Teaching Volunteer Stories, Senegal

Teaching in Senegal - Sushant Mukherjee Three weeks into my sojourn in Saint Louis, and in spite of the occasional, almost always good-natured cries of 'toubab' from street children on the grand Pont Faidherbe, I feel almost like a local, even if I don't look or speak like one. Moreover, my volunteer work, which has so far involved teaching computer classes to high school children and teachers, and painting a primary school, is hardly earth shattering in its scope or significance, and yet I often feel more useful now than I did in my two and a half years with the United Nations.

Teaching in Senegal - Danielle Paffard 'Writing about Christmas in St Louis is actually really hard, primarily because it doesn't really exist here! The majority of the population is Muslim and they are hugely more excited by the prospect of killing the biggest available sheep on an unspecified date in January (Tabaski) than trying to formulate - in the absence of chimneys - an alternative delivery mechanism for the fat toubab in red and white!

Teaching in Senegal - Alex Midha I left for Senegal on the 3rd January, still slightly hung-over from New Year and feeling completely under prepared for my two month stay - (except, I'll admit, for the comfort of travel socks and the Rough Guide to West Africa). I jumped on the plane at Heathrow and turned my attention to teaching. I had spent a month in Paris over the autumn as an Assistant Anglais but I couldn't imagine that my time in Senegal would be anything like this. True enough, the two were extremely different experiences.

Teaching in Senegal - Alice Harvey 'So you're back! Your doting mother has travelled through the night (a 90 mile trip which required almost as much preparation and timekeeping as your own little jaunt to Africa) to greet you with bleary eyes at International Arrivals and hand over the car keys for the drive home! At which point you hurl your filthy bulging rucksack, large, medium and small djembés (Senegalese drums) into the boot and try to work out which one was the accelerator and which was the brake again? Help!

Teaching in Senegal - Anna Reed The two weeks of summer school went well and there was a big party to celebrate the end of classes. All the teachers - myself included, though I felt a bit of a part-timer - were given a diploma and thanked by the various members of the community and school governors. There was a lot of hand-clapping, dancing and plays about SIDA, then someone had the bright idea, "why don't the teachers dance?"

Teaching in Senegal - Leila Mulloy Saint Louis was a fantastic town to live in for three months. I was on the teaching project in Senegal which offered such a variety of experiences, from working with full classrooms of 60 teenagers, to taking adult evening classes. Although teaching can be daunting at first, my first lesson luckily coincided with Bob Marley's anniversary and I was asked to give a rendition of 'Three Little Birds'.