By Ozzy Brown

Playing with the children in the village of Niognani was an important step in my understanding of Senegal. In the late morning with the harsh but beautiful Senegal sun beating down on our group we set out to play with the children of the village. We were the main event in the village that day so upon exiting Kekouta’s compound almost every single kid not in school swarmed us. Although it was a frenzy the children were extremely polite; each member in our group not in engaged in playing soccer had their hands held by the kids as the throng of people moved into what served as a town square.

In that town square playing with the children is where I learned a lesson about the people of Senegal and my treatment of them that will stick with me forever. Later in the morning, while most of our group had gone off to watch the butcher prepare our meat for lunch, Lilian, Maya, and I sat with the kids under a flowery tree that provided shade for everyone. Because the others were not with us we were overwhelmed with the sheer amount of kids and entertaining all of them. So to remedy this we came up with a plan. We were going to teach the children how to play hopscotch. Lilian started drawing boxes in the sand in the shape of a hopscotch game. As this was happening one of the girls began helping us create the hopscotch boxes. Although this was unexpected I thought nothing of it and as the box was finished Lilian began jumping on the little hopscotch squares. After she finished we attempted to show the kids how to play but before that could happen of the older kids, around thirteen or fourteen, picked up a rock and threw it onto one of the hopscotch squares. She then jumped through the hopscotch squares, skipping the square with the rock on it. When she reached the end she turned around and went back, picking up the rock on the way. At that particular moment we realized that we had all completely forgot how to play hopscotch. It was a humbling moment for us and we laughed about it while we jumped through the hopscotch squares with the ring.

While in the moment it made for a good chortle it was also a moment of realization for me. What I realized is that these kids and the people of Senegal were not actually different from our group in many ways at all, sure their environment was different from ours, which contributes to other major diffrences but none of those differences make them so unlike us. I realized I could see myself in these kids and that they had the same curiosity and zest for life that I had when I was a child. I had treated these kids diffrently to me because I thought they were so different from me and that was a mistake. Just because these people’s place is different does not mean that they do things so vastly different that it feels alien in fact it feels just like home. The kids and people of Senegal I connected with are all part of one big community of people sharing the earth together. No matter how different their traditions or their place may be they are still closely connected with everyone else in the world.

Coming from the U.S. and taking a break from being around my communities back home was different but I was still with my community because no matter how similar or different the people in Senegal are they are still my people