The final countdown

Well, it's finally here, the last week of my program in Senegal. I have very mixed feelings. It's certain that I'm going to miss Alex immensely as well as the culture and life of this country. Yet, there are tons of people and places I've been missing during my time here and I'm anxious to return to all of that for a while. I don't know where my life will be going in a few months after the big graduation day. AKA scariest day EVER! I like the unknown actually. It keeps things adventurous.

I've been thinking for the past few days that despite my minor complaints about how the MSID program handled some student issues I would still recommend it to anyone. I can't think of any other three month period in my life that has changed me so much. Parts of that are nothing to do with MSID at all but it's sure that some credit is due to them. The classes weren't exactly what I was hoping for but I did, in the long run, learn an awful lot. Even though in the end things did not go flawlessly with my family I am still incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to be welcomed into the home of actual Senegalese people to see how that functions. It's unfortunate that the differences between us could not be bridged because of the fact that it became so incredibly personal with me dating their son but regardless, it's impossible that the family and my time spent there could ever leave my memory. My internship was an irreplacable experience that I feel the program is completely responsible for finding. All in all I don't believe that most other people who are lucky enough to come discover this country have also the good fortune to find themselves being almost fully integrated as we as MSID students have been. There will always be glitches even in things that appear at first glance to be perfectly structured. The fact is that anything run by human beings- especially a program that works to mix individuals from very different worlds- is going to have some setbacks. Such is life.

I feel I've learned so much about development and poverty although I know that there is even more left to learn. The issue is very daunting but after being here I feel certain absolutely that I've found exactly the field I was meant to enter. What would've been really impossible to realize about development without having lived here is how cultural certain aspects of it can be. Or how some aspects of it are so intertwined that it becomes difficult to see any possible solution.

I've done a lot of traveling during the past four years and I thought of myself as very multi-cultural and very open-minded. If anyone described me as ethnocentric I would've been tremendously insulted. Now I almost feel ready to insult myself in that way. I can't help but compare the functions of my own country with that of things here. I hate that I can't change my own thoughts enough to see things in a different way. It proves only that I still have much to learn which is why even after I graduate I'll still be a student of the world.