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A Different Kind of Student: U.S.-Senegal exchange attracts
unique students to a unique programMasarah Van Eyck, Division of International Studies
Finally, I learned to say: Okay, lets just adopt the old phrase inshallah. Whats going to happenis going to happen. And if it does? Well, then cest pas grave.
Maren Larsen, UGB exchange student, 2007-08
When Maren Larsen landed in Dakar,
she had a great many expectations. I had
always wanted to live in Africa. It was a whole
dream of mine! she says one night last
January over bottles of Flag beer and Perrier in
Saint-Louis, Senegal.
She and nine other American students
have met up with Jim Delehanty, UWMadison faculty advisor of their exchange program, in the
bar of the Htel la Rsidence in the former capital of the historic French colony. This year, all
participants on the program are females, which isnt unusual, and all are enrolled at UW
Madison (most hail from hometowns around the state). Their majors range from agriculture to
business to literature and peace studies.
While undoubtedly westerneven Midwesternin appearance, the women exhibit
evidence of having lived in a remarkably different country since September. Some wear a mix of
Old Navy capris and Senegalese headscarves wrapped four inches above their heads. Another
arrives in a personally tailored turquoise Senegalese dress and shoulder-skimming earrings.
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Most wear locally made wooden-soled, leather
sandals, their white toes and painted toenails
crusted with the brown sand that covers
everything.
And then I got here, Larsen continues,
and for a long time it was just really hardthe
cold showers, the holes instead of toilets. It
wasnt necessarily bad, she hastens to add, it was just a lot to take in. The students n
recognition.
od in
Still, when I was down, I kept thinking: this is my dream! Why arent I loving this?
Delehanty annually travels the
approximately15 hours it takes to provide mid-
year support to the 10 American students enrolled
at the Universit Gaston Berger (UGB). Offered
through UWMadisons office of International
Academic Programs (IAP), the year-long exchange
has accepted almost 150 participants from a handful of American universities since 1991. This is
Delehantys twelfth-or-so midterm visit, which means he has served as one of the programs
faculty advisors pretty much from the start.
Delehanty, who is also the associate director of UWMadisons African Studies Program,
is here to advise the students on their the fieldwork research projects that each will transform
into a 35 to 50 page paper within the next few months.
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It is also a chance to check in with the students, to see how each is faring in one of the
nations most innovative, unique, and challenging opportunities for undergraduate academic
study abroad.
Hitting the wall
Some call it hitting the wall. Others, the midterm slump.
Its almost like clockwork, Delehanty had told me during our four-hour car ride from
Dakar to Saint-Louis. Its sort of a fixture in the study-abroad experience.
And this is no less true in Saint-Louis. By now, some are over the novelty of being called
toubab(white person) in the busy markets. Most are craving hot showers and flush toilets.
Others have just said goodbye to boyfriends or siblings who visited for the holidays; now they
are facing another semester before seeing them again.
Many of the students will confide to us over that week that if they felt they could leave
right then, they probably would.
All of them say they wouldnt trade this experience for the world.
Learning to judge from w ithin
These students are not tourists, Baydallaye Kane, professor of English and the on-site
program coordinator at UGB, tells me.
His office, on the second floor of the universitys main building, is bright with light from
one whole window of walls. A framed black-and-white photo of Gaston Berger, Saint-Louis
native and Afro-French philosopher, hangs on the wall by the door.
Although we now have a number of exchange programs, the UW program was the first,
and is very unique he says.
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Kane, one of the early architects of the UGB programtogether with UWMadison
African Languages and Literature professor Edris Makward and then-associate director of IAP
Joan Raduchawas determined to design opportunities for the greatest cultural immersion
possible.
These students really experience our
culture. Thats what I like so much about this
program. Its a cultural exchange at least as
much as it is academic.
Accordingly, the program consists of three
pillars: residential immersion in UGB courses and
African student life, intense instruction in the
Wolof language, and an innovative research project tailored to each students interest.
And so after a month-long stay with a Senegalese host family in Dakar for early
orientation and language instruction, each student lives in UGB housing with a Senegalese
roommate. Like everyone else, they wash their clothes in plastic pails and take cold showers for
the year. And they eat chebu gen(fish and rice) and other local fare at the outdoor blue-
terraced buvetteas goats amble along the acacia-lined paths between buildings.
Arguably, students might find downtown Saint-Louis, about a ten-minute taxi ride from
the university, a more stimulating environment. There, market-lined streets and nightclubs offer
color and more touristy opportunities. But that would distance them from ordinary student life
at UGB.
In this setting, their intensive Wolof instruction comes in handy. While all of the
Americans on this program arrive with some facility in French, an official language of the
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country, they receive year-long language instruction in Wolof, the most widely spoken language
in Senegal.
As Jo Ellen Fair, UWMadison journalism professor and faculty co-director of the UGB
program, explains: After a while you dont want the Senegalese students to switch into French
every time you walk up to them. If theres a Wolof conversation going on, you want to join it in
Wolof.
The last of the programs three-prong immersion mission is perhaps the most
innovative: the fieldwork projects which require these students to research some aspect of
Senegalese life, culture, or environment. To do so, students must navigate communities beyond
the university, where French and Wolof are just two of many languages spoken.
Getting students out into the community is especially important in a country like
Senegal, Delehanty explains. All universities are an abstract of society at large, but in Africa
the university is especially distant from the day-to-day lives of most citizens. (Never mind the
rarity of higher education: approximately 50 percent of Senegalese men and 30 percent of
women cannot read or write.)
Students have tackled such subjects as the struggling fishing industry, conflict resolution
in the Casamance region, and the role of Chinese merchants in
Senegalese economy (see sidebar).
This was particularly challenging to establish, explains
former IAP director and fellow program founder Joan Raducha.
The concept of undergraduate students doing fieldwork is not
really part of the French system. But it was Kane, who himself
was trained in a traditional French system, who really pushed
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for the inside perspective that fieldwork projects would provide.
Baydallaye is one of the most creative administrators Ive ever encountered, Raducha
says by way of explanation. (Indeed, as the newly elected dean of UGBs College of Letters and
Human Sciences, he is now implementing a major, and equally creative, restructuring of the
universitys entire curricular structure.)
Exchange opportunities for American students are very important in terms of cultural
tolerance, Kane says of the value of cultural immersion. Unlike their grandparentswho didnt
necessarily have the opportunity to experience other culturesthese students can see another
culture from the inside.
Thats important because then they can judge a culture from that place, he continues.
Its not okay to say I dont like this about a culture when you dont understand it. But if you
understand the culture and then dont like something about it, thats different.
But that is not to say its easy.
Scaling the wall
What exactly is so uncomfortable about the year in Senegal? Certainly Saint-Louis is a
modern city by West African standards. And the Universit Gaston-Berger, founded in 1990, is
regarded as the most advanced institution of higher learning in the country.
When we visit in the middle of winter, the weather is 80 degrees and sunny every day
it being the cool and dry season of the year. And the Senegalese we meet do justice to their
reputation as open and warm people. (In fact, each student recounts with equal parts pride and
humility the week spent celebrating the Muslim holiday Tabaski with the families of their
Senegalese friends.)
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Were definitely not sending them into
the bush, says Delehanty, who knows
something about that. He spent several years in
Niger, another former French colony, while
serving in the Peace Corps and, later,
researching settlement of marginal lands for his
doctorate in geography.
Still, most of the students have never navigated in a Muslim culture, where a religion
unfamiliar to most of them permeates social mores and requires different comportment: a more
modest dress for women, for example. And seemingly small things can loom large over time,
for example, only extending ones right hand in social situations, not the left.
Combine that with a more relaxed sense of time, an intensely social culture, and
diverging sanitary routines, and theres a point they have to abandon many of their own
ingrained patterns and expectations. Each student has to find his or her own way of handling
such disorientation.
Some solutions are practical. One student learned to manage the power outages that
interrupt routine errands by taking a book wherever she goes to just wait it out.
All of them recognize that just the act of seeing oneself through such challenges, which
sometimes require just sitting through discomfort, has helped them to foster a different attitude
entirelyone that they will draw on long beyond the program year.
I think the wall that I hit was built by my expectations, says Larsen. I had to learn not
to get worked up over things. Now no matter what happens, I feel like things will work out.
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I learned to have faith, says Catherine Skroch, who has just returned from conducting
peace studies and conflict resolution in the Casamance. Finally, I just said: Im going to close
my eyes and hold my breath and jump into it, and hope it all turns out alright.
Political Science major Brenda Lazarus assesses her experience with pride: Im more
independent now, she says. Im more confident that whatever situation Im in I can deal with
it.
A different kind of student
Its a different kind of student who
chooses to go to Senegal, program coordinator
Andrea Muilenburg had told me before I left for
my trip with Delehanty. They are more
independent, she had said, because they have to
conduct a fieldwork project without the oversight
of an on-site advisor. They are also more disciplined and mature.
Its not a regular academic environment, Muilenburg explained. They dont have the
luxuries that students would have in other countries.
Raducha says one of the biggest challenges has been designing productive academic
years when whole courses can be canceled or postponed for weeks at a time.
For the most part, its the students who show remarkable discipline and drive.
Indeed, the alumni of the UGB program have proven to form an uncommonly successful
lot. Along with a disproportionately high number of future Peace Corps volunteers, a striking
number have gone on to practice medicine or enter NGOs.
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Sarah Nehrling, who participated in the program during the 2003-04 academic year,
recently returned to work for a Senegalese NGO in Theis, an important city between Dakar and
Saint-Louis.
When we visit her in a caf on our way back to Dakar, she updates Jim on the status of
her fellow UGB alumni. Three are in the Peace Corps and another is earning her masters in
public health from UWMadison. Nehrling herself is now working for her third NGO in West
Africa since graduating back at UWMadison in 2005. She plans to stay at least a year and a
half.
With hindsight, Nehrling acknowledges that, while such a unique opportunity draws
exceptional individuals, something in the experience itself solidifies their compassion and
resolve.
Theres a big difference between [the students on UWMadisons exchange program]
and the other foreign students attending UGB with less preparation and immersion, Nehrling
tells us. American students on other programs, for example, only stay for one semester and
most often live in separate housing. Some of those students say, I didnt learn a thing about
Senegal when I was there, I admit it.
They dont experience the same level of stress and discomfort, she explains. There is
a cracking point in study abroad when youre just frustrated with so many things. And you
either learn how to deal with it, or you completely give up in the negative sense. You just tune
out.
So is it just a level of discomfort that makes UW students more successful here?
Delehanty asks.
No, not that, she corrects. Its the sense of self that results from having to adapt to such
intense cultural immersion.
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SIDEBAR A:
A culture in a cultu re in a culture
When we meet her at the campus blue-terraced, open-air buvette, Maren Larsen tells
us she has chosen to research the place of Chinese merchants in the Senegalese economy.
This, as it turns out, has led her to speak with everyone from a cultural attach of Senegals
Economic Mission to street merchants in Dakars Chinatown. She has also enrolled in Chinese
language courses, which UGB is offering for the first time this year.
But because her Chinese is rudimentary at best and most of the Asian shop owners
speak neither French nor Wolof, Larsen found herself approaching the Senegalese merchants
who hawk goods outside the Chinese owners stores. They would be effective intermediaries,
she thought.
I learned to bargain with them, Larsen says. I said: Ill give you an English lesson if
you let me interview you about your work.
Unfortunately, the English lesson takes twice as long as the interview! she laughs.
Still, she says shes gained an invaluable perspective on the informal economy between
the Chinese and Senegalese merchants, the latter of whom often purchase their goods from the
stores directly behind them.
Im doing real research, she says, and not just from an American perspective. The
Senegalese are asking the same questions Im asking [Why did these Chinese merchants
suddenly appear and what are they doing here?], so I dont feel like Im just examining their
culture as an outsider.
I feel like a real UGB student.
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SIDEBAR B:
A different kind of program
It didnt take long for us to ask what the people at UGB needed in exchange, Raducha
says.
Both institutions were committed to building a program that truly benefited each
partnereven when this meant accommodating very different needs. This commitment has
required the programs administrators to be almost as flexible as the students it sends abroad.
Joan was genuinely invested in giving UGB a fair half of the exchange, Kane says.
Even if that meant finding positively unique solutions.
By the second year of the exchange, UWMadison was welcoming top applicants from
UGB to spend a year studying in Wisconsin. In some years, one Senegalese student came to
Wisconsin, and in others years there were two or three. Because of economic disparities,
attending UWMadison is out of the reach of most Senegalese students, so fees from the
American participants contributed to the costs of bringing Senegalese counterparts to
Wisconsin. (Generally, one UGB student could come to Wisconsin for every four UWMadison
students sent to Senegal.)
Within just a few years, it was clear that this was an untenable arrangement: fewer than
one out of ten students from Saint-Louis who visited Madison returned to Senegal. Instead,
most parlayed their Madison experience into admission to a U.S. graduate school. Educational
advancement of this kind certainly was good for the participating Senegalese students and
admirable in every regard, but program organizers on both sides were concerned that extended
or permanent stays in the U.S. would limit the exchanges direct benefits to UGB and Senegal.
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They just sort of wove into the social fabric here, Raducha explains. Indeed, several
have obtained Ph.D.s and assumed faculty posts in American universities. As of yet, none has
returned to teach at UGB. A plan B was needed.
We really listened to the universitys administrators as they were figuring out what they
needed in exchange, Raducha remembers.
Unlike UGB, which is still growing, UWMadison is completely settled, says Kane,
making it a perfect place for a scholar in need of a library and fellow colleagues. We realized
we didnt need to strengthen the experiences of our students as much as we needed to offer
professional development opportunities to our top faculty. This, we figured, would lead them to
return to UGBand in turn wed attract further top students from West Africa to our university.
Now three Saint-Louis faculty and administrators spend three to five months every year
conducting research at UWMadison.
I feel very good about what we did with Senegal, Raducha says. A partnership means
both sides benefit. And if that means changing our rules, well, you have to do whats useful to
both sides.
On UGBs campus, the fact that UWMadison students are paying for other peoples
education and professional opportunities is not lost on program participants.
At first we thought it was weird that there was this arrangement, says one Wisconsin
student who joined us on our bumpy car ride back to Dakar. But it sort of makes sense. Like,
why shouldnt my tuition help pay for their growth? Why wouldnt it?
Says another student, Personally, Im glad that they can do this, now that Ive seen the
resources here, I have to stop myself from saying our libraries are the size of city blocks! I
realized how much we [UWMadison] have to offer.
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In fact, the arrangement has nothing to do with charity, and the costs to Wisconsin
participants are nil. UGB waives most tuition, room, and board costs for Wisconsin participants
precisely so that the fees that the American students pay can be reserved for UGB faculty and
staff research trips to UWMadison.
Its a new era in international education. No longer need large research universities
merely consume the educational and cultural experiences of other countries. Exchanges like
UWMadisons Senegal program value the fact that each institution has something different to
offer and gain from the arrangement. Both stand to grow because of it.
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