A Blessing in Disguise.

Since I have written in a while, there will be a lot crammed into this little blog, so get ready. I guess I haven’t talked much about day-to-day life when not on excursions or going out on the weekends. Don’t worry not missing much, a normal week here is not full of any real excitement, and actually more frustration than anything. There are twelve us here and in pairs we are supposed to have internships that we go to from 8:30 am- 12:00 pm. When we were told what we were placed in, all of us were pretty excited. There were positions in radio stations, HIV/AIDs organizations, Anti Corruption organizations, linguistics, and the hospital. Initially I got paired with one of the guys on the trip; Andrew and we were supposed to intern at a preschool here in Dakar. Originally very excited, because of course the kids aspect, though I did want something a bit more career orientated, or different than what I do everyday back at home, but none the less I was very excited, thinking that it would probably be a preschool that was in need of volunteers, but again I forgot to tell my self, when it comes to Senegal, have no expectations. The first day our internship was supposed to start, Andrew and I were driven to a particularly fancy neighborhood compared to other areas in Dakar we had witnessed thus far. We pull up to this gated, plant-decorated preschool that looks very high class. As we are waiting for one of our supervisors to talk to the director, European looking fathers walked their children into the school, other families pull up in their fancy vehicles to drop their kids off, at the same time I hear the director of the preschool yell in French well what do you expect me to do with them. Apparently he was not aware he was supposed to have interns despite the “claimed” conversations with him prior to our arrival. We were turned away and told that the Pre School was closing and that is why we weren’t welcome. A bit disappointed, I was hopeful at the same time hoping that a place clearly in more need than the preschool would get us. But from that day on it was a constant battle to find a place to really just stick us. We began to try and work for a governmental organization (which I was not too thrilled about) called Case de tous Petites, another preschool, early child-hood care program, aimed at trying to help low-income families. When we visited the preschool again it just seemed to cater to more of an upper class population, or worse was simply put into place to praise the president. The organization ended up wanting us to pay one thousand dollars to work/shadow there (paying to volunteer) so once again we were stuck without an internship. The rest of our time we either spent sitting in an office putting data into a data base for the NGO we were taking our classes at, and the rest of the time being bounced from organization to organization. At the end of what seemed to be a frustrating 5 weeks of early mornings and afternoons, reflecting back I may have had a better “internship” than any of the others. Through all of the failed attempts to place us somewhere, we were able to see a broader perspective of the organizational world of Senegal than any of the others. We got to see how preschools were run, high school, HIV/AIDs organizations, schools for delinquent youth, and many other things. Though we weren’t able to create relationships with the people we worked with, like all of the others, we truly got a unique experience, inside look to Senegal. (You can read about it in the next writing). Through all of this I learned an important lesson about not only trying to work in a developing country but about life. Instead of dwelling on things that go wrong, or roadblocks, you have to take everything with stride, dwell on the things that are important, and try to learn lessons with everything you experience. Be flexible and take the experience that comes to you, it hard to explain really, but I know this experience will guide my way through working at the orphanage, well at least I hope. There is so much more to write about every experience and the memories seem to be quickly flooding out of my head as I am creating new ones, so more to come, maybe not as vivid as ones before, but more for sure.