Reality Check

I came to Senegal for many reasons: one of them was to learn how to live more simply, and with that, learn how most of the underdeveloped world lives. After being here for only two months I have seen poverty and been around living standards very different from our own, but have compared it relative to Senegal, and not as much the US. In first living in Dakar us girls made comparisons of the differences in housing, thinking some of us lived in pretty poor families. By the end of our stay however, we had become aware of the fact that all of us lived in middle to upper-middle class families. Here in Saint-Louis we knew that living on campus would give us yet another perspective of life in Senegal, however as in any campus around the world, you are going to get another division from the rest of the country. The University of Gaston-Berger is the best school in the country, as well as the West African region. The students here are all very fortunate to have families that were able to sacrifice enough for them to of continued their studies all the way through high school, all in the hopes that after getting through college they will be able to get a job and in return help their family.

In Senegal the government pays for every student to attend the University, if accepted. This includes housing and a small living stipend that gets disbursed once a month. Upon first hearing this, my fiscally conservative mind couldn’t believe that the government was paying all of this for everyone. After discussion with many students here it started to make more sense to me. For starters, by providing higher education to a population of its citizens, Senegal is trying to create some opportunity to lift itself out of its underdeveloped state. Leaving individual families to pay for their children is almost out of the question, and leaving students to pay for themselves through a “summer job” or working during the year is completely out of the question. Already there is an employment problem here, and second of all, students take being a student very seriously. My second realization was that the US does do things similarly through scholarships, financial aid, and financed loans. That aside, I still felt that students here almost had it better than those in the US…until I talked with my roommate about the reality of their situation. Mbéré gave me the example of her family, one that I know is applicable to many others here. The living stipend that the students receive is approximately $60 for the entire month (and that’s for the older students, the first years only get $36)! Even for here, that is relatively nothing. For her, this is all the money she has in the world. She has never known her father, who died when she was really little, and her mother doesn’t work. There are four kids in her family, she is the second oldest with her 27 year old sister being the oldest. According to her, her family has been supported by her mother’s younger brother for most of her life. As she said, “if we had an older brother, he probably would be working to support my family, but unfortunately there is only my sister who is working to support her husband through his studies. My mother can’t get a job because she is not educated, the only thing she maybe could do would be to be a merchant, but alas you need money to start something like that.” Thus goes the wicked circle of many family situations. The differences between who have it good are the people who have family members who can afford to send a little extra money to their student at the University so they don’t have to solely subsist on the stipend, and those who don’t, like Mbéré.

This conversation really put me in my place as I realized that whenever I told people, “really I don’t have that much money, I have to pay for this entire year by myself”, in relation to the type of budget they are on, I am ridiculously wealthy. I was extremely humbled by my roommate as she took the discussion with the utmost acceptance, finishing it with, “life can be difficult, but that is life. Who knows why people have to face difficulties like this, but perhaps it is just God’s will. It is life.” To top it all off, she not only survives on the stipend, but economizes on months like December so that she can buy fabric for her younger sister, so that she can have a pretty dress for Tabaski. This talk has completely given me a different perspective and understanding of how people view money here, something that I could discuss from many different angles. There are so many lessons to be learned from this that I hope to never lose. I thought that everyone back in the US might benefit from hearing about how people make just a little go a long way, and how much people sacrifice for their families.