Yes I graduated high school… yes I’m on a gap year… and yes I’m going back to high school, this time as a junior! Because I am a gap year student, I get to go to Cours Sacre Cœur, a local lycée that follows a traditional Senegalese- French curriculum. I am in Première (the equivalent of being a junior) because they tend to be less stressed than the Terminale (senior) kids who are super focused on their preparation for the French Baccalauréat exam (which, like the SAT, determines future opportunities, but unlike the SAT, is usually only taken once).

I thought it would be interesting if I were to document the beginning of my time at Sacre Coeur, so I wrote a few entries before school started and then couple after. It has now been a month since school started and I am super excited to share my experiences!

Wednesday October 2, 2019

School starts tomorrow and I know nothing about what it will bring. And when I say nothing I mean absolutely nothing! In the US, I would have already gotten my schedule (and would have had it for a month), preseason would have already finished so I would have already seen many of my friends and met any new people, some clubs would have begun and we would have had some meetings, and I would have an abundant amount of clothes for school and supplies for classes. My experience here has been quite the opposite to say the least! Senegal is very laid back. Because of this, everything ends up having to be very last minute. Will (the other gap year student on program with me) and I raced around today after being told at lunch that we need to get our measurements for our uniforms (which we apparently need to wear or we can’t get into school) and passport photos (we still don’t know why we need them). I was at a naming ceremony all day so I had to frantically run around in the evening to get it all done in time!

On a positive note, I know three things.

1. Where my school is.

2. It starts on October 3 (tomorrow).

3. It starts at 8, ends at 5, and has a lunch break somewhere in between.

This leaves a lot of things I don’t know!

What I don’t know:

1. How I’m getting to school. I was told by my host mom that she wants me to take the bus. I don’t know if it’s a school bus or if I have to figure out a bus route. I also haven’t heard anything further about it so chances are I’ll just end up walking.

2. What to wear. We got the measurements for the uniform today but where to find the finished product is a mystery that I will have to figure out tomorrow morning!

3. My classes. I don’t know my classes. And to make it even better, the school doesn’t know my classes either because I haven’t told them which track (S1, S2, L1, or L2) I want to be in. I assume we are going to get that information figured out tomorrow, but if all 4,000 kids at my school are in the same position, I think I might be waiting for a while.

4. What to bring. I don’t have any school supplies because I am supposed to go with our local coordinator to get them, but we don’t know what I need yet. I guess I’ll be showing up with a pen and piece of scrap paper!

5. Where I am going once I get to school. Usually schools in the US have some sort of orientation to find where classes, officies etc are, but the most I have done is walk by the place. My plan at the moment is to just find someone who looks important and hope they can help me get where I am supposed to be.

6. What I’ll be doing at lunch. I am pretty sure we have a 2 hour lunch period (1-3), but I don’t know anybody there or what I am supposed to do with all that time. I also have yet to meet anyone going to Sacre Cœur (other than Will), so one of my first priorities will be finding friends.

It is strange because if this were to happen in the US I know I would be absolutely freaking out, but I have been here for long enough to know this is normal and that everything will work out. I am a bit nervous for tomorrow but surprisingly not stressed. I just hope everything goes well.

Thursday October 3, 2019

I stand corrected. I know two things for sure.

1. Where my school is.

2. It starts at 8, ends at 5, and we have a lunch break somewhere in between.

We got an email and text last night from our local coordinator telling us that school has been pushed back for us until Monday. There was no real reasoning except the principal didn’t want us to come in. We did find out that the school chose to put both Will and I in S2, which from what I’ve been told is the science track that focuses more on biology and chemistry which differs from S1, which focuses more on physics and math.

Monday October 7, 2019

Wow. What a day! I think it will be best if I organize my thoughts and break my day into two parts: La Première et La Deuxième.

La Première: I leave my house at around 7:15 this morning (my walk takes about 25 min) and I’m feeling good. I’m walking and it’s a pretty nice morning for Senegal standards (aka I am not sweating after taking two steps, I just have a light glaze). During my walk I approach a roundabout and I start to go around. Yesterday it rained quite hard and because road infrastructure is not the best here, the road was almost completely covered in water. Naturally, I begin to walk around the water. Turns out that was a mistake! I take a step into some mud that looks thin, but no… it was at least a foot deep and very wet, so my entire ankle and (white!) shoe is just covered. I don’t really know what to do, but I do know I need to clean it off. I go over to a big puddle off to the side of the road and begin to clean my shoe. Mind you, this roundabout is very crowded and everybody in their cars is staring at me while I struggle. Thankfully some cleaning women at a nearby building call me over and unlock a water spout for me to use. I get the first layer of mud off, but now I have one white shoe and one brown, soggy shoe. At this point all I can do is laugh because what the heck.

So I finally make it to school. Now is a good time to mention that I got my uniform yesterday, but the shirt is so tight that I can’t button it up (there was supposed to be a tailor at Sacre Cœur to help before school so I wasn’t worried). So, I have my button up wide open showing my undershirt. I also realize while looking around that I am the only one wearing a skirt. In the midst of feeling very out of place, I remember I also have no clue where I am going. So just imagine: here is this white girl (the only one to be seen for miles), with a muddy, soggy shoe, abnormal skirt, sweaty, tight, unbuttoned shirt, going around asking people for directions in broken French. Definitely not one of my best moments!

I attempt to ask two girls that seem nice where I am supposed to go, but as I ask my question (“Where is Madame Santos’ office?”) they give me a weird look and say they don’t know. I’m starting to worry that I completely made up her name. I mean how could they not know who Madame Santos is? She’s the principal! I end up following a crowd of kids that look around my age and find a list with a whole bunch of names on it and I actually find mine. It tells me that I’m in S2C. Suddenly Will pops up and shows me where our class is. I’m thankful, but I have to leave him because I need to ask Madame Santos where this tailor is so that I can get a shirt that fits. When I finally find her, I ask her if there is a tailor and she just looks at me and says “c’est pas grave” (it’s not important). Not the answer to my question but it was the only answer I was getting so I ended up just spending the day with my shirt wide open. *Note from a month later: I still don’t know where the tailor is or if there even is one.*

So I try and go to my class, but nobody is there, not even Will. I track down a man who seems like he knows what he’s doing and he says I need to go down the stairs to the courtyard (he had to repeat this three times before I turned my head and see what he meant). This was honestly the most awkward part of the day. All the students are lined up facing the building I am in (which has outdoor hallways) and everybody is watching me, clearly very confused, walk across the hall as I try to make my way down the stairs. Finally I make it to my line (thank god for Will being in my class and for being white because I honestly wouldn’t have had any clue where to go otherwise) and we stand there and say a morning prayer, which is interesting because although it’s a catholic school it seems like most people there are Muslim. Then we then go to our first class.

Deuxième partie: This part is where everything begins to look up. I find a seat next to a really nice girl, class begins, and although it’s in French I can begin to relax. The first class is our French class and we all introduce ourselves. I say my American name but the prof and the class laugh because they don’t recognize it at all, so I just tell them they can call me by my Senegalese name “Diarra.” I honestly don’t know what he said for most of that class but from what I could understand he was just explaining what we would be doing this year.

Then came break and the girl sitting next to me invited me to hang out with her and some friends which was nice because I got to talk with some girls and just enjoy standing up (two hour classes feel very long). Then came math class. We wasted no time getting to work and I’m honestly quite thankful. We learned (or reviewed I can’t tell) how to factor and find roots. This was great because I knew how to do this the American way so I could easily make the switch and follow how they factor the French way.

Then came lunch. A little while ago my host mom told me she would pack me some lunch, but this morning she told me that our local coordinator would give me money at school, so I was sent off without food or money. Turns out my coordinator did not show up to give me money. Thankfully I could see this coming and I packed some of my stipend. I made my way quickly out of school to the food trucks waiting just outside and got myself a Senegalese hamburger (don’t think American hamburger). Then as I was starting to walk back to school, some girls call out my name. I didn’t recognize them from being in my class but I didn’t question it. *Note from a month later: I still don’t know how they knew who I was.* They asked me where I was going and I answered that I honestly didn’t know. They invited me to walk with them and get some juice and then we migrated back to school picking up friends as we went. We made our way to the back of Sacre Cœur and met up with a group of friends and we all stood and ate lunch together. They kept telling me to speak and I wanted to, I just didn’t quite have a grasp on what they were saying! It was really nice to have their encouragement though. When lunch finished we went back for our final class of History and Geography. This class seems like it’s going to be super interesting (from what I could understand), but it was also when my soggy shoe started to hurt and I realized I just wanted to go home.

I’m home now and I just took a nice shower. Looking back on the day I’m happy with how it went, but when I think about how I have to do it all again tomorrow I realize how much today took out of me. I’m still not quite sure about who I’m going to hang out with (friend wise) so that takes a lot of mental energy, and I still need to figure out my uniform. But in all, I got through my first day and that’s what matters!

Thursday, October 24

This week has felt so long… and it’s only Thursday. As I start to settle in I’ve had some really great moments. I have joined chorale and it has become my absolute favorite thing (I think I may even write a whole post just for it because I love it so much)! I’ve also had many moments where I’ve found myself smiling and laughing and being simply happy for no reason. With this being said, nothing seems to be coming easy for me.

The one thing I’ve noticed is that everyone already seems settled. I think culture must be similar all along West Africa because even the new kids have seamlessly made friends (I didn’t know a lot of my friends were also new this year until recently- they all just seemed to know what they were doing). The girls here are crazy (in the best way!) and just seem to be happy all the time. They have so much energy and will scream, run, jump, hit (in a joking manner), and dance whenever they are given the opportunity. I think it’s beautiful to see all of my friends so happy, especially when they hug/ hang on to each other or sit in each other’s laps. As much as I want to be like them and act like them, American culture is almost the exact opposite of Senegalese culture in terms of personal space and how you express your happiness/ excitement. My time in American high school has ingrained in me a way of holding myself that has been hard for me to shake even when I want to scream and run and jump with them!

I have been incredibly fortunate to have come to a country where everybody is so kind and welcoming. People here love just talking and being in each other’s company, which I love too, but have found that these times have become one of the more tiring and sometimes even stressful times, not just because of the culture, but also because of the language barrier. Making friends in another language is hard. It is hard to fully connect when I can’t express myself in the way I want to. I seem to stress a lot because I feel awkward when I don’t know what they were saying and I am just standing there. Thankfully, even with all of my worries, my friends, although they wish I spoke more, still like having me in their group and for this I am so grateful. I just wish I could feel as normal around them as I do my American friends.

School itself has also been tough. I was the type of person that would be upset if I didn’t get an A on the test and although I have lowered my expectations, I don’t feel like I understand enough of my classes to even get passing grades. Other than classes, just going to school from Monday to Saturday (and most days until 5) has been difficult because I am doing more school now than what I was doing when I was actually in high school.

Anyways, school is a rollercoaster and I’ve had tough experiences like the ones mentioned above, but they’ve only made the good moments that much better. With so much change comes so many emotions and I’m sure I just need to give myself more time to settle into school life. I realize this entry was not be as upbeat as I wish it could be but I think it’s just as important to share some of my struggles as it is to share my good times.

November 2019

It has been about a month since school started and I have learned a lot! School has definitely been better than my last entry! Everyday is different and everyday is still a roller coaster but I have definitely found myself slowly settling into a routine. Though, I often have to take things one day (sometimes even one hour) at a time. Most importantly, I have been coming around to the idea that everything that I run into (both good and bad) is a learning experience!

I now want to reflect a little on what I’ve experienced the past month and also give a little bit of context to the place I’ve been going almost everyday. I decided to include some observations as well as some experiences from the past month and I broke everything up into three groups: school basics, school culture, and classes.

School Basics:

The school day starts at 8 am and ends most days at 5 pm (Thursdays we end at 6 pm, Wednesdays and Saturdays we end at 1pm).

My typical day will follow this schedule:

7:40: Arrive at school, greet as many classmates as I can

7:50: Line up in the courtyard for morning prayer and announcement

8-10: First Class

10-10:30: Break

10:30-1: Second (and potentially third) class

1-3: Lunch

3-5: Last Class

The high school is one big building, three stories high, with outdoor hallways. It is in the shape of a square with a courtyard (filled with dirt and palm trees) in the middle. My class has 50 kids and we all sit in old wooden desks that face a blackboard. Other than the desks and the blackboard, there isn’t much else. No posters, no art, no projector, no clock, there isn’t even flooring. We erase the blackboard with water and a sponge, and on the days we don’t have water, we just use our hands or a tissue.

Unlike in the US where each classroom had a Smartboard and each student and teacher had a computer, there is no technology here at all. We are not even allowed to have our phones on campus (and people actually follow this rule, even when teachers aren’t watching).

Everyone must stand when the professor enters the room.

Teachers here have more power than those in the US. For example, all of Premiere was supposed to have a day off from school, but my Physics/ Chemistry teacher decided that she not only wanted us to come in for her class.. but stay for FIVE HOURS! On a different note, that same teacher, along with a couple others, aren’t afraid of using a little bit of corporal punishment (usually just throwing chalk or a quick slap with a ruler) here and there to show us who’s boss.

With 50 kids in one room combined with Senegalese heat, the classroom can get quite hot and stuffy. There isn’t any AC and there aren’t even fans, so the school day consists of me just sweating for 9 hours straight! And don’t try and take a drink in the middle of class. You will get in trouble (I learned this the hard way)!

The toilets are squat toilets (with no toilet paper) and don’t smell the best. Girls do their best not to use the bathroom and the no-drinking-in-class rule helps dehydrate us enough to not need to go! Another little tip: don’t get sick during school, these bathrooms don’t accommodate well for such instances (again, I learned this the hard way)!

The bell sounds like a national emergency alarm and it rings for about 20 seconds. It took me a good two weeks to get used to it and not have my first reaction be “we need to get out of here!”

We have a uniform of a blue linen shirt and either dress pants or a long skirt. I have two shirts, a pair of pants and a skirt… for 6 days of school… in the heat. Although my uniform was tailored, it is actually quite small so it is not the most comfortable thing to wear. I also have learned that even though my skirt came from the school tailor, it is not in dress code. It goes below my knees, but it doesn’t cover my ankles. So, for the past few weeks I have only been using one pair of pants for an entire week. Talk about different hygiene standards!

For lunch, there isn’t a cafeteria, but there are a whole bunch of vendors in the back of campus that sell anything from sandwiches to juice to little cakes. Some days I will just get a ham and cheese on a baguette (350 CFA about 60 cents), other days I will get a hot sandwich that’s filled with eggs, fries and ketchup (600 CFA – just over $1), I am proud of myself because recently I found a woman who sells a sandwich with the classic Senegalese onion spread, meat/ or eggs, fries, ketchup and hot sauce for only 400 CFA. What a steal! If I am feeling like having a small snack, I will choose between getting a little cake (200 CFA), 3 beignets (100 CFA), a few spring rolls (50 CFA each), a crepe with a chocolate spread (100 CFA), or a juice (200-300 CFA).

School Culture

Honestly I love the culture here. Everyone is open and truly kind. Everyday, everybody greets each other. If one person has a snack or drink, they will offer it to everyone in the vicinity. Even in my friend group, they will buy each other water and snacks just to be kind. I mean this isn’t a perfect world and I have heard my friends say that they don’t particularly like some people, but there are no fights/ picking sides; they keep it as a personal problem and move on.

There are friend groups, but they are not anything close to cliques. Everyone is welcome into every conversation and there really does not seem to be any sense of popularity or social judgement that determines who your friends are. This has made me realize how toxic American school culture can be, even in its most basic sense. Even at my high school which was a pretty accepting community, there were unspoken rules of who you could and couldn’t speak to based on who your friends were and what people thought of you. I didn’t even realize I was carrying that weight on my shoulders until it was suddenly gone.

My friends in particular have been wonderful and so incredibly helpful. I still eat lunch and spend every break with the group from my first day. I mentioned before that I found this time stressful, but now it feels normal for me to just kind of hang around and listen, which has allowed me to relax a lot (and even look forward to my time with them). I have also been getting better at using this time to practice my French. My friends are amazing and have been finding different ways for me to be a part of their group (i.e. playing games, talking directly to me rather than expecting me to add to group conversations, translating the main idea of the conversation so I can follow along etc.). The girls have also made it their mission to find me a boyfriend so we will see how that goes.

Other than my lunch friends I have my class friends. The girls that sit around me in class are great. There are many times when we have to be in class and stay seated even when there isn’t a teacher, so we use this time to talk. They have given me song/ movie/ show recommendations and have done my hair on many occasions. Celeste, the girl who sits on my left, has been my personal guide to the French school system. She helps me with dictations, tells me when I need to switch pen colors when taking notes, tells me if I am not drawing/ writing clear enough, asks me every 20-30 minutes if I understand what’s going on, and will repeat instructions/ homework if she sees my blank face and knows I don’t understand. I am so thankful for her because I realize how much work she does for me. There have been so many times when I ask myself why she keeps helping me. In the US, if you are new and don’t speak English, people often try and help you at first, but for the most part you are on your own. Language takes a while to learn and most Americans (myself included until recently) don’t fully comprehend this because we are rarely in a position where we can’t use our English. I admit Celeste has made feel a little guilty for not having done more to help my international friends back in the US. At least I now know how I can be of best help when I return.

Classes:

I am in the Science 2 track. This track focuses on Chemistry and Biology, but we also take Physics, Mathematics, History, Geography, English, Spanish, Morals (different classes for Muslims and Christians), Information (which focuses on how to use Excel), and Gym. Unlike the US where each year started fresh with new courses (i.e. I took Chemistry sophomore year, Physics junior year, Environmental Science senior year), my classmates have been continuously taking all of these classes for years now and each year it gets progressively harder. This has made it feel like I am starting in the middle of a school year and has made it difficult to understand what is going on even if I understand the French! In my first chemistry class I was actually able to follow the lesson pretty well. Then we were given three homework exercises. I went home that night and read, re-read, then re-re-read the question because I could not see, for the life of me, how it connected to what we did in class. The next day my classmates took an hour and a half during lunch to help me with the first question… turns out I needed to know theorems and formulas from the year before.

Another huge contrast to the US system is that every class is lecture/ dictation based, meaning that the professor will stand in front of the class and read out sentences that we write down, word for word, in our notebooks. These dictations essentially become our textbook. Because of this, notes here have to be taken in a VERY specific manner. Certain things need to be written in certain colors (meaning I have to switch pens in the middle of a dictated sentence- which is stressful!). Often times Celeste will tell me that I am not writing clear enough. One time she even told me to stop taking notes off of something the professor was teaching (not part of a dictation just his lecture) because it was messing up my page. Sometimes this drives me a little nuts, but she is doing it in good faith because apparently there are “pop notebook checks” where our notebooks get graded. It has been hard for me to dedicate so much effort towards aesthetics, but again, this is a learning experience!

Dictations have also been difficult to grasp because many of our professors have different accents so I can’t even distinguish words I do know! Celeste has gotten to the point where after every sentence she will just shift her arm so I can copy/ check whatever was just said. Recently though, I have found that my listening has improved a lot and I only need to look over every three to four sentences (we love small victories!).

Although this type of learning has been helpful for me to learn French, I realize there is little to no analysis done in or out of class. In the US, most of our classes were discussion based. We were presented with information and then we had to make conclusions or make connections with what we were given. Here, we are simply just given information. Even science/ math courses in the US were interactive. We would start a topic with a lesson, then we would be shown a few questions and do them together, and finally we would do work on our own or in groups. In science, we would have labs about once a week. Here the teacher will lecture and if we are lucky they will show us an example or two. I have found it difficult when I go home to practice, because I don’t understand the material/ examples enough to make connections and apply what we learned in class to any new material I run into. I realize that it will take time to get to know this new system. While at times I seem to find the French system a little confusing or inefficient at times, I realize I’m just being critical because it’s all so new. This system has worked for millions of students so I am sure that as I get more used to it I will begin to recognize and truly understand its benefits. Even so, I really do value learning how to think rather than what to think.

Before I end this blog I want to just want to take a little bit of time to say that I am currently class valedictorian. We had our first “devoir” the the other day and it was for our English class. I came out with the top score- boo-ya! Sure we were only working on passive/ active voice and my classmates don’t speak English but whatever. I have also been in a little rush to post this blog while my standing holds true because we are supposed to get our Chemistry grade back soon and my GPA is only going downhill from here.

Anyways, this month has been a lot, but it has been anything but dull and I am thankful for that. I am excited to see what the next 8 months will bring!

Today is the Grand Magal of Touba! It’s the annual religious pilgrimage that Senegalese Muslims take to Touba in order to celebrate the life and teachings of Cheikh Amadou Bamba, the founder of the Mouride Brotherhood, who was exiled on this date in 1895 due to religious persecution. The Mourides are one of the main brotherhoods here in Senegal that follow the Islamic faith. Millions of people, of all brotherhoods, migrate to Touba to celebrate with prayers and huge shared meals. But, if you are like my family and can’t make it to Touba, you stay home and prepare an enormous amount of food for anybody and everybody that wants to come and eat!

Preparation started Wednesday with the first half of the day dedicated to the meat and the sauces. Multiple chickens and goats were killed earlier in the morning and I watched and learned while my family began to tediously skin, clean and then stuff them with seasoning. While they were showing me the different steps to preparing the meat, I was putting two and two together on what I have actually been eating these past weeks. I had to take a few “water breaks” every now and then and I realize it was definitely better living in ignorance. Since neither my family nor I trusted me with actually preparing the meat, I just fanned it to keep the flies away. I also skinned and cut up the garlic for the sauce. Helen (the housemaid) then ground the garlic with spicy peppers, other seasonings and oil.

In the second half of the day my family took to cooking the meat and skinning/ cutting the vegetables. My job was to boil and then peel over 100 eggs with Baldé, our houseboy. Because I was out in the afternoon, we stayed up until 11 PM finishing our work!

Day two started at around 8:30. I finished peeling more eggs while eating my breakfast. Then the house was cleaned and we began to cook… again! We started to make the vermicelle and rice and finished cooking the meat.

Then I was assigned my big task: fruit salad. I sat with Mamie (my host sister, although she’s more like my host aunt because she’s in her 40s with three kids and doesn’t live with us, but call her what you will) in the cat room and we began our work. I only mention we were sitting in the cat room because I learned that the cats have been enjoying air conditioning this whole time. My family and I don’t have air conditioning… just the cats. Anyway, we sliced bananas and melon, peeled and separated oranges, thinly chopped apples, added grapes, pineapple, vanilla sugar, a whole lot of juice and voila! We had fruit salad to feed over 50!

The party had already started by the time we finished the fruit salad so I snuck to my room to throw on my Senegalese dress and braid my hair. I was then ushered into my host brother’s living quarters and introduced to his girl friends (think companions, not polygamy for this one). Today was one of those days I am so grateful I am a girl because we got to sit in the air conditioning while all the men were sitting out in the (scorching!) heat.

The 13 of us huddled around two platters (one of vermicelle, one of thieboudienne) and I listened as they animatedly spoke to each other in Wolof. After we finished our meal everyone took a deep breath and enjoyed the fruit salad and some juice (bissap, madd, or baobab). Then all of a sudden they erupted into conversation which lasted well into the evening.

I think this holiday is exactly what I needed (and not just because it was a break from school). I not only got to spend some quality time with my family, but I also got to spend a good amount of time getting to know people like Mamie and Baldé, who I see all the time but have never had time to sit and talk with them one on one. I also feel like I reached a new level with my family today because I was right alongside them sharing the responsibility of welcoming and serving others. By doing so, I was no longer a guest myself. So, in all, for my first holiday here, I would definitely say it was a success!

Welcome!

My soul honors your soul. I honor the place in you where the entire universe resides. I honor the light, love, truth, beauty and peace within you, because it is also within me. In sharing these things we are united, we are the same, we are one. — “Namaste” — an ancient sanskrit blessing