Category: Caitlin in Dakar

Best first day EVER!

Published on by Caitlin TurkLeave a comment

I pretty much just had the best first day ever. 

I just had my first day at my internship! My program is divided into two main sections, the second of which is a 6-week internship within the thematic focus I selected for the program. Considering my human rights focus, I am undertaking my internship at a women’s rights legal organization called l’Association des Juristes Sénégalaises (the Association of Senegalese Women Juristes). 

According to my most recent LinkedIn post, here’s what I’ll be up to: “I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as Intern at l’Association des Juristes Sénégalaises/AJS as part of my study abroad program in Dakar, Senegal! For the next six weeks, I will be working on various legal rights’ projects with AJS’ international partners, observing women’s legal clinics, and learning from mentors who manage the organization in administrative positions. Furthermore, my entire internship will be in French! I am very excited to learn about Senegal’s legal challenges, approaches, and solutions at both a grassroots and international level. Thank you so much to the School for International Training for facilitating this opportunity!”

I truly hope my internship is as amazing as I tried to make it sound on LinkedIn; so far, it has been. On my first day, I took a 15 minute taxi ride from my house to the office. I was so worried about traffic potentially making me late that I ended up arriving 25 minutes early. I decided to sit outside on the steps and wait until a far more reasonable time to arrive. A few minutes later, a woman came up to me and asked if I’m the “stagiare” (intern). I said yes, and explained to her I was worried about being too early. She laughed and told me to come inside. We walked up the stairs into the office.

As soon as I stepped inside, my supervisor greeted me with a smile. I had met her the previous week for my internship introduction so I already knew who she was, but I knew no one else yet. Therefore, my supervisor spent the next half hour or so introducing me to the other members of AJS. They were all extremely friendly, especially when I greeted them in Wolof and knew more than just the basic salutation phrases. I made it a goal to try to learn everyone’s name!

An hour or two into my first day, the president of AJS arrived and invited me into her office. She pulled out her agenda and asked if I wanted to attend three conferences with international stakeholders in the next two weeks. Was that even a question?! After enthusiastically responding yes, she gave me a bunch of material to prepare for the Wednesday-Thursday conference this week. 

The focus of the upcoming conference is a discussion about abortion rights in Senegal. Currently, any form of abortion is illegal according to Senegal’s national law. The only exception is when multiple doctors agree that the life of the mother is in danger, they concur that an abortion is necessary and will perform an abortion despite the fact it is technically illegal. The conference I will attend aims to integrate the Maputo Protocol, signed by Senegal in 2004, which states that the right to a “medical abortion” should be permitted. This includes abortion in the case of rape, incest, danger to the life of the mother, or malformation of the fetus. 

In the midst of researching, I was invited to sit in on a Zoom meeting to coordinate the communication and press for the conference with one of AJS’ donors, a Canadian organization. Unfortunately, as soon as I sat down, I recognized the major tech issues they were having, particularly about the translation software. As it turns out, the donor representative only spoke English, and the AJS member I was shadowing spoke very minimal English. Trying to make myself useful, I translated what the Canadian woman said to explain they were having issues with the translation issues too. My mentor looked at me and asked, “Est-ce que tu peux le faire?” she asked me. “Can you do it?” I felt my adrenaline spike and responded that I’d try! 

For the next 45 minutes, I translated from French to English and English to French to the best of my ability. I’ve been learning French for nearly a decade now, so my language skills are pretty decent. However, finding exact translations instead of synonyms, conjugating, and still listening to what they were saying so I could translate without stopping was a whole new ballgame. I don’t think I properly took a full breath throughout the entire experience, but it was thrilling! The conversation was made even harder by the fact that AJS has apparently never used Google Docs before. Both sides were trying to figure out this confusion simultaneously via my translation, and I’m pretty sure my brain nearly combusted at one but. But it was kind of awesome! As an intern/shadow for six weeks, I didn’t expect to actually feel useful on the first day. And here I was, using my language skills for a task that no one else at the agency was capable of doing. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that way before, but now I definitely want to accomplish something like this again. 

I concluded my day with a few more hours of research and then I headed home, so excited to come back tomorrow! 

Ba ci kanam / À bientôt / See you soon, 

Caitlin

St. Louis (Senegal, not Missouri!)

Published on by Caitlin TurkLeave a comment

After my family left late Tuesday night of my weeklong break, my friends and I woke up early on Wednesday to take the 7am bus from Dakar to St. Louis. About five hours north of Dakar, St. Louis was the old capital of Senegal and West Africa back in the colonial period when Senegal was a French colony. The main section of the city is a small strip of an island, taking perhaps two minutes to traverse the width and half an hour to walk from the northern tip to the southernmost point. My friend Izzy and I had decided on St. Louis while trip planning a few weeks ago, and were both extremely excited to see a completely new part of Senegal. Some of our other classmates’ travel plans unfortunately fell through, so they ended up joining the trip as well!

When we arrived in St. Louis at noon on Wednesday, we had to get a taxi from the bus stop to the main city. As we drove by, the sunlight hit the brown water surrounding us in a way that looked like pure gold! We later learned that the color was due to natural tannins, a material leached from decaying wetland plants into the water, similar to how a tea bag colors tea. Then, the city came into view! We drove up the main street and could very clearly see the influence of French colonial architecture. The buildings were brightly colored (although definitely faded) and each building even had a balcony on its second floor, just as in the Haussmanian-style buildings in Paris, France. 

Needing to kill a little time before our Airbnb was ready, my friends and I went to a coffee shop. Then, we headed to our Airbnb. The very smiley manager met us outside the door, took our bags, and let us upstairs. He handed us the keys and told us our room had been double-booked, so we had been upgraded. For the CFA (Senegalese currency) equivalent of $147 USD, we had an apartment complete with a bedroom, bathroom, living room, common space/dining area, and kitchen all to ourselves—for four nights. Izzy and I were over the moon. 

For our first afternoon in St. Louis, we began by relaxing in the AC of our amazing apartment. I made a plan for course registration while we talked about religion and various conspiracy theories. The conversations we have as a group are extremely random at times, and I love it. The amount of people who choose to go to Senegal is quite a small group, so one of my main goals for this experience was getting to know the nine other students in my program. 

After chilling, we walked the entire circumference of the island in just over an hour. It’s quite small! Unfortunately, during our walk we received a text that our friends who were joining us had missed their bus! They had to take an alternative bus to a neighboring city and take a taxi from there. We bought some pasta and pesto to make a quick dinner for ourselves, and then bought some sandwiches and fruit for them to eat when they arrived—hours after they had planned. Fortunately, we all had arrived safe and fell asleep quickly. 

The next morning, we woke up early for our boat tour! Only four of us went, since that was the maximum number allowed. When we arrived at the agency, our guide greeted us at the door and led us away to the boat immediately! We put our orange life vests on and we were off. For the next few hours we were on the Senegal River, going through the water shared between Senegal and Mauritania. We saw numerous huge birds and were told that sometimes hippopotamuses could be seen in this river! Sadly, we didn’t see one. However, we did get to explore a small Senegalese village and enjoy a lunch of fish, shrimp, and ataaya (Senegalese tea) right next to the water. The air was so fresh and clean. As we returned back to St. Louis, we saw a huge collection of “piroques” (fishing boats) on the fishing island adjacent to the island we were staying on. Some of them were absolutely massive, but apparently they aren’t even used for the open ocean! Their size is meant to support the big nets used for fishing in the river. 

When we rejoined the rest of our group, we went out to dinner at a Spanish restaurant. Although I do quite like Senegalese food, it was extremely nice to have the opportunity to mix up the cuisine a bit! I extended my streak of eating shrimp through dinner, eating a delicious meal of pesto pasta with shrimp. We walked back to our Airbnb and chatted and hung out before we all fell asleep. 

Friday was a day of many, many steps. In the morning, we walked around the fishing village island, exploring the streets and staring out at the ocean. It’s so interesting to note the water differences between the ocean and river; one is a foamy blue with crashing waves and the other is barely flowing brown water. After getting a quick lunch, we made our way over to the mainland to see the sunset. On our way back, we saw a huge swarm of hundreds of birds flying across the river! Upon closer inspection, we could see that they were all bats. I’ve had lots of fun watching bats fly over my head at night in my backyard when I was younger, so I was happy, but my friends did not share the sentiment. We walked quickly across the bridge to find dinner. 


While eating, one of my friends suggested we see a free dance performance at the French institute. We all agreed, not thinking too much of it, as some of the shows we have seen thus far were… interesting, to say the least. However, this show exceeded our expectations in every way. It was SPECTACULAR. The performance was composed of ten dancers, all from different regions of Senegal. Through a contemporary dance that lasted about an hour, they explored concepts of identity and masculinity struggles. They used physical theater, lighting, acrobatics, and even shredded newspaper to showcase their stories. We all left the performance speechless, not quite able to believe that our last minute decision to go had led to such an amazing experience. 

The next day was far more low key. We began the day by exploring a few museums in the “archipel de musées” of St. Louis, which is an “archipelago” of eight museums spread across the island. We visited two of the major photography museums before lunch. Sadly, we were not allowed to take pictures, but the photographs were beautiful. Two of my favorites complemented one another: an older Black man and a younger Black girl. Both were dressed in white clothes and the young girl was holding a stick of cotton. Their lips were painted white and the starkness of the depth of their emotions in their eyes was captivating. For several minutes I couldn’t make myself look away.  

After a delicious lunch of crepes, we took the afternoon off. Izzy and I hid from the hot sun in the AC of our Airbnb, played lots of SkyJo, and watched a movie. We had our last dinner of the trip at a delicious Vietnamese restaurant and headed to bed early. The next day, we had a sleepy chill morning before catching our bus just after lunch and headed back to Dakar. 

St Louis was an amazing time! After living with my host family for eight weeks, it was incredibly strange to have the autonomy to leave when I want without seeking permission (my host mom will never say no but I still have to ask), speaking English with my friends all day, and most of all, having autonomy over what I eat for meals. It was a great little escape and I’m feeling ready for the internship portion of my program to begin! 

Ba ci kanam / À bientôt / See you soon, 

Caitlin