2010-10-27
Embarrassingly enough, I am a huge fan of game shows. Given this, you can imagine my excitement when I was sitting in the living room with my siblings last week, doing homework and watching a ridiculously silly comedy show, when a familiar scene ran across the television screen (and it wasn’t the ever-popular Simpsons). It...
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Left, right, left, right… My breath was labored after about four hours of hiking up the steep incline towards that summit that just never came, hovering in front of me like a mirage but never actually becoming reality. Several breaks eased the day along, but it became slowly harder as less and less oxygen made...
Read More2010-10-26
“I think you’ll find that if there’s one word to describe Brazil, it’s dichotomy,” Tony told us. Last Monday, the Brazil fellows visited a neighborhood in Salvador called Massaranduba, where we saw the last remaining palafitas, or water slums. We wound our way down dirt roads, between bare but solid brick homes, and past a...
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The thing I remember most about my first day in Senegal was that I had to sneeze the entire time. Alright. So. Rewind to me walking up to my new home, leaving a trail of sweat, friends, and three Senegalese men who are dragging my bags behind me. They open the front door to my...
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When I learned that I was going to be working with an organization called Dynamiques Femmes (Dynamic Women) with a city wide effort to promote composting and recycling (I thought) only amongst women, I had two thoughts: My first: “YOU MEAN I WON’T BE WORKING ON A FARM?” My second: “why do only women need...
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My heart was beating to the rhythm of the African drums. The floor was wet and slippery because of beads of fallen sweat. The man in front of me was moving his hips and knees in ways I’d never seen before; I tried to mimic his movements. The woman dancing next to him turned around...
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Most days in Senegal the sun shines so brightly that the white pavement blinds me on the way to class. Most days my host mother encourages me to eat, eat, to invite friends over for lunch, for the night. Most days I greet strangers on the street and hear their joyful rejoinder in a chorus...
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