Cameron

Na nga def ? That means, “How’s it going?” in Wolof, which is the main language spoken in Senegal, where I just spent two weeks. It was probably the most amazing, surreal, and intense two weeks of my life, and it is hard to believe it is over. I went with ten other students in my class and one of my faculty members, Terry Setter, and we stayed with a very famous Senegalese drummer named Thione Diop (pronounced “Chown Jyop”), in his house that is right off the beach in the suburbs of Dakar. Thione and all his friends and family are the nicest warmest people, and made us feel very safe and welcome, while at the same time fully immersing us into their culture.

We did a lot of drumming and dancing, working with Thione and his friends who also were famous performers in Senegal. While the drumming lessons were great (we all had our own brand new djembes to practice with while we were there) and the dancing was fantastic (I had never seen dancers with such incredible moves and energy), many of my favorite moments came from the really simple moments when I truly felt presence in another country.

There was one moment when I was watching some local boys practice wrestling on the beach from behind an archway on Thione’s mom’s patio, when suddenly seven or eight little children start running along behind the wrestlers all in a line all rolling tires in front of them and laughing. It was like a scene from a movie, I swear.

Another day we were eating lunch in the sitting room in Thione’s mom’s house, and a goat just ran in through the open patio door and came a few inches from ramming right into Thione, when his friend Abdoulaye caught the goat by his hind leg and steered him out of the house like a vacuum cleaner. It was ridiculous. The goats were omnipresent throughout the trip. We even witnessed Thione sacrifice a goat as a way to cleanse his house of all bad spirits.

It was great just being able to watch the locals playing soccer on the sand (They are so freaking good!) and taking rides in these colorfully painted rickety sketchy buses called “Supers” (a back wheel fell off of one as we were driving to a concert in the middle of nowhere), and eating the delicious food and watching the sunset and moon rise and become full. It is a really beautiful place that has a charm all its own, and it was ceaselessly interesting to watch the struggle between new and old, and the blending of traditional culture and modern western influence. I saw factory workers walking down roads alongside a man in a horse drawn carriage. I saw beautiful women dressed in bright full length African outfits with a matching head scarf walking next to beautiful women dressed like they were about to step into a nightclub in New York City. I saw goats standing on parked cars. And while there were great new paved roads and public transit and banks and hospitals, there was also extreme poverty and trash everywhere and suffocating air pollution.

There really is no way to sum up all of my experiences from the past two weeks. I will post some pictures, but really, so much happened and I really was just a sponge soaking in all the culture and the sights and sounds and smells and tastes, and what I have written here is just a glimpse at what turned out to be the most incredible two week journey I could have ever hoped for. There truly could not have been a better way to see Africa.

As this trip pretty much ends the quarter for me, I honestly cannot imagine ever having a better freshman year.