A Journey of Discovery in Senegal with Peace Corps Volunteer...

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A Journey of Discovery in Senegal with Peace Corps Volunteer @dana_arr

For more scenes from daily life in Senegal, follow @dana_arr on Instagram.

For Dana Roth (@dana_arr), who left her native California in 2013 to serve as a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal, the experience of living and working in West Africa has been nothing short of transformative.

“Going into this, I really didn’t have an idea of what I was going to do in the future,” says Dana. “While I hoped that I’d be on a journey of self-discovery, up until recently I thought maybe that was a silly idea. But as I get further into my time here, I realize that I’ve changed a lot, and I’ve changed my mind about what I want to do.”

Dana was in her second year at the University of California, San Diego, when she became inspired by a Peace Corps veteran’s presentation about her own time overseas, so she decided to join up. Now, a year and a half later, Dana is considering a career overseas when her time with the Peace Corps is over — working for an aid organization, or, perhaps, in the Foreign Service.

Meanwhile, the photographs she’s been taking in Senegal serve as both a passport of sorts — to encounters and interactions with her Senegalese friends — and a trove of mementoes to share with those back home.

“Fifteen, twenty, a hundred times a day, someone here in Senegal will ask to look at the pictures on my phone,” she says. “Then everyone crowds around and they go through all the photos over and over again — the pictures of America, pictures from here.”

Dana says her Senegalese friends find some of her captures of everyday life in Senegal hilarious. “Like, I’ll take a picture of the bucket that I shower with, and they’re like, ‘Oh, Kumba. Why are you taking a picture of your shower bucket?’” laughs Dana, who was given the Senegalese name Kumba.

Her Instagram feed, however, is specifically tailored for one specific viewer.

“Nearly everything I post is for my mom,” says Dana, who was born and raised in Yosemite National Park. (Her dad was a ranger, her mom a school nurse.) “I take photos of people and things that she would be interested in. You know, when you’re abroad, you kind of lose touch with your friends a little bit. And while I know that when I get back it will be like it was before, right now I feel a little distant from them. But my mom is always my mom.”

by via Instagram Blog