On the 16th of September, former pupil Millie Howat (Class of 2021) returned to The Glasgow Academy to give a talk to Senior School Pupils. In true Ted Talks style, Millie wowed pupils with her new-found love of the West African country of Senegal.
This is her story…
Hi everyone. Some of you may recognize me, well at least some of the older years, my name is Millie.
I left the Glasgow Academy in 2021, at the age of 17. Although I had secured a place at university in England, I decided to defer, simply because I didn’t like the idea of starting university quite so young.
In November 2021, I travelled to Senegal, where I would spend a whirlwind 9 months. I’d discovered a charity called Project Trust, who offered exactly the kind of life experience I was looking for.
They are a Scottish based gap-year charity who send young people all over the world on the adventures of a lifetime. Whilst looking for an organisation to work with, promoting and supporting sustainable tourism was very important to me. A lot of charities and companies send young people on holidays around the world where they volunteer for a few weeks and then come home, and whilst this does have some merits, the organisation usually retains very little knowledge about the impact of their work on the community. Being a languages assistant meant that I wouldn’t be taking a job away from the local community, and that was important to me.
Working with this particular charity and being able to educate both teachers and students created greater opportunities for me to make more than just a short-term impact. Being out there for a significant period of time also meant that the environmental impact of my flights were justified ins one way as my carbon footprint was potentially the lowest it has ever been whilst living in Senegal.
In order to make the trip I raised around £6,000 for Project Trust. Thankfully, I had some money I had saved up, but also took part in the kilt-walk and received grants from various Scottish trusts as well as the Ian Jeffrey Travel Scholarship offered by the school. For the remainder of the money I worked just about every job I could find in the run up to my departure date.
Senegal is a truly fascinating country. it is a majority islamic nation with 33 national languages, a population of almost 17 million and is unlike anywhere I have ever been before. The history of colonialism in Senegal is both interesting and heartbreaking, if I had time, I could talk about it for hours.
Senegalese education is based on the French education system, with students attending ‘ecole primaire,’ followed by the CEM and then finishing their education with three years of ‘Lycée.’ In France, this system allows students to leave school at around 18 or 19 years old, but due to different reasons, such as sickness, failing grades or needing to spend time helping families in the fields, a lot of students would finish school as late as 20 to 24 years old!
My role as a languages assistant was in a middle school of 500 students, with 9 classes, some of which had as many as 60 students in them. At times it was verging on chaos. Teaching was initially very difficult. I learned very quickly that the majority of Senegalese people communicate with each other using a language called ‘Wolof,’ however political and educational matters are to be spoken of using only French. The problem with this is that French is taught in school, so for those in Senegal who are uneducated, particularly older generations, a lot of what goes on in the country is inaccessible to them. To make things even more confusing, my village was made up of people from a very specific ethnic group called ‘The Serere’ and they spoke a completely different language to the rest of Senegal! My students were roughly half-way through their school career, so spoke a little french, but no English, which I felt privileged to teach them. I managed to struggle through my classes with a mixture of French, Wolof, Serere and miming to teach them words in english.
During my time in Senegal I lived in a small village called Ndianda, about 2 miles from the coast. It was an ideal location, two hours from the capital city, Dakar, and very close to beautiful areas such as the ‘Sine Saloum’ delta (a mangrove filled river delta) and the ‘petite cote,’ which is a slightly touristy stretch of coast with the most beautiful beaches. My village was very small in comparison to other villages throughout Senegal, and had approximately 4000 inhabitants, two primary schools, one middle school, a questionable private school and a Franco Arabe school, also known as a Koranic School. Luckily, I was only a 15 minute drive down the road from a big fishing town named Joal, where two other Project Trust volunteers lived. In Joal we would spend our weekends exploring the religious island of Fadiouth, or at the beach.
In a country where 95% of people are muslim, it was very interesting that our village was set up initially as a christian village, due to its proximity to a missionary settlement in Joal. The huge crumbling European style church was a beautiful feature of the village, as well as the vast fields of vegetables and peanuts surrounding the village.
I lived with another volunteer, Tess, in perhaps the only two story house in the whole village. It was a large house that was designed for the landlords to live below, and for families to hire out one or two rooms each upstairs. When we lived there, we lived with three other families, one single man, and 21 children! The house was permanent chaos, but to our surprise, we loved it.
A typical day usually started at around 7:30AM, with class starting at 8AM. Sometimes I would go for a run before class but even at 6AM it was still too hot! We would usually leave at around 7:50AM as the school was just around the corner from our house. Tess and I frequently taught together, it was a great way of managing 60 students for what was typically 2 hours at a time.
Breakfast at school was usually a spaghetti baguette or a petits pois baguette – which was surprisingly amazing! Then we walked home from school at 2:30PM, at which point we would tackle the daily issue of having no cooking facilities. Eventually we started paying a teacher’s wife to cook lunch for us every day, which her son would bring to our house. Neighbours also seemed adamant on feeding us, we were given one massive sharing plate of food from three different people each lunchtime. We were rather touched by their generosity.
Lunch usually consisted of Senegal’s national dish – ‘thieboudienne,’ or ‘yassa’ and sometimes ‘mafe.’ After lunch we would relax, do our washing, play with the children in our house and read, anything to escape how hot it was outside. On Tuesdays we opened up the school library or did speaking practice with the year groups who were preparing for exams. On Wednesdays we had ‘Serere’ lessons with a village elder. Sometimes I would even go to Karate club, which to this day is the most strenuous workout I’ve ever done. At around 6 in the evening we usually went for a nice sunset walk around the village and bought a frozen bag of juice (always a nice treat in the baking sun) before coming home at sunset. Dinner was always had at around 10PM which to be honest was far too late for me – especially just before bed – but you learn to adapt.
As well as teaching, there were other projects we did around the school, such as painting murals and traveling to the capital city to pick up donations of English books – carting them back hundreds at a time. We also started a small pen pal scheme between some students at The Academy and students in my troisieme class in Senegal, which was difficult due to the lack of a reliable postal service in Senegal, but we managed to make it worthwhile.
One interesting thing about Senegalese schools is that they will take a days holiday for almost anything, this gave Tess and I plenty of time to travel and Senegal and really see this beautiful country. I can safely say I have now seen more of Senegal than I have seen of Scotland, which is a tad concerning if I’m honest.
At the end of July, it was time to come home. This was probably the most difficult thing I have ever done, leaving my students and especially the families that had become second parents and brothers and sisters to me. Coming home was surreal, reverse culture shock exists, I promise you. I completely forgot how to use self-service check outs in Morrisons, and it was very difficult re-adjusting to even the moderate wealth around me.
I want to go back to Senegal as soon as possible. It truly feels like a second home now, so much so I’ve decided to incorporate French into my university degree. A truly incredible experience, and one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
Millie Howat – class of 2021