A day in the life

I wanted to document what a day in my life looks like. We only have one more week of class before spring break and then the internship phase starts so pretty soon my days will look differently. But most days look like a version of this one. The only other class I have now that I didn't have on Tuesday is Inclusive Finance.

Tuesday, March, 1st

We had a guest speaker and then celebrated one of our classmate's birthdays so it was a bit out of the ordinary but class is always the same.

7:30 Wakeup

8:30 Walk to school: I wanted to take pictures of our walk to and from school, but this week one girl had her phone in her hand and a motorcyclist came up and grabbed her phone and backpack (right by the school). She grabbed her backpack back and also stole his fanny pack which we all thought was very smart thinking. He only got away with her phone. After the incident a huge crowd of people gathered around, someone tried to hit the motorcycle with their car, and a lady walked with us to school to explain what happened. Those acts of solidarity help to balance out the bad experiences. She was ok but now we are all super cautious. Anyway, here are some Google map photos of our walk since my phone will no longer be out.

These are pictures from walking through our neighborhood which is super safe.

This is the first busy street we walk along. The Google map picture is outdated because there are a ton of street vendors and buses parked on the curb along this road every single day.

This is the most stressful street crossing we have to do. Usually, during rush hour there is a policeman who sort of helps, but usually you just have to go for it and the drivers stop for you.

9 French class: we have French once a week just to review grammar. Today we reviewed "y" and "en" and then watched a short film in French on domestic violence to kick off Women's History Month.

Here is the classroom where I have all of my classes.

11 Break: we have coffee, pastries, and fruit every day which helps get through the morning

11:15 Wolof: We have Wolof 4 times/week. I actually really like Wolof. It's fun to learn things that is actually super useful and kinda of necessary to our survival here.

Here is some of our homework.

1 Lunch

2 Historical and Political Perspectives: During class we had a guest speaker, Kalidou Kasse. He is a famous Senegalese artist who spoke to us about the importance of art (culture) in shaping economics. We are going to visit his workshop on Monday which I'm looking forward to.

4 Women's Film Festival: For the second half of class we watched two films. This week in Dakar is the Women's Film Festival. WARC hosted two films and a discussion. The first one was called Oil and Water about the oil industry in Kenya which uses indigenous land. The women are trying to organize protests since they are the ones who have to manage the land they no longer have control over. There is now a huge drought and the oil companies are pulling out so the people are at risk of dehydration. The second one was about slavery in Canada, specifically about Angelina.

5 Run along the corniche: I do not do this every day, but a classmate and I decided to walk to the ocean (about 5 min. away) and run along the Corniche. It was the most beautiful day with a cool breeze. It's a super popular place to work out, the beaches are filled with guys and there is even an outdoor gym. It's mainly only guys who use the beach and outdoor gym so we just stick to running along the sidewalk.

These pictures are from another day when we were just messing around

6 Begin the walk home

7:30 To celebrate Chris' birthday, we went to a Japanese restaurant and it was so so so good! I think I thought it was so good partly because it was just different, but we have 3 classmates who are from Japan and they also agreed that it was amazing. At the end, the chef, who moved to Dakar from Japan 4-5 years ago, came out so it was fun that everyone could talk together. After supper one of the program staff brought us a cake. We now know happy birthday in three languages so we have to sing it three times every time.

Honestly, Tuesday was one of the longest days we've had yet, but luckily we didn't have class until 2pm on Wednesday so I slept in really late Wed. morning :)