxury, so when it is available it is cheap in the beginning, but as the season comes to an end, the prices increase, as I saw happen with the mangoes our first month in Dakar. Here in...
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Define
Grace Mannix
2014-12-09
Hey, Mom and Dad? There’s this playground I’ve always wanted to go to. It’s a bit farther away than the one we’re used to and I’m not really sure how to get there or if it has the swings, and I don’t know if the other kids there will be nice, or if I should...
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Au Sénégal, Sans Langue: Memoirs of a Bridge Year
Maylin Enamorado
2014-12-05
I. I’m seeing it this way now: Tough Times and Tough People are two drunk old men in a back alley somewhere in the Bronx. The two stand shoulder to shoulder, comparing height and build; they’re almost exactly the same in both. Annoyed, they pull two crates from behind a nearby recycling bin. Spectators begin...
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