Lakeside School

Every summer, groups of Lakeside students embark on Global Service Learning trips around the world. Students write blog entries to document their learning and share aspects of their experience. The following post is from midway through the group’s stay in Senegal.

Assalamualaikum all! I come writing to you from our little village in Senegal, where the temperature is an unusually pleasant 88 degrees Fahrenheit. Today included a light itinerary of watering our now-planted trees, a discussion of the impact of our service on the village, and a few games.

Before embarking on this trip, my understanding of life in low-income, rural places like this village was derived from despondent media and statistics. Similar to many people, I assume, I've read articles, listened to anchors, and seen images depicting people living in these types of places as one and the same. With headlines of climate disasters, mass poverty, poor infrastructure, violence, and other tragic topics representing the rural developing world, often paired with an incomprehensible and equally tragic statistic of how many people live in these situations, I had subconsciously began to think of the people living in these places as one unfortunate entity.

Unfortunately, my expectations for my time in Senegal were also tainted with this sentiment, as I unknowingly assumed the people of the village to be a singular mass, who, along with the rest of the rural 3rd world, expressed only resentment or resignation.

Thankfully, these expectations were swiftly disproved. Within the past week, I've met athletes, comedians, students, business owners, and religious leaders all in my host family. I've heard countless and varying opinions of emigration, love, children, work, and what it means to live in this country. In my host family's cafe, famed for its spiced coffee and where I rest as dusk turns to night, packed within its small confines are introverts, extroverts, raucous jokes, shouting matches, and confessions of love, all facilitated by refills of cafe and baguettes packed with petite pois. Emotions of all kinds fill the streets on my daily walks to and from our service, paired with laughter, shouts, and complaints of the weather. All the regular characters and personalities that one would expect to see at school or work are present here, just in different forms.

When I started talking to the people of the village and noticed these variations, I was surprised. Then, after my surprise came confusion; why was I surprised that the people living here were so different from one another? After much introspection, however, I came to recognize the unconscious judgement that had caused my shock.

In today's world, an unfortunate amount of places are represented by our media with negativity and despair. For many of us, these unfair representations lead to unconscious, unfair judgement towards the people living there. Oftentimes, this judgement can lead to an "us vs. them" understanding of large groups of people, which depicts "them" more as a single person with the same thoughts, emotions, and actions. The biggest takeaway I've received so far from my time in GSL Senegal is that in order to fight this harmful "us vs. them" mentality, one must understand that every person on this earth is capable of their own unique personalities and that no one should belong to a stereotype.

We hope that everyone's doing fine, and ba cikanam (until next time)!