Fellow Stories
True gap year stories from Fellows abroad!
Check out the latest blogs from Global Citizen Year Fellows in Brazil, Ecuador, and India!
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Class Year
Country
The art of opening your heart
Jahshana Olivierre
2013-12-30
The stars illuminated the noir sky,the crashing waves became a calming melody – it was the night of November 28th one day before what would make a full three months since I set foot in Senegal and here I was in Toubab Dialaw gathered around familiar faces and warm spirits reflecting on it all. Now that I look back on it –...
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My Mother Away from Home
Aly Counsell
2013-12-30
October 7, 2013 My host mom in Dakar, Soda Diop Diallo, is an incredibly nurturing woman. Though she and my host dad never had any children of their own, they have been hosting foreign students (most, if not all, Americans) for the past ten years. By the way she plays with and loves her nieces and nephews, it’s clear...
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A Single Road
Aly Counsell
2013-12-30
September 19, 2013 In the US, my commute to school consisted of one mile of driving through neighborhoods and seventeen miles of driving on the freeway. In those seventeen miles, I would whiz through three different cities, passing countless numbers of houses, people, and businesses, all of diverse backgrounds. Yet of those seventeen miles, all I ever saw were...
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Simply Being
Allie McKinney
2013-12-13
Last week I met a 21 year old Senegalese guy named Aziz. Aziz is studying English at the University of Dakar and wanted to practice with a native English speaker, so my Aunt Bebe introduced us. I was immediately impressed with his fluency; Aziz kept up with my pace, and hardly ever asked me to repeat myself. I was...
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Rambling Update from the Field
Mouna Algahaithi
2013-12-05
Written on October 22, 2013 I just spent the last 3 hours scrubbing my clothes. Laundry is an extremely tedious task in the rest of the world. Spread across the sand of my backyard were three buckets. The first one was for washing, the second one was for scrubbing with a bar of soap, and...
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Adunna, dafa graw
Mouna Algahaithi
2013-12-04
Wolof proverb: Adunna, dafa graw. Meaning: Life, it is difficult. “Like the ocean, on some nights, the tides come in soft and slowly, and life is without problems, and all is fine, and a few nights later, huge, dangerous tides roar, and your life has many problems, and all you can do is wonder where...
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How Justin Bieber May Have Saved Me from Despondency
Rachel Teevens
2013-11-23
For the past six weeks I’ve been living in Tivaouane and its safe to say I’ve had some extreme ups and down. One minute I’m having fun with host family playing, dancing, laughing, then the next minute I’m standing face to face with an angry sheep who’s guarding the bathroom door & refusing to allow...
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Heartbeats
Shakhi Begum
2013-11-20
The concept of having my own children ever since I started understanding life terrified me immensely. This is why I decided to adopt kids when I would settle down in life with everything. It’s a really weird coincidence that my apprenticeship is placed in Maternite Centre de Soins, a maternity health post here in Ndianda....
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Une Lettre pour Mon Ami
Mouna Algahaithi
2013-11-18
Written on October 2, 2013 Dear Friend, I know you’ve been asking me for an update, so here it is. The anxiety is deepening. By the end of this week, I’ll be officially moved to my house in Mboro, which is on the coast of northern Senegal, about 2 hours from Dakar. I...
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A long awaited update on my life in Senegal
Lillian Wells
2013-11-15
There is no real way to even come close to describing every facet of my experience in Senegal thus far, so I will just say that I’ve never felt more alive than I have felt in these last couple months. Since my arrival in Dakar many weeks ago, I have experienced the highest of highs and...
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Expectations to Revelations
Samuel Normington
2013-11-12
Ignorance has a funny way of working itself into our lives until it is so tightly knit that the unraveling of it seems wrong and impossible. As do expectations, and the saying “expect the unexpected” doesn’t quite cover it all. The hardest thing is to prepare for the obvious, to be ready for something so...
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Only Time Will Tell
Samuel Normington
2013-10-29
Fair warning: This is a tad graphic, sorry. Life is a very powerful force. I have never seen anything more than an insect have to combat death as the life escapes from its grasp. And although sometimes even seeing a spider die slowly can be sad to watch, it still doesn’t seem to hold much...
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