Emma has some stories to tell.
Last night, rattling into Dakar, the moon obfuscated by man's bright lights and pollution, my ankles rivaling my thighs in size, every inch of my body affixed by sweat or god knows what grime to something else - be it the old man next to me whose lips moved in silent prayer for the entire five hours he sat rigidly at my side or Kendall's Senegalese pillow with its used weave stuffing poking through busted seams or the Bassari palm wine drinking gourd resting at the crook of my arm as though it were a baby, or the veritable baby sitting on its mother's lap behind me and enjoying the feel of my white flesh between its tiny fingers or the exposed foam of the seat beneath me or the steal bar jutting into my legs as the foam of the seat lacked the requisite base-level thickness attributed to foam or the gray plastic covering of the bench seat before me on which my heavy head rested - I furthered my appreciation for the whole notion of relativity.
'Civilization!' I cried at the first signs of the city hustle: the interminable Dakar traffic, the gendarme's whistle, the metallic thuds of vendors hawking our N'Diaga N'Diaye (a mini bus/colorless car rapide), the shrill prayer calls made shriller still by crackly PA systems... And indeed, civilization, at its most basic definition, was and is an apt word. But that sure wasn't what I thought two months ago when I was first accosted by the chaos of Dakar, of Africa... or even two weeks ago, before I left on this little southern Senegal jaunt."
The southern Senegal jaunt that Emma is referring to in this passage from her blog is her spring break. While many college students spend spring break at some island resort or perpetually attached to a bar in Florida, Emma spent hers in the African bush. No electricity. No outside communication. No houses (unless you consider a hut a house). This was third-world living at its core. True cultural immersion. For the two weeks that Emma was away, she was an African.
Half of her trip has already been blogged. She rode along the Gambian River, just her boat and a group of hippopotamus floating on the water's surface. She relaxed under the county's largest "baobab" tree while villagers danced to the beat of a hypnotic drum. She sat in a meeting in which a village leader and the head of her study abroad program spoke about how to, "capitalize on Tamba's role as a crossroads and filter some tourism money into impoverished eastern Senegal."
There are plenty more escapades ahead, as she is only half way through her trip. But we will leave you with this little teaser:
"In the planning of our trip, it became apparent that we all wanted to stray from the beaten path; we wanted wildlife, remote villages, cultural immersion, distinct physical beauty... no generic palm-lined beaches, thank you very much."
"And, ultimately, we found what we sought."
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