tagged w/ Global Citizen Year
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This is a guest post from Ananda Day, one of the Global Citizen Year fellows. She writes from Senegal.
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 I will be staying in for six months, is just a tad bit different. First, it’s all hustle and bustle. Eleven children (of which three pairs share the same name) divided between two sets of parents in the two parts of the house, a restaurant to run, relatives and friends always coming and going, and cooking and dishes are forever being done. Not quite the same ambiance as my Dad, cat, and I. Then there is the hierarchy that exists. Bali and Awa clean and cook for the house and restaurant, only the women do any chores, older people get more food and respect, and then there’s the fact that while they think of me as part of the family, I’m still separate from it. Growing up with two brothers and a sister, we all did our equal share of chores, whether it was vacuuming or the dishes. When eating, we were given equal shares of food which were not divided by age or sex. This difference in hierarchy has led me to feel as if I’m playing politics at home, for everything I do has a different significance and every American expectation of equality is out of place. Along that line, independence is a very different thing here. No matter what I do, be it going to the bathroom or work, I am always asked what I’m doing, for permission must be granted to do almost anything (not going to the bathroom, thank you very much). Back in America I have a freedom to go almost anywhere, and a Dad who just wants to know if I’m okay, not what I plan to do after showering. All at once I am the most independent that I have ever been, far, far away from everything that I know, and yet the most dependent as I have rules and expectations from a family and culture that are foreign to me. True, I probably couldn’t imagine a more different home. Nevertheless, I still eat breakfast with my ‘dad’ here, enjoy helping to cook, do my own laundry (it just takes a bit more work here), and have the sanctuary of reading (as I am lucky enough to have my own room). Being here for almost two months, I know that I’m not at home yet. It is possible though, so I’m looking forward to having over four months to find out.
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This is a guest post from Gaya Morris, one of the Global Citizen Year fellows. She writes from Sebikotane, Senegal.
When I first entered the backstreets of Sebikotane, a large town just east of Dakar in Senegal, Africa, I saw only a peaceful, culturally vibrant, almost idyllic community - people and houses packed together in a spidery web of sandy streets and family ties. I was struck most by this tight social web; by the way people drifted in and out of each others houses, doing each other's laundry, eating out of each other's bowls, watching each other's televisions; by the way nearly every person I was introduced to in the street turned out to be related to my host family in some way, and so by consequence was introduced as my new uncle or cousin, my second father or mother. The town seemed to be basically one big family and everyone welcomed me in with open arms, lots of laughter, and bowl after bowl of steaming, oily ceebujeen.
And so during the first few weeks I saw only prosperity. People around me always ate well, dressed well, and were always celebrating - baptisms, weddings, holidays. Everyone seemed relaxed and content - no one stressed on in a hurry. Life was centered around the home and the family. Any lack of material amenities I took for simplicity. Who really needs food processors and dish washers and sinks and whole sets of cutlery? Vacuum and showers? These people live in complete dignity with just a few buckets, a spigot and a toilet bowl - and for cooking, some bowls and pots, spoons, knives, a single gas stove and a wooden mortar and pestle. Garden fences made of sticks and rags I saw as signs of resourcefulness, not poverty. The women who are obliged to spend their days selling vegetables and fish in the streets seemed cheerful and proud, calling out respectful greetings to friends as they passed - not at all poor or desperate. The copious piles of trash bordering the paths along the outskirts of the town kept the pigs fat and happy.
These were my first impressions as a newcomer in this maze of sandy streets and people. Now, nearly two months later, I can say without a doubt that a lack of resources, a lack of money, is a reality for the majority of Sebikotane residents. I'm not just talking about the kids who watch me unpack my backpack of interesting possessions and gadgets with envy; the people who dream of moving to America and France to live the luxurious lives they see 'tubabs' (white people) live on TV; people who might not be able to purchase things on a whim, but who live comfortably. These are the people that I, in my GCY homestay, spend most of my time amongst. I'm talking about the greater mass of families who lack the material means to live comfortable, healthy lives, and the education or opportunities with which to improve these lives. Poverty is here, but, as we GCY fellows all agreed discussing our first impressions during our first monthly meeting in Dakar, it is less striking in Senegal than it could be because of the way people take care of each other - the deep traditions of generosity and charity. I actually think it is almost impossible for a child to go hungry in Sebikotane because he will always be welcomed around the bowl in whichever house he might wander into.
But despite the incredible capacity of the Senegalese to make the most of what they have, the lacks are there, and Sebikotane as a whole faces many challenges as it developes and expands - for with the influx of people from Dakar and the abundance of small children, there is not doubt that this town is growing. First and foremost among these challenges, I would say, would be a lack of work and job opportunities and a general lack of education. Most adult males are in and out of work, and those that do have steady jobs are under strain to support their many brothers and cousins who depend on them. Public schools are so overcrowded that its not hard for young students, especially girls to slip through the crack and drop out before their reach middle school; others simply aren't admitted at all due to a lack of physical classroom space.
And its not like problems aren't being addressed. What with NGO's vaccinating infants and raising awareness on diabetes and AIDS, with the government efforts to boost the economy and fund social projects, with women's associations fundraising to plant gardens in schools and tutor the illiterate, the development of Senegal is certainly not being overlooked. Listen to the radio every morning, or turn on the news at night and all you see are government officials, professors, experts and NGO workers presenting their solutions to local and national problems, in slews of fancy, technical French vocabulary. Zoom out and you have expansive, grave problems, each with their prescribed solution, the global issues that we've all heard about: expanding population, desertification threatening an agriculturally based economy, too much dependence on imports and not enough investment or infrastructure, a lack of schools and universities. But zoom in and you see the grains of sand that slip through the cracks: the one child that decides to skip a day of school, the next scrap of plastic tossed onto the pile, the father who spends another day sipping tea under a baobab tree. Spend a month or two living with them, experiencing the intricacies of their daily lives, and you'll see that most of the time people are neither poor nor wealthy, neither hopeful nor desperate, but simply living from one moment to the next - you'll see that the problems and solutions aren't as easily measured or defined. Not in a bad way, just in a real way.
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This is a guest post from Alec Yeh, one of the Global Citizen Year fellows. He writes from rural Senegal.
Q: What are your first impressions?
Things here are incredibly different, even from Dakar [the capital]. Being in the village is just a lot more downtime. Things seem to move at a slower pace, and it isn't a bad thing at all. People here genuinely seem so happy. But the weird thing is, they yearn to immigrate to a western country, where they can hope for a better life. It's interesting that outwardly, they can be so happy, yet also want a better life. Everybody in the village is so incredibly nice. Nothing like Dakar. Dakar has that city feel to it, and you don't get to know as many people, such as your neighbors. Here in the village, people know everybody, and upon my arrival, I already feel incorporated into the community. I stick out like a sore thumb, but nonetheless, they've been nothing but accommodating.
Q: How does your new home compare to where you live in the US?
Well, obviously it's different. You don't have the amenities that you had in the US. But it's not necessarily worse. Somethings may be, but some things are better. For example, bugs fall from my ceiling. That's something that doesn't happen. I have a toilet at home, and a hole here. I have a shower at home, and a bucket here. But nonetheless, here, there's camaraderie. Here, there's this solidarity, this idea of "we're in it all together." That's something I've never, and probably will ever, experience in the US.
Q: What are some of the local issues facing the community you're in?
That's easy. Unemployment. Everybody here wants a job. Yet there are so many young, able bodied men here, that simply can't get a job. People just lounge here. They sit around and make tea and talk. And it's not their fault at all. They're so incredibly bored, and they yearn to do something. But with no jobs, they actually don't have anything to do. I don't think I will ever forget what my host brother said. I asked him "how many times a day to you make and drink attaya [tea]?" He answered, "sometimes three, sometimes ten. Who knows? You know, we come together to make attaya to talk and forget about our problems. We don't have jobs here. There are no jobs. You know, I have my college degree, most of us do."
Q: How are those issues indicative of bigger global challenges or trends?
I think it's indicative in two ways. One, the fact that with globalization, with media, and with kids like me, people in third world countries sees how the other half lives. This gives them to desire, the want, the yearn to try and improve their position. Though they might never do that, it's still there. That idea of wanting better is stronger than ever, which is why there's so much immigration. The second way is that it challenges governments to be creative, and to create jobs and opportunities where you think there could be none. That's what's needed.
Q: How does what happens in this community affect the folks back home in the US? And the other way around - How do lives and decisions in the US affect the community you're in now?
Well the first one for me, is just the fact that they're making such an impact on foreigners. I'm going home, a changed person. And I can't express my gratitude to them. It's something thats invaluable. It's irreplaceable. And I'm hopefully going to go back and do something about it. I think my answer to the second half is in answer number 4. They see how the other half lives. It gives them a new picture of what's out there, and what could be achieved. It may be a bad thing, or it may be great. I don't know. Only time can tell.
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This is a guest post from Laura Keaton, one of the Global Citizen Year fellows. She writes from Guatemala.
My first impression of Guatemala was that the place I was living in was not “rural” as I had expected because everything in the little town in which I live is concrete and cinder block. There’s an internet café, and buses thundering past all the time. Also one thing that struck me the very first night was that they’re much more tolerant of noise here-- there was music blaring until at least 2 am that Saturday. But now I don’t even notice it, so I guess it’s just what they’re used to.
My house here is not really like my home in the US in many ways. Here, there’s no central air, so having a window or door that isn’t perfectly sealed doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. We have no washing machine, so we wash our clothes by hand and line dry them. The weirdest thing to me though, was that they have a TV (with cable, so lucky) and a TV watching area, but no comfy couch to lounge on while watching. They just have plastic chairs. By now though I don’t even notice these physical differences, I consider my house here to be very comfortable.
So that’s my “house”, but my “home” here, my family and the daily activities of the household, is very much like my home in the US, if not more functional. My host-mom is a housewife, and she makes three meals a day for me and the rest of the family, we always have dinner together at 7. She is so thoughtful and has said things to me that my own mother would have. My host-father drives a water truck to fill people’s water tanks and also has land where he grows leeks (which we’ve had in meals and are very good. They get trucked to the US for sale apparently.) I have three brothers who are all in college including one for a business degree, and one who wants to become a heart surgeon. The youngest is 16, the oldest 23, and none of them are married because they want to get good jobs first. I see that as a kind of rare thing here, but I really think its good. They go to church all the time and are always visiting their family who live close by.
In the town I work in, Pastores, one huge problem I see is deforestation. The hills are all but bare of trees, because the public is uneducated about the dangers of deforestation--even though several years ago a tropical storm dumped enough rain on the area to cause a devastating mudslide of the eroded soil. The mothers chop down trees for firewood because it’s their only source of fuel.
In the town I live in, Santo Tomas, Pastores, and Guatemala in general, I see a huge lack of diversification in businesses. In Pastores, there are 8 boot stores in a row on two sides of the street. Every corner Tienda sells exactly the same products, and they are located within feet of each other. It boggles me how anyone can make any money that way!
Clearly deforestation is a factor of global warming. It’s not to say that they don’t care about the environment, for example the “alcalde” or governor of Pastores considers deforestation to be a big issue in the area soit’s not totally unnoticed, but their priorities are just a little different. You can’t live unless you have firewood to cook your food, it’s that simple. But there are more sustainable ways to do it, and that’s what they don’t know about. As far as the lack of diversification goes, I don’t know what global issue that’s indicative of. I know it’s indicative of the relatively poor education system here, and I don’t think it makes for a very strong economy either...
The economy of Guatemala is hugely dependent on that of the US. Just focusing on the aid organizations who function here mainly through donation based funding, they are now seriously struggling, which is a sad thing for the Guatemala when aid organizations who were doing really excellent and empowering work, as was the Reicken Foundation. This foundation was funded by one donor who essentially pulled his funding due to the economic down turn. The Reicken Foundation’s work consisted of creating community libraries and simple community spaces for the people to use a resource in personal and education development. (Guatemala has very few libraries, and of the ones it does have, most are not lending-libraries.) Now the scope and expansion opportunities of their work are much more limited. Just in general, the economic downturn in the US and the world at large have decreased revenues in Guatemala because people aren’t travelling or spending as much. This money really means a lot to the Guatemalan government because most people don’t generally pay taxes so a big chunk of their funding comes from tourism.
As to how what’s going on here affects the US, the most striking thing to me is I guess kind of an inconsequential thing. I have spent a lot of time here visiting my host-family’s family members and lot of them have farms (even my host dad has a small farm) and most of them sell these vegetables in the US. First of all, I don’t think I’ve ever seen lettuce actually growing in the ground before, or eaten oranges straight off the tree-- but I’ve never ever gone hungry. And it seems as though it’s very possible that these were the people growing the food that fed me. Maybe that’s a big stretch, but I just never thought of my food as coming from somewhere other than American soil. Which is so silly.
Oh and another more personal example of how the US connects to Guatemala is through clothes. My host-mom runs a “paca” or a store that sells American clothes out of our house. She goes into Guatemala City to buy huge bags of shoes, and clothes that have been cast-off by the American fashion forward. It’s basically a grab-bag system, you don’t really pick what you buy, you just buy a huge bag and you get what you get. As a person who has always donated my unwanted clothes to GoodWill or something, rather than just throwing them away, I now see where it’s possible that a lot of them have ended up. At the supply store in Guatemala City I saw bags of toys that included a Hannah Montana sing-a-long guitar, and I truly wondered where it came from-- who had bought it and for whom, and how quickly they must have tired of it, since Hannah Montana is still pretty big (I think.). But really, isn’t it kind of amazing to think that the Christmas sweater you wore once, and hated, and then gave away, might now be proudly worn by a child in Guatemala? It doesn’t just disappear-- it all goes somewhere.
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What did you do between high school and college? Work at the mall for the summer? Try to read all of your college books ahead of time? Play your videogames in the air conditioning? Or instead did you go to a developing country and lend your hands and your mind in an unparalleled experience in service and leadership? Yeah I didn’t do that either. But eleven Class of 2009 grads have, embarking on the pilot of Global Citizen Year.
Global Citizen Year is a fellowship program that invites high school seniors to take a “bridge year” before starting college and to serve overseas. From their site: “By providing intensive training and support, we ensure that our Fellows develop an ethic of service, the ability to communicate across languages and cultures, and a deep commitment to becoming agents for social change.” I think this is a really powerful idea. So few Americans travel, and even fewer ever develop a second language, and a program like this can provide a really incredible perspective.
Global Citizen Year (GCY) is just starting up this year and its first round of fellows have recently embarked for Guatemala and Senegal. I had the good fortune to speak with them before they left about documenting their experiences abroad. I invited them to share some of their experiences with us here to the Current News Blog and we’ve got some of their responses back already. I’ll be highlighting them this week: starting with Alec Yeh, Ian Zimmerman and Laura Keaton.
Laura Keaton / Guatemala:
My first impression of Guatemala was that the place I was living in was not “rural” as I had expected because everything in the little town in which I live is concrete and cinder block. There’s an internet café, and buses thundering past all the time. Also one thing that struck me the very first night was that they’re much more tolerant of noise here-- there was music blaring until at least 2 am that Saturday. But now I don’t even notice it, so I guess it’s just what they’re used to.
Alex Yeh / Senegal: Q: What are some of the local issues facing the community your in?
That's easy. Unemployment. Everybody here wants a job. Yet there are so many young, able bodied men here, that simply can't get a job. People just lounge here. They sit around and make tea and talk. And it's not their fault at all. They're so incredibly bored, and they yearn to do something.
Ian Zimmerman / Nebaj:
Guatemala Looking outside of Nebaj into the surrounding communities, one of the biggest problems is malnutrition. Beans, rice, and tortillas are great and all – but they frankly don’t make up a balanced diet. In an attempt to raise awareness to this issue, one of our projects is to begin a vegetable garden with kids at a community center called El Centro Explorativo in La Pista. We hope this project will lead families to start their own vegetable gardens as a means for which to improve the local diet.
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What did you do between high school and college? Work at the mall for the summer? Try to read all of your college books ahead of time? Play your videogames in the air conditioning? Or instead did you go to a developing country and lend your hands and your mind in an unparalleled experience in service and leadership? Yeah I didn’t do that either. But eleven Class of 2009 grads have, embarking on the pilot of Global Citizen Year.
Global Citizen Year is a fellowship program that invites high school seniors to take a “bridge year” before starting college and to serve overseas. From their site: “By providing intensive training and support, we ensure that our Fellows develop an ethic of service, the ability to communicate across languages and cultures, and a deep commitment to becoming agents for social change.” I think this is a really powerful idea. So few Americans travel, and even fewer ever develop a second language, and a program like this can provide a really incredible perspective.
Global Citizen Year (GCY) is just starting up this year and its first round of fellows have recently embarked for Guatemala and Senegal. I had the good fortune to speak with them before they left about documenting their experiences abroad. I invited them to share some of their experiences with us here to the Current News Blog and we’ve got some of their responses back already. I’ll be highlighting them this week: starting with Alec Yeh, Ian Zimmerman and Laura Keaton.
Laura Keaton / Guatemala:
My first impression of Guatemala was that the place I was living in was not “rural” as I had expected because everything in the little town in which I live is concrete and cinder block. There’s an internet café, and buses thundering past all the time. Also one thing that struck me the very first night was that they’re much more tolerant of noise here-- there was music blaring until at least 2 am that Saturday. But now I don’t even notice it, so I guess it’s just what they’re used to.
Alex Yeh / Senegal: Q: What are some of the local issues facing the community your in?
That's easy. Unemployment. Everybody here wants a job. Yet there are so many young, able bodied men here, that simply can't get a job. People just lounge here. They sit around and make tea and talk. And it's not their fault at all. They're so incredibly bored, and they yearn to do something.
Ian Zimmerman / Nebaj:
Guatemala Looking outside of Nebaj into the surrounding communities, one of the biggest problems is malnutrition. Beans, rice, and tortillas are great and all – but they frankly don’t make up a balanced diet. In an attempt to raise awareness to this issue, one of our projects is to begin a vegetable garden with kids at a community center called El Centro Explorativo in La Pista. We hope this project will lead families to start their own vegetable gardens as a means for which to improve the local diet.
NEWS BLOG: http://blogs.current.com/news/2009/12/14/global-citizen-year/
GLOBAL CITIZEN YEAR: http://globalcitizenyear.org
http://globalcitizenyear.org/blog/What did you do between high school and college? Work at the mall for the summer? Try... more
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