A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending a Global Citizen Year event. With new and old faces, prospective and returning fellows, and many of the people that make Global Citizen Year tick, I felt the close of another circle. This loop, the mark of being one year back from Senegal and…

11 July, 2011

The idiom “good grief” has always seemed a bit oxymoronic to me. How can it be that grief is good in anyways? Perhaps this is why “good grief” is often used as an exclamation expressing something bad that has come along- like rain on a birthday cake outside with candles lit. Good grief, it’s raining!…

23 August, 2010

The phrase that keeps going through my head? It feels like a dream. When I actually say it out loud, I am referencing how surreal it is to be leaving my host family and Senegal – a fact that I have known, but something that was never quite manifest throughout this journey. When I think…

27 April, 2010

Last week I met a Brazilian-Baptist-ex-missionary current NGO worker named Salete. On Friday, Alec and I went along with her and her Brazilian-medical-Baptist missionary friend to the Village of M’Bissaou where she helps out at the local Case de Sante each and every Friday, has a football school with her husband, and aids the village…

10 April, 2010

Dear You, Person reading this, maybe even GCY applicant, Hows life ? Whenever my friends and I talk that’s where we start. Last year at this time, life was centered around school , soccer, and figuring out college . The thought of a gap year started when I was applying for scholarships, and the ones that excited me…

22 March, 2010

Years ago when the French first arrived in Saint Louis du Senegal, male colonists created transient marriages with local women while in country and would return to France, leaving everything, including any relationship title, behind. Going by the name of “mariage à la mode”, these relationships were used by locals to advance themselves through associative…

21 March, 2010

A couple of weeks ago a lot of personally and monetarily valued things were stolen from me. Cameras, phone, favorite shirts, money, and so on. The roughest part by far being the loss of my notebook containing four months of notes and all of the studies that I had completed in Noflaye thus far. The…

26 February, 2010

The morning is still dark as I sit in my Ndiaga Ndiaye on the way to Rufisque. The single light bulb hanging from a failing red wire illuminates me, casting a grand silhouette, maybe four times my size, on the passing scenery. The past few weeks I have been getting a wealth of opinions on…

20 January, 2010

An account from the morning… 8:00 a.m. – Wake up, get ready for the day, head over to our family’s restaurant to go eat my bread and tegga degga (natural, no added hydrogenated oil, peanut butter, yum). 8:30 a.m. – Find out that the bread has, in fact, not already arrived at Mamour’s Boutique, and…

05 January, 2010

This post by Fellow, Ananda Day has been cross-posted from the Current TV News Blog. Home’s a pretty big deal to me, its where I feel safe and comfortable, where all my roots are, where I go to relax, breathe, and just be. From what I can tell my new home here in Senegal, which…

28 December, 2009

There are many different scales by which to measure poverty: less than a dollar a day, being able to provide food, shelter, healthcare, emergency funds, stability, etc. Compared to many places in Senegal, my community is pretty well off in that the majority of the population can afford at least their food and house, which…

19 December, 2009

Well to say the least, chickens are no big deal. I mean really, they are small, equivalent to a soccer ball. You could even kick them if you really wanted to. Rams are really not small, and I’m sure that if you kicked one, that it would kick you back, with sure damage being done….

11 December, 2009

When I first arrived in my new family, all I had to go off of were first impressions. In my head I tried to decide how I would describe these people who I would live with for the next six months, both to myself and to others. So that is what I did, I described…

06 December, 2009

Up until this point it’s been all about turtles. French turtle vocabulary, cleaning, feeding, and picking up after turtles, turtle facts (Sulcatar turtles can grow up to 100 kilos and 150 years old), and even a turtle shirt with the eleven specials of Senegalese turtles on it. This past week I finally saw more than…

24 November, 2009

The book Heat by Bill Buford is about his culinary education as he runs through an intense number of first class culinary jobs. He was first an understudy at Mario Batali’s Babbo, then a pasta student in Italy, and finally shadowing arguably the most famous butcher in the word, Dario Cecchini. This past Saturday I…

23 November, 2009

By all means today should not have been an encouraging day. I got to work and did an hour and fifty minutes worth of raking turtle feces, feed, and pathways. I then walked home and commenced to do three hours worth of hand washing laundry. It was incredibly hot and it didn’t help that every…

17 November, 2009

16 November, 2009

Everywhere I go I meet people along with their expectations. With one exception, I am always greeted with the French “Ca Va” instead of the ritual “Assalam Alekum”. I have no qualms with being viewed French, as most toubabs here are. Where my uneasiness comes in is how along with the Ca Va comes the…

10 November, 2009

I sat watching baby Muhammad run (or waddle depending on your definition) across the courtyard and realized that while we are definitely opposites in almost every aspect, (I do no wake him up at ridiculous times in the morning each and every day); at this moment we are more alike than we ever will be….

10 November, 2009

Sitting here listening to Shania Twain serenading me from the television – in Dakar, in Senegal, on my last day of my first month – I cannot help but notice an odd juxtaposition. All at once it feels like I have been here the longest time, yet it also feels like I have only been…

02 November, 2009

Two days ago, while struggling to fall asleep (due to the hilarious wolof jokes being told outside my window by ten Senegalese men), I pulled out a stack of Visual Explorer cards, from the Center for Creative Leadership, that I had gotten during training. Visual Explorer is basically a stack of really nice photographs that…

26 October, 2009

19 October, 2009

Right now the rain continues to pound the tin over my room. Since last night the rain has been torrential, pouring over every crevice, dripping from each edge, and slowly seeping over every surface. To say the least, it was quite the opposite of my experience yesterday. Saturday began like every other day this week-…

18 October, 2009

Oh la la,where in the world is my mind? Last week the we had our first french lesson here, and Hilary and I are with Madame Dianaba (Jana-baa). Before the lesson we had to take an exam to find out which class we would end up in and the exam consisted of a speaking conversation with…

16 October, 2009

It rips through the silence, and all that is left, is all that I hide.-Beirut Looking at the majority of my days, there are usually some things that go wrong, but every day seems to turn out at least a little bit great. Its funny though how sometimes, even when so many things go right,…

16 October, 2009

Here we were-Victoria, Alec, Matt, Hilary, and I (Gaya is still getting better so Rachel took her home in a car)- standing on the corner leading away from the zoo in the twilight right before the black of night. Behind us lat the cement walls with their murals of lions, tigers, and….. monkeys (no bears,…

11 October, 2009

Pictures of you, pictures of me, hung up on the wall for the world to see. -The Last Goodnight   The courtyard in my house is roughly a 12/12 square with an extra 4×6 rectangle added onto it. From me at 8 o’clock I have the grey concrete hallway that leads to my room and…

10 October, 2009

Under the boardwalk, out of the sun Under the boardwalk, we’ll be havin’ some fun, Under the boardwalk, we’ll be fallin in love. As the sun beat down today, lifting moisture into the air and slowly boiling us, Gaya, Matt, our guide Adama, and I walked along the boardwalks of Dakar… and by that I…

07 October, 2009

October 3, 5pm. By the way, the theme song for this year’s GCY fellows was decidedly Cat Stevens’ Wild World. Sweet sweet song. Hmms. So a quick recap of the world as is, and has been for about a day. I got a red hard cover moleskin in the airport because I think I’ll run…

03 October, 2009

He say “I know you, you know me” One thing I can tell you is you got to be free Come together right now over me -The Beatles Last Saturday, around 4pm Pacific Standard Time, the Founding Fellows of Global Citizen Year came together. Drawn from opposite sides of America, we were all a motley…

28 September, 2009

When the road gets dark And you can no longer see Have a little faith in me. -John Hiatt When you read the headlines in today’s newspapers and websites, anything but the feeling of faith is conjured up. Disgust, anger, sadness, shock, fear, even humor, resonate everywhere, but faith almost never appears. What about the non-stop…

01 September, 2009

Who said sailing is fine? Leaving behind all the faces that I might replace if I tried on that long ride, looking deep inside but I don’t want to look so deep inside yet. -Okkervil For me, realization is the coast of the sea. As you leave the water to go back to the beach…

25 August, 2009

I’m waiting for my moment to come, I’m waiting for the movie to begin, I’m waiting for a revelation, I’m waiting for someone to count me in. -Keane Before Global Citizen Year I was waiting for something more… more than just the expected path. Graduate high school, go to college, graduate college, fall in love,…

10 August, 2009

Ever wonder if why you’re alive is because you were born on the winning team? Ever looked at the TV and thought about how this is really happening? Ever said something stupid with no idea how powerful those words would be? Oh, I don’t know what to say, oh, whose god would want it this way? –…

28 July, 2009

Just listed on the College Board website there are over 600 profiled majors, and that doesn’t even cover the plurality of subjects being created this very moment. In today’s day and age the college & career processes are quickly being expedited. I clearly remember sitting in my homeroom during sixth grade planning out the next…

23 July, 2009