Senegal
WWS Correspondence Suggestions
Things volunteers can write to their correspondence match about when they've run out of ideas
Don’t know what to write about to your correspondence match in the states? Remember, the goal is just to help them visualize and understand life in Senegal. Here are some ideas:
Get your village’s students and teachers involved
• Have them draw pictures of something specific and mail them to your US class. Ask the US class to draw the same thing and mail it to you, show the kids in your village, compare how we (do or don’t) see things differently
• Have a girl student tell you what a typical day for her is like. Have a boy student do the same. Record and send to your match school, asking if they see a difference between the two. Have the US teacher do the same, compare the difference with students in your village
• Ask what students think of the US/Americans, send ‘results’ to your match school
• Ask kids what their favorite things to do/eat are, send to US class
• Ask the students if they have any messages/greetings/questions for the class in the US
Tell them a story
• There are so many folk tales and superstitions in Senegal. Ask around (people of all ages can fill you in) and record one to send to your match class. Ask your match class to write you some American superstitions that you can tell to your village
• Have someone sing you a song and record and translate the lyrics (a good way to get to know your village and practice the language). The songs represent a lot about your village’s culture (i.e. the Pulaar chin tattooing song)
• Ask an older person in your village to tell you about “the olden days” in the village – clothes, food, how they farmed, what money was, etc.
A typical day
• Many teachers just want to hear about what a typical day for you in your village is like. Divide your day into separate letters – morning, afternoon, and night (gives you more to write about)
• Write about what your five senses detect in village – cows, sheep and roosters waking you up in the morning, the texture of millet in your mouth, the smell of burning trash, the taste of attaya after cheb, seeing your village for the first time… you get it. Paint a picture!
Send photographs
• Whether by email or printing and mailing them, they will love pictures of your village and you in it
• Take photos of people doing things Americans are unfamiliar with (pounding millet, gathering firewood, pulling water, etc) and ask the (US) class to guess what they are doing
• Take photos of people doing things everyone does (pretending to cook, playing with a doll, playing soccer, putting on makeup, watching TV, dancing, etc) to show similarities between Senegalese and American kids
Write a lesson plan
• Use your village as an inspiration/source of material to write a lesson plan tailored specifically to the US class (their subject/age level)
• Look at the posted lesson plans here for guidance or just pick one that matches the grade and subject matter of your match school and email the link
Use your sector
• Tell them what your sector is and write about what you’re doing/what you observe at site that has to do with that sector. Some ideas…
• Health – are there toilets/what are they like, hand washing practices/beliefs about soap, attitudes towards doctors/hospitals/western medicine, traditional medicine, superstitions about how to stay healthy/what’s not healthy, how you get drinking water/if it’s clean, nutrition/lack thereof, etc
• EE – if/how people garden, pests and pesticides, attitudes towards trees/deforestation, attitude toward environment/how they use it for their purposes (trees, plants, etc), the 3 seasons and what they bring, types of trees around, etc
• Agfo – challenges to growing trees, attitudes towards re/deforestation, about live fencing, the kinds of fruit trees available, etc
• Ag – types of crops grown in fields, challenges to growing each crop, seasonal influences, tools/methods (i.e. horses and children) for field work, etc
• Urban Ag – if/how people garden in urban areas, tricks you use for gardening (tires, hanging beds, etc), challenges/pests, most popular things to plant, how much vegetables cost (relatively), etc
• CED – most common small enterprises here/what they’re like, challenges to helping people with their business ideas, etc
• Eco-T – where do most tourists come from, is what they see of Senegal representative of it, how do Senegalese view tourists, what’s the big attraction to your site, challenges to developing an eco-t site, etc
