My Crowning Achievement in Peace Corps

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If you’ve ever wanted to make a celebrity, all you need to do is put a white person on a black continent. From the second I got off the plane, I have gotten more attention than I ever could have wanted. The villagers truly treat me like I’m Paris Hilton-- everyone thinks I am super rich (since I’m an American), as well as stupid (probably due to the fact that I have the language proficiency of a 2 year old). So, I’ve been in Senegal for almost a month now, and things are just as crazy as the day I arrived. First of all, this is nothing like South Africa. South Africa, despite its internal problems, was physically beautiful. Mountains and vineyards were everywhere I turned (except for in the townships). Here in Senegal, it’s trash and cinderblocks that beckon me everywhere I turn. I’m sure it is beautiful in its own way, and I can only hope that I will soon begin to be to love Senegal as much as I will always l...

SENEGAL MEETS RICK

My Dad just came!! I feel like I was preparing for his visit for so long, and then it just happened so fast. He came in to help with an eye clinic Peace Corps was putting on in my regional capital. Dad at Work We had a group of American doctors come over to perform surgeries/consultations and to teach the Senegalese doctors an appropriate method for removing cataracts. We got my Dad involved, and bing, bang, boom…Poppa Brooks comes to town. It was so cool to not only just see him but to also work with him. Ya’ll should have seen him. Patients gathered early and they stayed late. He was like robot-seeing patients from sun-up to sundown. It was a task just to get him to take a lunch break. I was so proud. His equipment was old, and his patients were anything but normal, but he tirelessly checked eye after eye, and set them up for surgery. I mainly translated or filled prescriptions for glasses, but I did get to see a couple surgeries, and I even to...

Amerik to Here! And Back!

They came. They saw. And they conquered. Jenn and Margaret just left the land o’ Pulaar for the land o’ plenty. They gave up three weeks of their real-world lives to see what encompasses my semi-real-world life here. It was three weeks that sped by too fast for sure. We laughed. We cried. We drank. We ate. We declined marriage proposals. We WERE Senegal. They did it all, and to be perfectly honest, I definitely didn’t make it easy for them. To call them troopers, isn’t even close to enough. In short, they faced not only culture shock, but also cases of the African stomach, threats of gangrene, intense sunburn, broken-down transportation, midnight goat and donkey calls, and among other things, the craziness of the 4 th of July annual Peace Corps Senegal party. We started the trip in Dakar. They arrived early in the morning, fresh-eyed and energized for all Senegal’s opportunities. ...

Tales of a Thirty-Something

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