By Luis de Grandes

On this trip, you can experience and observe many perspectives. That is, you expect something from a place and then you discover it yourself by living the experience. We have seen many facets of Senegal and in the end we have had perspectives on all of them before, during, and after our time. 

At the beginning of the trip, we settled in the town of Kecouta and I did not have very high expectations from what I had been told and what I saw at first. I imagined a complicated economic situation and a not very developed town. This was my perspective of the town when I first laid eyes on it but before I met it. When I got there and lived for several days with the inhabitants of the town, I realized that I was partly right because they did not have many resources. But, I noticed that they made it look like something good. That is, they took advantage of the little they had and enjoyed it. There was not too much. What they had they used to the maximum, and they made it seem that the poverty of the people was actually perfect and worth enjoying.  It did not decide whether they were fulfilled.

Now, we are experiencing the second part of the trip more in the big city. And although we haven’t been here for many days and we still have a long way to go, I have paid a lot of attention to this place. I came with the idea that the city was going to be another extreme, that is, lust. But I realized that this is not the full case. It is true that Dakar has more luxuries and advantages than the town of Kecouta, but I do not see the people enjoying it as much as those back in the village. I see them enjoying what they have less and therefor seeking more.

In a simple way, these differences are due to the progress of the places. That is, the town of Kecouta has been the same for a long time, it has not received many economic or social progressions… but I have learned that there is nothing necessarily wrong with it because at the end of the day they still have the things that they are comfortable with and that make them feel like themselves the way they have for centuries.

By contrast, in the city there is a progression and a more progressive evolution in economic, cultural, social issues… Which gives more variety, more options to the people who live in it, but it also implies that many people are against it. There is no common way of living in the city and that means that there is no common connection to happiness or fulfillment.

And in the end I have realized that the important thing is not whether the place has luxuries or advantages… but rather how the people have adapted to it and learn to take advantage of it as much as possible, and at this point in the journey I feel that the people of the countryside – of the authentic Senegal – enjoy more with fewer things and city people enjoy less with more things. At the end of the day, I have realized that the moral of all this is that the person who needs the least can be happier than the person who has the most. It’s all a matter of perspective.