Angela, a young friend of the Italian Sisters, who is getting her degree in medicine, decided to spend three months in Senegal, where she put herself to the test with a hospital internship in Dakar and volunteering her time and talents to serve the people she met in Koungheul and Lwanga. Here she recounts her experience.
How about Senegal? What do you think? Well, sign me up.
I left for Dakar without knowing the faces of the people I would spend the next three months with, without knowing the language of that new country, practically unknown to me. It was a last-minute opportunity that I was not convinced about but that I decided to accept.
I landed on a Saturday evening in March and waiting for me were Sr. Jacqueline, Sr. Pascaline, Sr. Christiane, and Sr. Maria. We arrived at the house where a hot meal was waiting for us along with the first words in French that I could not understand and then their gazes ready to accept me.
The first weeks were a mix of discoveries and questions. I was spending the days in the hospital for my internship and seeing a working reality to which I was unaccustomed and that often left me frustrated. It was a frustration that I learned to understand only with time and then transformed into the desire to adapt to what was different rather than to judge.
Each night I returned home knowing that I would find people ready to listed to me, to tell me about their day, to make me feel like part of a family, and, day after day, we created an everyday routine: coffees together, exercise before dinner, moments of prayer, which helped me to rediscover a faith that had been a little obscured by the frenetic life I was used to.
Amid a walk along the shore of the ocean, a Senegalese dance, and nights in the hospital, the first weeks passed and, without realizing it, the time arrived to make the Easter sweets with Sr. Maria to help us feel closer to Italy. Easter Sunday in Keur Mbaye Fall with the other Sisters and the young Focolares, in the middle of the red earth, needed nothing else to make us feel we were in the right place.
After some weeks, I had the opportunity to spend a weekend with some Focolare friends to know their reality and daily life, and it was also a way to deepen the relationships that had been created in Dakar before moving to Koungheul for a couple of weeks.
In Koungheul I found the Africa again that I was in love with: a small town immersed in the torrid heat—amid schools, clinics, silence, and nature, with kilometers of bush and authentic bonds. The community welcomed me like a member of the family: Sr. Flavienne with her smile and the heart of a big sister; Sr. Marie Augustine, a partner in long chats in Italian; Sr. Genevieve, my traveling companion in the car to Lwanga with anecdotes and laughter; and Sr. Anne Marie, a sensitive friend who always managed to impart calm after the long, hot days.
During my two weeks in Koungheul, I was with the children of the Garderie, with the girls from the dorm, and with teams from the Missira and Koumbidia clinics. Being a medical student, I tried to spend most of my time making myself available in the different clinics, to be able to understand how to manage patients without all the tools that we take for granted in a hospital or doctor’s office, where sometimes the means are practicing the medicine more than the people. The diversity of diseases was the first thing that struck me. They were different from what we see in Italy but from Dakar too. Then the relationship between the healthcare worker and the patient was different, respectful but without detachment. The human connection comes before any role.
After all that came Lwanga, the place that stole my heart, a village two hours from Koungheul, in the middle of nothing, with a school, a clinic, houses, donkeys and goats, a garden that was only a few months old, and a market some kilometers away.
We gathered the first harvest from the garden. I met Emil, the head of the village, who patiently showed me all the vegetables, explaining the properties of each one, and then welcomed us into his home to introduce us to his family. I was struck by their kindness, hospitality, and kind nature: like Mirta, who I saw for the second time the following week and it seemed like we had been friends forever—because maybe this is the meaning of human relationships: not focusing on the differences but only on the need to have profound connections with people who embrace you with their gaze.
Lwanga made me say “here I feel my soul at peace,” “here I feel like myself,” and it made me breathe tranquility and freedom. Lwanga is a refuge from the frenzy of thoughts and the traffic of life.
Returning to Dakar was not simple, but knowing that I had those women waiting for me, who by now had become friends and sisters, was the encouragement needed to make me return… There was only one month left until my return to Italy and those four weeks went by too quickly.
I always tried to live my daily routine without thinking about my return to Italy. Until the car ride to the airport, I did not want to realize that the experience was coming to an end.
The last month was also complicated from a medical perspective. In the hospital I had an experience that moved me deeply: the death of Khady, a 17-year-old girl who taught me that sometimes we need a friend and nothing more, just someone to spend time with so we don’t feel alone. She taught me that holding hands and understanding one another with a look is worth more than anything.
The meeting of our lives, the crossing of our paths, deciding to be a friend to her and not only a doctor: none of these were random and our friendship continues to accompany me every day. I continue to remember her hugs and her happy eyes. The time spent with her remains an intense memory and not just the most painful of these months in Senegal.
Senegal was a different Africa from those I had experienced. It gave me a real everyday life, one that I see in my future. It was a new street that opened up at a time when I thought I had already understood where I wanted to direct my life.
Realizing that difficulties and debates exist in every family, in every house, and that the important thing is to face all of it through discussion, learning to put aside one’s pride, and embracing the differences of others are the great Senegalese lessons.
Thank you, Senegal, and thank you, Franciscan Sisters. Together you were a special trip and experience.
Angela Stoppato
