Reflection...

It’s this time of the transition process where one gets trapped between two worlds, two families, two languages, two life styles. Sentiments change with the hours. Reflection is unavoidable.

Things I’ve come to love:
- Hibiscus juice, or more commonly known as Bissap. Red, sweet, makes mouth happy;
- Welcoming everyone every time you or they walk into the room, people are important;
- Knowing that I can drop in on anybody at anytime and its never a problem, people are important;
- Cold showers, it’s hot;
- Using the brown crayon to color my friends;
- Family meals, everyone waits for everyone to arrive and we all eat lunch and dinner together;
- People who walk meter after meter w/ you just to make sure you arrive;
- Drums morning, noon and night;
- Coffee sellers on the street. They push little red Nescafe carts around so that you can have coffee any time day or night and for only 50cfa (less than 1USD);
- Peanuts- sugar or roasted;
- Fridays. Unlike the US with its ‘casual Fridays’ in Senegal, Friday is the day to sport your best wears. Its not ‘church clothes’ but ‘mosque clothes.’ The streets are filled with color!;
- My host brothers;
- The ability and true freedom to talk about religion in all parts of daily life. The co-existence of religions;
- Mangos…after every meal;
- Reading novels in French and discovering new vocab;
- The OCEAN!! The waves! (the salt I’m still working on loving…)
- Mint tea that takes hours upon hours to make and serve;

Things I won’t mind leaving behind:
§ Taxi men, Honking taxis, Negotiating prices with taxi drivers;
§ Expensive fresh fruit;
§ Palm oil or oil in every meal…fried food, ughhh!
§ Cockroaches;
§ Fish bones;
§ Slaughtered goat parts in the sand/street;
§ How most Senegalese don’t use toilet paper but a sort of water cleansing system that leaves the toilet seat constantly wet;
§ Begging children;
§ Garbage in the street;
§ Hand washed, stretched out and sun faded clothes;
§ Construction materials that take up the entire sidewalk for weeks at a time and force you to walk close to annoying taxis;

Some things I wish I could change:
§ The idea that I NEED a husband;
§ The conviction that all white people are rich;
§ Literacy rates and access to education, especially for girls;
§ The number of hours I had to spend in the physical classroom that took away from the life classroom;
§ Complacency or the acceptance of certain things without proactive efforts that could be sooo simple to make things work any better;

Things I wish I could do differently:…I don’t go there, everything happens for a reason.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. -Mark Twain