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
Who’s Talking With Whom? Communication and Public Health in Senegal
Talia Katz
2013-03-07
Ask the Senegalese what the national language of their country is and the responses are often mixed. While the government and all reliable media sources assert with black and white precision that it is French, a little grassroots observation displays something quite different. While French may be the national language of Senegal, the amount of...
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Precious Moments
Claire Amsden
2013-03-07
This is a journal entry that morphed into a blog with some additions and editing. I like it because it shows how important the family integration part of this experience is to me. Because I didn’t decide to do this to “save the world” or even to make a difference in a village. Don’t get...
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Sounds of Mako
Kevin Do
2013-03-07
I hear the roosters every morning I hear the donkeys as they bray I hear my family shooing All the animals away I hear the sounds the children make I hear them shout with joy as they play I hear them shriek from the beatings they take But that’s the Senegalese way I...
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On the Life of a Poor Person
Kevin Do
2013-03-06
Picture the following life: A person living in a village in Africa. You already picture some poor starving child probably. Let me continue the description. This person is living in a village with no electricity or running water. If he wants water, he has to go to the village pump and fill a bucket. Of...
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On My Objective in Senegal
Kevin Do
2013-03-06
My objective, intention, goal, expectation, whatever you want to call it, for this whole bridge year experience was to find myself. Sounds like a tough task, considering that people are always discovering new things about themselves right? It’s the experiences we go through that help us discover ourselves. And believe me, being here has given...
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Ibrahim
Kevin Do
2013-03-06
I was on a high. Just coming back from the first training seminar and seeing everyone again was awesome. Spending Thanksgiving on the beach and seeing how much we’ve changed only 7 weeks in. Sitting on the bus back I remember thinking, “Okay, now I’m a quarter of the way through. Time to kick thing...
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Becoming a Callous
Kevin Do
2013-03-06
I always say that you can make anything at all a metaphor for life. So I challenged myself to actually do it. This whole experience is turning me into a callus. What do I mean? Well first of all, what is a callus? It is a buildup of dead skin on a certain part of...
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My Love-Hate Relationship with Senegal
Aissatou Barrie-Rose
2013-03-06
In the past few months, Senegal and I have developed a very complex relationship. At moments I love everything about being here, and other times I find myself utterly confused as to why I chose to spend 8 months in a place where nothing seems to make any sense to me. With this is mind,...
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And We Danced…
Aissatou Barrie-Rose
2013-03-06
In Senegal, everyone loves to dance—all the time, and everywhere. Here’s a little taste of all the dancing you’ve been missing.
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The Start of an Adventure
Marisa Comeau-Kerege
2013-03-04
Sorry this took so long to upload but here is a link to my video of the first month and a half of my Global Citizen Year. Enjoy!
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A Senegalese Snapshot
Emily Ford
2013-02-28
In December I began writing a blog about the roles of Senegalese men, a highly critical piece condemning their absence and consequent effect within the family. Yet during the drafting process, a friend in the village confided in me he would no longer be able to come home from school because he could not afford the transportation fare (the...
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Mother and Child
Mai Lee
2013-02-27
A mother and her child. They epitomize intimacy in our society. But what regardless of what they symbolize, our modern world has built barriers between this mother-child relationship. Not brick walls nor iron gates, but baby carriages and and diapers have created barricades in the relationship. In Senegal, the women here have not yet abandoned...
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