When most people think of Africa, they think of AIDS, poverty, malaria, war or maybe Oprah and Angelina Jolie, wild animals, jungles and starving children, red bracelets, Darfur and Hotel Rwanda.

They see an entire continent as one: each region, country, ethnic group, tribe and person indistinguishable from the next.

I’m writing this from inside my mosquito net in Bakau, a large-ish city in Gambia, a small country twice the size of Delaware, nestled inside Senegal in West Africa, right along the Atlantic coast.

It’s a teeny-tiny English-speaking former British colony tucked away inside of French-speaking Senegal, only one of several things that doesn’t make sense.

I arrived in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, a little more than three weeks ago, with, unfortunately, the same negative perceptions of Africa floating around in my head, although I didn’t realize it at the time.

I thought I had an open mind, but judging from how surprised we were, I guess most of us expected to “feel sorry” for this continent –— “us” being the 16 students on the University of Washington’s Exploration Seminar headed to the region of Senegambia. We’re here to do individual research projects and to observe the effects of modernity on tradition in the area.

My project involved watching Gambian mothers interact with their babies, but we all learned about much more than our projects.

DAKAR

“You don’t know?” asks one of the university students from Rwanda. He is here to study veterinary medicine in Dakar, and he is asking me quizzically in French why I don’t know if I’m Catholic or not.

I sheepishly avoid the topic, as he and his friend smile, amused that anyone could be so ambivalent about faith.

He is Roman Catholic, like the majority of Rwandans, and yet he encounters very little discrimination in the predominately Muslim Senegal. It doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you believe.

The university students give us a tour of their campus, the most prestigious college in Africa, though it is hundreds of billions of dollars away from our own Bill Gates-blessed University.

And yet they’ll make do because they have to. Most of the ones I meet are here on scholarship and are struggling to stay on top of their studies.

They have more academic stamina then I ever will, but in the eyes of many European institutions their degrees mean less because they were earned in Africa.

“Most foreigners see Africa as one entity, a disease-ridden, poverty-stricken whole country, not an entire continent with different cultures,” says another student.

I know he is right, because I couldn’t even point to Rwanda on a map if you’d asked me.

THIES

I do the hokey-pokey, and I turn myself around. That’s what it’s all about.

After a presentation on the non-governmental organization Tostan, the presenter asks us to teach him an American game. We teach him to put his left foot in and take his left foot out.

He genuinely enjoys it, and I think how odd that this is what he’ll take away from American culture.

We’re staying at the Tostan conference center in Thiès, the second-largest city in Senegal. Tostan’s mission statement is about improving human rights in Senegalese villages.

Right now they primarily deal with eliminating female genital cutting and educating the public on this issue in a non-judgemental way.

They emphasize Africans helping Africans, and make an effort to not change their goals to accommodate whatever is “in” at the moment, in order to gain funding, like many other African NGOs.

What is “in” is, of course, AIDS.

BAKAU

At Katchikally, I nearly trip on a crocodile. Katchikally is a sacred crocodile pond that has become something of a tourist attraction.

Women from all over the world come here to submerge their bodies in the pond that supposedly will make you fertile. The pond is owned by a secret society of barren women.

This is only one of many things to do in Bakau, our final resting stop, not including a weeklong trip to rural villages. Here in Bakau is where we meet our host family that we eat with, but don’t sleep with, and also where we will conduct our research.

At the beach, my roommate is convinced that the large European man sitting next to us is a pedophile, because he is watching after three African little girls. We’ve just learned that this area is a major leader in illegal child sex trade, and my roommate is a little paranoid.

I get caught up in the hysteria before one of the girls comes up to me at the beach and decides to be my friend. Her name is Margaret, and she speaks perfect English with a slight British accent.

It turns out that she is on vacation from Sierra Leone, another West African country, with her uncle (the European man) and cousins.

As I build a sandcastle with the youngest one, I try to remind myself that the world is not always a horrible place.

BERENDING

It’s nearly 2 in the morning, and I’m nodding off. Even when I’m awake I feel like I’m dreaming.

In this dream I’m sitting in a circle of women. There’s drumming, whistle blowing, clapping and a man dancing in the middle. He’s wearing a mask and is covered in leaves and other tree debris.

Of course, it’s not really a dream. I’m in a small village in Gambia, Berending, and I’m exhausted from an entire day of meeting, greeting and celebrating. And dancing. So much dancing.

Every once in awhile, I jerk awake to watch the other students dance. When I dance, I feel like I’m in a trance, partly because I’m half-asleep and partly because this whole performance is steeped in mysticism.

The men are standing behind the women, and energy is created between the sexes. I’m not going to pretend I understand what is going on, but I take part in the festivities nonetheless.

The entire village is celebrating our arrival, a group of “toubabs.” Toubab means white person, although the word is used indiscriminately to apply toward any foreigner. If your skin is not dark, the children will inevitably scream toubab.

ESSAU

“Is it true that at Christmas in the U.S., people get rid of everything they own and buy all new stuff?” asks my new friend in flawless English. We are in Essau, a neighboring village of Berending.

I don’t even really know how to answer that, as we watch the drumming and dancing. The villagers in Essau have had a long-standing rivalry with those of Berending, and if we visit one, we must visit the other.

My friend is 19 and a football (soccer) player trying to save money to go to college. He has a brother in Spain who he thinks will help him to “get out.”

So many young men here, pressured to make a better life for themselves and their families, are determined to “get out.”

I ask him questions about life here, and he in turn asks questions like the one above. I try to break down the perceptions of the United States as a magical “land of opportunity.” Just as the media has created a warped view of Africa, so are there warped views of America.

When he asks if there are tribes in the United States, I get in the sticky situation of having to describe what happened to the American Indians. He is understandably horrified at the fact that the foundation of our country is based upon mass genocide.

And then we talk about Thanksgiving, which somehow made it okay, although it shouldn’t have.

My program director, Ylva Hernlund, Ph.D., came to Gambia on a whim more than 20 years ago, fell in love with the country and changed the rest of her life.

When I asked her why she does what she does, taking 16 students to West Africa to study abroad, she said she wanted to be able to use the number of contacts she had developed over the years; she also admitted that it was a matter of self-interest and promoting a positive view of Africa.

“After seeing so many misconceptions of Africa and Islam in the media, I just wanted students to be able to come here, see it for themselves and be able to come back home and tell people how it really is,” she said.

There is more to Africa than AIDS, war and poverty, although these things of course do exist.

The issue of AIDS is huge, political and worthy of a whole other article.

Zero to one percent of Senegambia has the virus, and the president of Gambia claims he can cure the disease.

President Jammeh blames AIDS on white people and pharmaceutical companies. Not surprisingly, this did not go over well with the international community.

As for war, Senegal itself suffers from ongoing guerrilla warfare in the south, as the region of Casamance fights for independence.

And poverty &mdash well, that much is obvious when walking the streets of Dakar or Bakau.

But there are also the people. The food. The dancing. The food. The beaches. The food. The music. The food. And the stars.

By the time this is printed I’ll be home, probably in class and hopefully I’ll have eaten my fill of Thai food. I also know that I will be missing Africa.

[Reach reporter Arla Shephard at features@thedaily.washington.edu.]