End of the program

Continuing to update on all the stuff I havent been blogging on, heres a summary of the end of the program:

So, the abroad program with SIT ended May 15. The last month, from about April 10 until May 10thish, classes ended and we all embarked on and carried our respective "ISP" projects (Independent Research Project). This is one of the main parts of the program. Each students chooses a topic of his/her choice and researches it for a month. At the month, you produce a paper on your findings, usually ranging from 30-50 pages. If you do an alternative project, like I did, your final paper can be shorter.

My project was difficult in the beginning because I knew exactly what I wanted to do but it was hard to explain to people. But, thanks to my wonderful advisor who quickly became one of my good friends, Aida, I think the project turned out fairly successful. I was basically exploring how dance can be used as a medium for educating people on topics of social injustice. In order to explore this, I interviewed several dancers, people working in dance and theater, and people working on social justice to get their thoughts on the topic. In addition, I wanted to choreograph a dance with the goal of educating people on an injustice, so I chose a current and local situation of injustice/suffering. For the past few years, the suburbs of Dakar have been experiencing horrible flooding. Some people are living in water, not only during the rainy season, but year round. The suburbs are generally very poor and overpopulated, so this flooding just increases illnesses, especially malaria (more water, more mosquitos). People are living in what should be abandoned houses, because they either can't be convinced to move or do not have the financial means to move. I went into the suburbs with my advisor, Aida, and a man working with an NGO whos working to solve this crisis, Gaby. Gaby took us around in his car showing us the abandoned houses and polluted bassins of water, ready to overflow once rainy season gets there in less than a month. I took a video with my camera showing the disheartening living conditions and flooding.

I then choreographed a duet on myself and Aida which represented this situation. She also contributed some traditional west african dance moves which we melanged with my modern choreography. The week of our final presentations came. I put some of my interviews and some music on top of my video from the suburbs, and ending up showing this to the class, explaining a little bit about the situation in the suburbs and my project goal. After showing the video, Aida and I performed the duet.

There actually was a third part-the Ndeup. When I first explained my projet idea to Aida she suggested she teach me this traditional healing dance- the Ndeup. So, After performing the dance I choreographed, we performed this traditional healing dance. Unfortunately my foot has still not completely healed so none of this was done as full out as I would have liked, but it still went pretty well.

The day after this, we all went to Mbor, a really pretty and touristy area of senegal. This is where everyone else did their presentations (we had to do mine in Dakar, since it involved a dancer living there). The day we got there I started feeling fairly sick, few days later it got really bad. Long story short, I had a parasite! Exciting right? I dunno, it seems inevitable that I would have gotten something like that. Although, no other students got anything like that, but I imagine its fairly common. From all the things Ive eaten from possibly questionable looking shacks and such. You cant be super careful about what you eat here cause otherwise youd be offending people all over the place n such. Anyways, now I can say Ive had a parasite, and my system's all the tougher for it I'm sure.

2 months later, oops

So, yeah, major slacking on the postings, but the program is over and I have started my internship here, meaning I sort of have more time, but more so it means I have moved into an apartment with my friend Moutarou (he was one of our language professors on the program), renting out one of the 3 bedrooms in his 3 bedroom apartment, and the apartment has wifi! Therefore, the internet has become a lot more accessbile.

To continue the Ndar village post...I will try to recall and briefly recap that. The Ndar village stay was a lot more frustrating for me than the first village stay. Even though this village was fairly wealthy (well, espcecially when compared to the last village in Kedougou), I got asked much more often for money. I'm pretty sure this was mainly due to the fact that we were the first toubabs to stay overnight in the village, the first group of students to come and do a village stay like that. The village is used to the only white people they see being peace corps workers who come in for a day to do some project or something. This was the first time SIT has used this village for a village stay. Some students had a great time with their families, mine was just frustrating because they were constantly talking to me about money. They definitely fed me enough though! Its true what they say that the best ceebu jen is in St. Louis, mmm, it was so delicious.

On our last night in the Mouit, the village put together a Sabar for us. This is basically a huge dance circle. It was soo soo much fun. My family dressed me up in this traditional garb, big fulwar and everything (the piece of fabric women wrap around their heads) and brought me to this one big open space where we started cleaning before the party. This was the first time Ive ever raked sand. Yeah, so we raked the sand, I guess getting all the big rocks and such out of the area, then set up a bunch of chairs in a circle. I Few of the other students had come over with their families at this time as well. So, when we all finished raking, the drummers came, and the rest of the families came, bringing along their respective toubabs. Some of us talked about it later saying that it felt a little bit like they were dressing up their dolls. But, however they were looking at it, it was really funny to see all of us in our traditional garb, and even more entertainging to watch us (at least the women) try to dance in these bou bous. Once ppl started dancing it was so fun. They would just pull you in , and you had to throw any insecurity out the window. I think like half the village was there, probably about 70 or so people. I had a blast.