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
A Proud American
Gus Ruchman
2011-04-04
Turn on your favorite news network. Whether you watch CNN, Fox, The Daily Show, or WalfTV, the images are largely the same. The world is falling apart at the seams, and anti-American sentiment seems as high as ever. Yet here in Senegal I have had an optimistic encounter with my national identity. I am always...
Read MoreShorts
Madeleine Balchan
2011-04-04
My friend told me I have 2 faces, “sometimes you’re white, sometimes you’re red.” The Poussal or Peujot is a public transportation pickup with a canopy to hold produce and more people. Today there were a few sheep lying peacefully on top of the canopy with their legs tied – I didn’t even know they...
Read MoreAdmitting
Emily Hess
2011-04-04
As I carefully write out the date on the top of the blackboard on a cool afternoon, kids are filing in, shaking my hand and greeting me with “good afternoon” and “how are you, today?” and the like. And as the usual bustle of murmurs and laughter dies down, I step back. I look at...
Read MoreTick Tock
Clara Sekowski
2011-04-04
My first couple weeks in Senegal, I woke up at exactly seven o’clock and I didn’t know why. I hadn’t set my alarm, and I certainly wasn’t the type to wake up without one. On a Monday, I woke up late. My host-mother explained to me that, every morning at seven am., my host-sister Deyfama...
Read MoreStrangers With Candy
Gus Ruchman
2011-03-28
It was 1:30 in the afternoon, and the sun was broiling the earth beneath my feet. Sweat ran down my face and began to soak through my shirt. I could smell the swarming heat. “Why are you laughing?” asked a bewildered co-worker as we walked through the streets of Sangalkam. “It is difficult to explain,”...
Read MoreUnplanned Parenthood
Tess Langan
2011-03-28
I came to Senegal with high hopes of embarking out on my own and weaning myself off the comfortable interdependence of my family. There were my dreams and then, there was the reality. I am now an eighteen –year old, self-defined feminist …with a two-year child. Alaine and I walk hand in hand to school...
Read MoreSongs From My Stomach
Gus Ruchman
2011-03-25
At the Senegal Fellows’ most recent monthly meet-up in Dakar we had an entertaining art competition in which we each tried to represent, through a medium of our choosing and 30 minutes of preparation, our feelings towards Senegalese cuisine. Johannes, a brilliant Fellow stationed in the Millennium Village Project in Leona, won for his unique...
Read MoreNancy’s Skin
Michaela Kobsa Mark
2011-03-24
“If you could, would you be white?” I asked my grandmother, Nancy. I like getting reactions out of her and I was expecting a very strong reproach. “Wow de” she answered, her eyes on me. The affirmative makes my jaw drop in shock. “Quoi?!” Why? “Look at this..” I think she is picking at invisible...
Read MoreBrave New World
Naomi Wright
2011-03-24
I’ve read many books over these past few months, including Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Madeleine Balchan, another GCY Fellow, had read the same book in high school, the following is an excerpt from a discussion we had about the parallels between the book and our GCY experience. Naomi: Brave New World is set in...
Read MoreFirst Weeks in Dakar
Michaela Kobsa Mark
2011-03-24
A post written in October… Had someone given me the chance to return to California today, I may have taken the person up on her or his offer. There were a few things I could depend on today: the fact that I would be going to school, the intensive heat, and my body’s capability of...
Read MoreOld Posts
Michaela Kobsa Mark
2011-03-23
A post written in October… “Life is not in the pulse, but in the heart” “La vie n’est pas dans le poulse, mais dans le Coeur” Today, I was nervous for the first time since I began my GCY experience. This feeling of uncertainty hit me as I sat at a table in ACI Baobab...
Read MoreFutures
Michaela Kobsa Mark
2011-03-23
Aïsha, a little girl who attends the school across the street, is not part of my family, but as she lives in the next village over she eats lunch with us on school days. She is a reticent pair of open eyes that stares unabashedly and eerily never seems to blink. Sometimes I try to...
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