Study-Service Term

On Friday of our second week in Thiès, we spent the morning and afternoon with the Talibé in a variety of settings. The Talibé are boys from between three to fourteen years of age who often come from rural settings to live with a Marabout (Sufi Muslim teacher) in what is called a Daara or school. The Talibé often spend part of the day begging for alms to help support their Daara and Marabout and are also taught the Koran.

In the morning we started at a small home-front kitchen run by a Costa Rican missionary family that provides the Talibé with breakfast. We then went with some of the Talibé to visit with one of their Marabout. In the afternoon we visited a center that provides shelter, food, and education for street children, often including some of the Talibé, or former Talibé, in their numbers.

GC students entertained the Talibé with song, dance, sport, and games.

Dancing with the Talibe

On Monday of our second full week in Senegal we visited Lac Rose, spent some time on the beach, and attended mass at Keur Moussa, a Catholic monastery, where we heard traditional harp-like instruments, called “kora,” in the service.

We visited Gorée Island on a very hot Friday at the end of our first full week in Senegal. Gorée Island is located about 3 kilometers east of Dakar. In the past it was an important trading center and military outpost. It currently serves as a symbolic evocation of the slave trade. The one time military fort on the island has been converted into a historical museum that documents social life in the Senegalese region from the Paleolithic through the slave trade and popular resistance to French colonialism.

We were accompanied on our visit by Galiné Yennon, a political geographer, who provided further historical background and some critical questions regarding the commercialization of the island. Students also got a strong dose of what it means to be a tourist in a place like Gorée.

We spend most of our formal class time at the Centre d’Accueil, de Formation, et d’Études, or simply the C.A.F.E. The C.A.F.E. is a project of the Baptist Church in Thiès and is attached to a private Christian school called John Hoffman. We often hear the raucous bustle of students switching classes or taking recess echoing through the cement and tile hallways. It is here that we take our Wolof and French lessons at least three mornings a week, it is the main location for our formal lectures, and the departure point for most of our field trips.

On Friday we traveled from Dakar to Thiès for orientation. On Saturday evening students met their host families. This weekend, Thiès was also hosting the 50th anniversary of the Baptist Mission in Senegal. We got to attend their opening event of choral singing and dancing on Friday night. Several of the host families are associated with the Baptist Mission and you will see that one family even had a dress made for their GC student in the theme cloth for the event.  There was an all-around sense of warm, animated, eager hospitality with an underlying current of uncertain anxiety as families and students met for the first time and left for various parts of the city.

Regretfully, a few students and families slipped out before we could get a picture taken. Everyone did get to a family and we will try to get a picture of those we missed up on the blog soon.

We picked up the students around 10:00 p.m. this Thursday evening. We were a little late because our bus driver had fallen asleep, but the students were all there and so was all their luggage. They had made their way, or it had been made for them, to a holding area with several other groups of mostly white people who were standing around comfortable looking buses near the airport’s departure terminal. The students were engaged in a variety of negotiations with local well-wishers who wanted to carry their luggage and help them get to whatever destination they were looking to get to. They were taking good care of themselves and each other. Christine, our local coordinator, took over the handling of the well-wishers and we made our way through a parking lot toward a large white bus that was not as comfortable looking as the ones we were walking away from. We threw our luggage on the roof, jostled our way through nighttime Dakar, and arrived at Le Phare de l’Espérance. To the chagrin of the drivers, we pulled our luggage off the roof. Then, we had a late night snack and headed for bed. It was a hopeful beginning to what is sure to be a meaningful summer.