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.