Laura visits the village of the Batik people. (Photo courtesy of Laura Herzog)

Reflecting on my time in Senegal, I’ve written so much about what I love about being here. But I worry that I’ve been whitewashing an experience that’s been filled with personal concerns about a (literally) colorful world, and where I fit in it. In particular, I’ve spent a lot of time grappling with how I should feel about my whiteness and American “privilege” in the context of Senegal.

As a concept, “racism” in Senegal is different from racism in the U.S., which is about power imbalances within our society. In Senegal, this is a foreign concept—I’ve found that people here are very much interested in looking beyond color lines. Many Senegalese people asked me, with a tone of sad fascination, about the racism that goes on in the U.S..

Nonetheless, skin color is definitely engrained in the minds of people in Senegalese society. There is “the Negritude movement,” started by Senegal’s first president Leopold Senghor, and people here are truly “fier d’être noir” (proud to be black). Yet “race” is also obviously tied to a history of foreign oppression that has led some people to develop what I heard one Senegalese friend-of-a-friend refer to as “la mentalité nègre”—the instinct to see white skin and see an opportunity for profit.

In Senegal, I am a toubab, which is the local Wolof term for a white person. Many men are intrigued by white women for other (friendlier) reasons, but every day I feel an extra pang of sadness when the little mendiants (beggars) approach me with their donation bowls expecting more because of my skin color. There are little boys who, seeing me pass by, have paused their neighborhood game of soccer to shout across the street to me “Toubab, donne-moi un cadeau! (Give me a gift!)”

We in the program (although not all the American students are white) have learned that the term toubab comes from an Arab word for doctor; in the days of colonization, many Frenchmen carried black medical bags. Therefore, even though the term is a benign descriptor here, it connotes power and privilege.

I initially felt a nagging sense of guilt about the whole situation, especially after a visit to Senegal’s Gorée Island, the first slave trading post in Africa, prompted my host sister to say jokingly “Tu as fait ca!” (i.e. I enslaved the Senegalese people.)

Obviously, this is not true. My Senegalese society and culture professor even stopped a class conversation that began to turn in the direction of guilt saying that it is an unhealthy reaction because “Our ancestors were fucked up, but they are not here.” Furthermore, my Senegalese French teacher has us read Senegalese novels about the bourgeoisie in Dakar who aspire toward Occidental dress and pop culture, yet she laughs because she knows that skin color is not a reliable marker of wealth. She would prefer that more Senegalese people work harder for what they need.

As I’ve said, my black/white guilt was quickly replaced by a rose-colored vision of Senegal that I have talked about in my past columns: The Senegalese people, and myself, love Senegal for everything the West is perceived as not being—warm, community-based, familial. In fact, in Senegal, Dakar, which I (with my New York-based conception of “city life”) view as practically village-like, is viewed as fastpaced and morally corrupting. Dakar is very much the exception in Senegal, which is comprised mostly of small, fenced in villages, comprised of small, one-room sand-based huts with roofs made of sticks and dried grasses.

I finally visited the villages of Senegal two weeks ago, during my spring break (that’s right people, I already enjoyed mine), during which six other girls and I traveled 13 hours from Dakar (to the southeast region of Kedougou for a week-long hiking expedition. It was easily one of the most amazing experiences of my life, primarily because I was able to visit several villages. Passing through the villages, I felt a mixture of fascination and familiarity.

I also got a major perspective shift from my interactions with villagers and local guides. The people in the villages, far from being “destitute”—which, in terms of modern amenities they certainly would be in the context of American culture—are (often) making a choice. Highly aware of the Western lifestyle in Dakar and having befriended many Peace Corps volunteers, they prefer to live amidst the safety and simplicity of the largely self-sufficient village community. It is in many ways a romantic life, and a life that, in today’s modern world, is countercultural (badass, even?).

However, my new perspective definitely needs to tempered, because I don’t want to fall into the trap of “complacency.” I have met many Senegalese villagers studying in Dakar who are very interested in development and one day modernizing the villages. In my ignorance, before coming to Senegal, I hadn’t realized that it was ranked 144th on the U.N.’s 2010 world development scale, and that about 40 percent of Senegalese people are illiterate. This means that, although public education is free, many people don’t have access to it, and that medical access is not what it is the U.S. It means that, with my own eyes, I saw little boys and girls with stomachs bulging from malnutrition, belly buttons the size of apples due to crude umbilical cord removals, and I held the hand of a little boy whose eyes were ejecting green mucus from a terrible eye infection. Many of the little children were wearing dirty, tattered clothes with American slogans.

On the other hand, in Dakar, my (very giving) host family is probably more well off than my family in the U.S. in many ways. Yet, there is a conflict between the poor of Dakar, who have to light candles when the lights go out, and the rich, like my family, who have a generator. Just like in the U.S., there are people who see modern things and want them and feel the injustice of not being able to attain them.

So what is poverty and privilege in the end? In my mind, there is poverty that comes from materialism and poverty from lacking the basics. I’m not suggesting that those with electricity should give it up, or that people who want it shouldn’t get it, but I do believe that we who have it need to be more grateful for it. And in my view, the only way to truly attain “human progress” is not by focusing on acquiring more iPads, but to focus on correcting past (often color-based) injustices, and getting everyone in the world a baseline level of health and education.