{"id":50791,"date":"2012-08-07T14:56:25","date_gmt":"2012-08-07T12:56:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cesie.org\/experiences\/voices-from-around-the-world-senegal\/"},"modified":"2019-04-18T16:01:13","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T14:01:13","slug":"voices-from-around-the-world-senegal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cesie.org\/en\/experiences\/voices-from-around-the-world-senegal\/","title":{"rendered":"Voices From Around the World – Senegal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reports from our volunteers through the EVS volunteer experience living in distant countries <\/em> (SVE Project – Voices From Around the World III)<\/em>, not only for miles, but also for culture and traditions. Often the match close and prolonged contact with different cultures is a source of great fascination, sometimes leaves upset and stimulates deep reflection on your company and on that host. The convergence \/ divergence in the protagonists creates a point of view is not sweetened and disillusioned, setting in motion a series of questions that sometimes they can trace the biographical and professional future paths of people involved in such projects.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I live in a city called S\u00e9dhiou, in the south of Senegal , Casamance. Here the main ethnic group is the Mandingo one, the most tied to its traditions and, I have to say it, the most chauvinist of Senegal. Women always work in here: in the ricefields, in the fields, in the house, everywhere. I never see them sitting under \u00a0the mango trees, making tea and watching people passing by. If a man is 3 meters far from his glass, he does not stand up himself, but he asks his sister, who he is teaching a card game to, to go and take him the glass; and she does it without saying any word.<\/p>\n

In this place it happens to me to hear\u00a0 a 20-years-old boy say that men and women are not equal, that if he hits his sister because of her close-fitting clothes\u00a0 it does not mean \u00a0doing violence to her but it means \u201ccorrecting\u201d her, I think he meant\u00a0 \u201cforming\u201d me. I met\u00a0 this boy\u00a0 in a training session held by Amnesty International whose topic was violence against women fighting. The most bizarre thing is that his speech hardly caused\u00a0 the slightest reactions from the training session organizers. I can not even imagine what this boy really thinks.<\/p>\n

Sometimes girls look at me with distrust, I can feel their sight staring at me and I do not understand why, I do not know if I have to feel\u00a0 at fault or if I have to ask them what is wrong;\u00a0 in any case they hardly speak to me.<\/p>\n

If they have to give me an example of men seduction or attention grabbing, the sole technique they know is about close-fitting clothes and sexually provocative behavior. And they are educated girls who are speaking and thinking that intelligence does not help that much with men.<\/p>\n

Finally I find out that in this area of Senegal\u00a0 95% of women suffered excision,\u00a0 a practice that mutilate the possibility to feel sexual pleasure forever, excluding \u00a0the other risks.<\/p>\n

This\u00a0 topic usually is not discussed , especially with the Toubabs (white people).<\/p>\n

Thus I think about the beauty of these women and about their sweet smiles, about \u00a0their\u00a0 heavy and loud laughs,\u00a0 their strait and proud backs and I ask myself is it possible to live a life on such \u00a0conditions and to keep smiling, without rebelling to it. The more secrets about their lives I can steal , the less I am able to look at them\u00a0 the same way as before.<\/p>\n

I walk along the main street of S\u00e9dhiou with these thoughts in my\u00a0 mind, on a Friday afternoon at 2 p. m., the most important religious moment of the week.<\/p>\n

I am deep in my thoughts as I approach the Mosque, I look around and I realize that it is crowded with people who are praying, and so is every angle of the street all around.<\/p>\n

The silence surrounding me is broken only by the prayer, mystic chorus of voices.<\/p>\n

Walking in that magic space I feel\u00a0 myself enshrouded by great respect \u00a0for this community,\u00a0 gathering \u00a0entirely to pray in honour of the death of three women in a car accident the day before.<\/p>\n

Two aspects of the same place, so different in their inner essence and in what they communicate to me.<\/p>\n

Understanding all this is difficult, I do not manage to do it sometimes.<\/p>\n

Letizia Marongiu<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reports from our volunteers through the EVS volunteer experience living in distant countries, not only for miles, but also for culture and traditions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":57668,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26913],"tags":[],"unita":[],"class_list":["post-50791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-experiences"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t