Senegal便り

Hello my dear friends in GSID! This is Ayaka Iwatsuki from Senegal. Hope you are having a good time in there.
It has been about 4 months since I left Japan and came to this warm-hearted country, Senegal. Time flies! I am doing great and enjoying the life here very much.
As a JICA volunteer, I am teaching aesthetic education (music, physical education and arts) in elementary schools in the prefecture of Kebemer which is located in the north-west part of Senegal (3 hours away from Dakar). In this prefecture, there are more than 200 elementary schools. It is impossible to visit all the schools but every day I visit various schools in country side and city side to teach the subjects with the cooperation with local teachers. I learn something new every day! I think that Kyohei in Malawi does almost same things as me. Kebemer is the capital of the prefecture, so it is not too country side but still there are some school issues. Especially, the aesthetic education which I am dealing with has some troubles such as no interests of teachers, not enough materials to teach and so on. I’ve started my work around 2 month ago. I have many difficulties to do so since Senegal is francophone country and the local languages like Wolof are strongly used here. However, I still enjoy seeing and playing with cute kids. Also, of course this linguistic situation stimulates my research interests very much! Before coming here, I don't have any teaching experiences in elementary schools and the fact worried me so much but now I am positively thinking that I want/can do something for the kids in here. From the beginning of July to the end of September, Schools in Senegal are on summer vacation and currently I am mainly doing some activities in a youth center.
I believe that GSID is super busy for finals and fieldworks now. Good luck everyone and thank you for your attention :)

Ayaka Iwatsuki