My Trip to Senegal: How A Little Bit of Bravery Changed My Life 

Two years ago this month, I broke my passport out of its innocent and previously unused shell and boarded what I thought was a seven-hour flight to Senegal, a country on the very edge of West Africa. Our seven-hour flight soon turned into a 14-hour long odyssey, however, after our plane’s de-icing machine broke while still on the runway. It didn’t matter that we were still on the ground; for those first seven hours while we waited for the de-icing technicians to do whatever de-icing technicians do, I felt like throwing up the entire time. I was a junior in high school who had been dying to go abroad for as long as I could remember, and when one of my favorite teachers of all time announced that he was taking a group of 30 students to his home country of Senegal, Africa for a week, I jumped at the chance. It didn’t matter that none of my friends were even remotely interested in going, nor did it matter that I would need to get 50,000 ominous-sounding shots before I even left the country. I had made up my mind. I was going to Senegal. I impulsively applied for the week-long service trip on the day it was announced, innocently assured in the belief that even though the idea of going across the Atlantic with a bunch of high schoolers I knew but didn’t really know was scary, I would do it anyways. And it would be great. It had to be! 

I had *almost* forgotten about my impulse application until a few months later, when an email with a subject line that said “Bon voyage! You’re going to Senegal!” popped up in my inbox. I wish I could say that my initial reaction upon getting the news was one of disbelief and happy tears, but I can’t lie—it was pure, unadulterated dread. Now that this was real, that I was actually, seriously going to Senegal, I suddenly didn’t want to go so badly anymore. My stomach plunged every time I thought about the trip in the months after finding out, and I couldn’t believe I had actually ever thought this would be a good idea. I was brave, sure, but I wasn’t THAT brave.  

Fast forward three months, a 14-hour plane ride and countless bouts of anxiety later—I must have been a little bit brave because I finally found myself in Senegal, quietly crying myself to sleep in our silent hotel room on the first night. I had just read the goodbye notes my family had secretly packed in my suitcase before I left, and I felt like such a fraud. My parents had praised me for being brave in their cards; but in reality, everything felt so scary and so impossible. Most of the people on the trip were already close friends with each other, and I decidedly was not. I had never talked to most of them before, and I was sure that I wasn’t ever going to. Plus, we hadn’t even been in Senegal for 3 hours and I had already accidently drank some of the water we had been instructed not to ever, ever drink while in the shower. What. Was. I. Thinking. Now, writing this piece, that first night in Senegal seems eerily like my first night in college (or month, let’s be real). I was completely and totally terrified, but I woke up the next morning and boarded a bus for the next plan on our agenda anyways. And I’m so, so happy I did. 

We left behind the bustle of Dakar, Senegal’s capital city, for Lambaye—the small, rural village my beloved teacher, Mr. Seck, had grown up in. As our bus veered off the main road and ventured straight into what (for reference) looked like the Sahara in The Lion King, the anxious buzzing of butterflies in my stomach began to subside. Everything around us was still and serene, and I felt a sense of calm that I hadn’t felt in days. A faint hum of chanting and cheering awaited us as we neared the village, and as I stepped down the steep stairs of our bus and into the scorching African sun, I was swarmed by a huge group of kids, parents and teachers who had all gathered to greet us. We had been assigned a “buddy” to get to know over the next few days, and mine was a 14-year-old girl named Nyanta who shyly held her hand out to me before I had even introduced myself. She led me through the gates of Lambaye’s elementary school with newfound confidence, and promptly sat me down in a circle with her friends to play Quackadilly Oso while we waited for lunch to arrive. 

The next few days with Nyanta and her friends passed by in a blur of soccer games, French lessons and meals huddled around one large tin bowl. I came back to our hostel each night feeling a type of exhausted I had never felt before: a happy exhausted. I huddled inside my mosquito net canopy each night with people that had begun to feel like people I had known all my life; tired, weary, but completely content. We laughed ourselves to sleep after finding a lizard on our ceiling one night, and held each other’s hands as we talked about the unthinkable things we had seen that day. Even though lunch at school was the only full meal many of the kids would eat that day, they still waited until they were absolutely sure that every one of their visitors was full before they reached for the chicken and rice themselves. I had never, ever, seen that kind of poverty before; nor had I ever seen that same kind of joy and generosity before, and something about it woke me up inside. I felt this deep sense of unshakable certainty that I was exactly where I needed to be, and I have been dreaming of that feeling ever since. 

As a former French colony, Senegal’s official language is French. Despite my broken and butchered (but still semi-coherent!) attempts at communication, Nyanta and I were able to get to know and understand each other in a way that I was entirely not expecting. On our last day in Lambaye, she pulled me into a somber hug, tears in both of our eyes, and slipped a tiny piece of paper with her name and phone number into my hand. That tiny slip of paper is now one of my most prized possessions—it’s taped to my wall at home, where I look at it every now and then and remember. My screensavers on my phone and computer, too, are there to remind me: that even when my schoolwork feels hard and pointless and so, so tedious, there is a reason that I’m doing all of this. We all have a reason, and mine is Senegal. A huge part of why I chose Notre Dame is because of its approach to global service and learning work. When a panel of students told me during an accepted students day that Notre Dame will “literally throw money at you to go do research in another country,” I was sold. I’m now an Anthropology and Peace Studies major, an academic path I credit completely to my Senegal experience. My dream is to go back to Senegal after college, where I want to live and work at the high-tech learning center that my incredible teacher, Mr. Seck, made a reality for all the people of his home village. 

I’ve never seen anyone look at someone else the way the children of Lambaye look at Mr. Seck; the adoration, respect and pure awe that they reserve only for his kind and smiling face is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. Even now, just thinking about the moment that I glanced over at a group of them while they listened to Mr. Seck speak about the learning center he was building for them gives me the chills. He is their idol, and he’s mine too. A dedicated and driven student, he left Lambaye to study Statistics at the University of Dakar (a huge feat in and of itself) and later Chemistry at New York University, where he got his teaching degree after deciding that office work bored him. He began teaching at a little high school in Mamaroneck, New York, where he started a club to raise money and awareness for education efforts in Senegal with some of his 10th grade Chemistry students. Students for Senegal is not a club anymore—it is an organization of hundreds, and it is changing the world. It has definitely, without a doubt, changed mine; and I am so grateful for it. Thank you, Mr. Seck.