Poverty

Every morning after I talk with my French professor for awhile, he gives me a topic for a "petit paragraph." Yesterday morning my paragraph was on the topic of poverty. He told me I should write about poverty in the United States and any poverty I've seen in Senegal. He told me that it was a shame that I haven't been to a poor country yet, and said maybe Costa Rica cold count as that. I found it fascinating that he didn't consider Senegal a poor country. Sure, there is poverty in Costa Rica, but it's not like the poverty in Dakar. And there is definite poverty in Dakar and throughout Senegal. I can't walk to class without someone begging me for money… children, women with babies, etc. Even the man who works at the corner store that I always go to has a habit of asking me for money.

In the classroom/office where I have French class in the afternoon, there is a world map directly above the desk where I sit with my professor. My professor looked up at the map yesterday and fell silent. After a few moments, he said "Look, Senegal is the center of the world." On the map he has, Senegal IS conveniently located relatively in the middle. He went on to talk about how because it's the center of the world, it attracts people from all over the world. He said people from every continent come to Senegal. There were approximately 1.5 million residents in Senegal at the time of independence (approx. 1960), but now there are 12 million. He said that the people who came from all over the world brought poverty with them. Senegal was never a poor country and it never had poverty. Not until 1980. But now it exists here.

We talked about China and the influence of the Chinese on Africa, which was a big part of my senior seminar research for International Studies. Zator, my professor, talked about how China can make things very cheaply. He then went on a tangent about sheep in Senegal, how they're everywhere, but that they are very expensive. After a long pause, he said, in French, "Perhaps the Chinese will find a way to make cheap sheep." He then proceeded to almost fall off the back of his chair and laughed for quite some time. He then gave me a high five and we got back to what we had actually been working on... reading a newspaper article.

I thought it might be interesting to share some basic statistics about Senegal with you. Brought to you by CIA World Factbook (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/).

Median age: 18.7 years

Infant Mortality Rate: 60.15 deaths/1,000 live births

Life Expectancy at Birth: 56.69 years

Total Fertility Rate: 5 children born/woman

Literacy:

Total population: 39.3%

Male: 51.1%

Female: 29.2%

Unemployment rate: 48%

Population Below Poverty Line: 54%