Until next time, my Senegal, God willing.

My last week in Senegal involved nine hours worth of Independent Study Project presentations, a final djembe lesson, goodbyes and ba beneen yoons to my host family, lots of sabar drumming and dancing, two rhinoceroses, a village made out of shells, a crab race, a last run of the markets, many hours at the beach, and what seemed like many more hours of packing. Waaw waaw. If you want more details (perhaps about the rhinos) I apologize. You will have to wait until I return to America and regain my composure. All of that has left my head spinning, and it will continue spinning right onto that plane that will lift me up out of Dakar and back to my comfy American life.

After writing a 25 page paper, filling out evaluations of the semester and spending hours reading through my several journals from the past few months, one might think I'd be able to articulately express what this semester has been like, and how I feel about coming home. But as it is, I feel an overwhelming sense of mental block. All I know is that I am getting on that plane very early tomorrow morning--early enough that it still counts as tonight--and coming home. At the thought my gut jumps a little, then sinks a little, then ponders the ceebujen for lunch a little. And I can find no words to say.

So please, faithful audience, accept my gratitude for your support and interest throughout these past months, it has been fun sharing with you. I imagine the twenty-four hours of planes and airports will afford me a little time to reflect. Then, my very own computer access will afford me some photo-posting abilities. At any rate, I'll be putting some more thoughts into this little blog here. But the words you read from here on out will be typed on a boring old American keyboard (which I will have to reacquaint myself with), and not in any tropical cyber cafe in urban West Africa.

Ba beneen yoon, sama Senegal, inchalla.

Pinch Punch, First of the Month!

That's to get you back, Mike!

Well hello there everyone. Please forgive the recent dearth of blog productivity on my part. I have been busy working on the final portion of my academic semester here, the Independent Study Project (ISP). A few days ago, I returned from a week-long trip into the interior of the country, to a village called Fimela. Well, and to the city of Fatick. And to eight other villages in the immediate area benifitting from the presence of the NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) I have been working with in research, World Vision. What I was doing in those villages was examining the impact of child sponsorship, a particular form of international aid. I imagine many of you have seen the big-eyed faces of foreign children in photographs tacked to refrigerators by their proud, state-side sponsors. I know for a fact that some of you see them in your very own kitchens, a reminder every time you reach for the milk of a life across the world, linked with yours by a monthly check. What do these big eyes see as a result of their sponsored status? That's what I was going to find out.

Well, they didn't have any refrigerators in the villages I visited, but I saw more than one picture of smiling sponsors presented to me by World Vision children. That is not to say the responses were all the same when I asked these children about their sponsors, the term translated as "toubab friend" by my WV-employed interpreter. Some didn't know the name or country behind the letters delivered on occasion, but others readily produced pictures or little gifts they got from their xarit toubab. What is certain is, even if the individual relationship between sponsor and child was weak, the presence of World Vision in developmental and collaborative projects in their communities was strong and visible. And, in my novice opinion, they're doing a pretty good job.

The task that lies before me now is to figure out how to explain all of that to twenty to thirty pages of paper, waiting in the printer of an internet cafe somewhere, for me to come decorate their blank surfaces with all of my ideas.

More to come, once at least some of those pages are properly clothed.