News from Maison de la Gare
Looking Back on Precious Moments with the Talibés
Tweeter
Patricia Mehaffy reflects on her volunteer experience with Maison de la Gare
My life has more than considerably changed for the better thanks to my experience during the two months
that I spent at Maison de la Gare as a volunteer. It will be impossible for me to forget all the lovely
kids and adults I met at the center. My trip revolved around them and I will
always be grateful that
they made it as wonderful and lively as it was.
The talibé children in Saint Louis face a lot of hardships but, no matter what, they are brothers to
one another. They laugh and play together. They also wrestle and fight like all kids. But there
won't be a day when they won’t smile at you when you make a funny face. And working at Maison de la
Gare meant leaning into that happiness and providing a space where the kids can be kids.
Through my experience, I was exposed to a totally new, totally different culture. As someone who has
rarely had fewer than two 
jobs, spending two months in Africa has allowed me an immensely happy and
calm season. In this brief moment, and for the first time, I wasn’t terribly worried about everything.
I loved my job and I had friends who loved me; it was everything I could have ever asked for. Of
course, the stay wasn’t comfortable like my life in the United States and there were things I could
have done without, but I was so grateful to have the opportunity to be there in a strange place,
surrounded by kind people and kids, without a thing clouding my mind.
As a student, I am determined not to waste the opportune environment I am in. I attend an excellent
university full of extraordinary
people, and such a position is scarcely attainable in most other
places around the world. I have gained valuable experience working through a significant language
barrier. I have gained cultural immersion in a foreign country and greatly expanded my ability to
communicate and be courageous in new situations. With these new skills, I have new confidence and
can expand my work prospects internationally with valuable experience already under my belt.
As a citizen, I am now capable of bringing a culturally educated voice to my life’s range of
influences. I can 
raise awareness and contribute to refined views of certain types of social issues.
Now, I can advocate for those that might not get a voice otherwise.
I will have to use incredible will to not let what I learned through my experience fade away. In
the future, I will struggle to ward off my ingratitude, my self-destructive behavior and my
temptation to place my own needs above those around me. Watching old habits return to my life
terrifies me; I just hope the terror is enough to keep me from returning to my old lifestyle. In
any case, in the future I will seize my opportunities to make known the reality I came to know in
Senegal; the good and the bad, the personal and the public.
___________
We invite you to read the full reports written by each of the former volunteers who are quoted
above: Sam Kenney,
Alessandra Battioni,
Tommaso Arosio
and Myah Freeman.
