So, what will you be doing in Senegal?

Eeeee! So, I know I've done more than enough typing for one day, really, I have, and once classes slash homework starts I promise I won't be as obsessive about updating...probably. But I finally have an answer to the most-asked question, that I get everywhere, as soon as I say "yeah, I'll be spending next semester in Senegal". The response, 99 percent of the time has been, "So what will you be doing there?"

Well.

I just talked to Waly who's in charge of the MSID program here about my internship. I spent maybe ten minutes talking to him, and I like to think I appeared very calm and collected. Inside I was dancing dancing dancing- here's why.

I signed up for the "Arts and culture" track... which is the only one of six tracks (Education, Environment, Public Health, Microfinances, and Literature being the other five) that is offered in India, Ecuador, Kenya- but not Senegal. I can't study it here. So I signed up for the Education track, and am going to audit Environment just because I find it interesting.

Even though I can't study arts and culture in a class, though, Waly found me two possibilities of doing/learning about traditional music as an internship. The first one was with a performing group in the town of Toubacouta, the second was learning about the style of singing, dancing, and drumming that accompanies the national sport of "Lutte"- a kind of wrestling. The first would be in a medium-sized town, the second in a very small village. Waly recommended the first option for two reasons. The first is that while women can do the drumming and singing, the focus is on the athletes and I wouldn't be doing as much. The second reason is as follows: My internship is supposed to be 25 hours- five hours a day for five weeks. Performing groups only meet at night, and it would be very hard to make up five hours a day in that case. In Toubacouta, I could do something like, oh, helping out with kids at a kindergarten (I hope I don't scare them all) maybe from 9-12, then resting in the afternoon, to then work with the performing group in the evenings.

I really can't think of anything more perfect for what I want to do here.

I mean, it's very very intimidating (just look at the picture! The first group, allah laké http://toubacouta.info/societe/troupes-de-danse-et-musique/) but I'm super excited. And, inshallah, it's going to be amazing.