August 8, 2007

Weekly Meeting Minutes
August 8, 2007
Reporter – Stan Bugner

President Beetle convened the meeting and Skey Caskey opened with a prayer. John Hanson introduced our guests: Fred Midway, Dolly Patton, and Brooks and Brice Miley. Lyman Whitehead had Skey lead us in singing Happy Birthday to Jeannette Coulter and Lynn Richards informed us that this was the 25th anniversary of her family moving from Santa Monica, CA. to Columbia.

Rob Funderburk briefly spoke on the scholarships offered by Rotary, the organization that sponsors more scholarships than any other organization in the world. The primary focus of these scholarships is to be an ambassador to the area being visited. The scholarships are administered by the Districts and a very intense interview process is employed in awarding them. Our District awarded two cultural scholarships last year and five ambassadorial scholarships. Our club sponsored one recipient for each of these scholarships.

Rob introduced our guest speaker, Andrew Schwark, the 2005 scholar that we sponsored, who spent 2006 in Senegal. Andrew is a graduate student at USC in the International School of Business. He applied for the scholarship because he values the educational experience of studying abroad and wants to learn about other cultures. He chose Senegal because he speaks French, their primary language, has always been fascinated by Africa and he wanted to view an emerging economy, first hand. Senegal is one of the most democratic states in Africa. He wore a Korite’, the attire worn by men of Senegal for special occasions. In addition to the university study, which he did at the Universite of Gaston Berger in St. Louis, he focused on the study of two native languages/dialects, Palaar and Wolof. He arrived in Dakar, the capitol and urban center of Senegal, where he spent the first month and a half with its 3.5 million inhabitants. Dakar is very crowded, suffers from pollution and much petty crime, and has poor infrastructure. Power outages are a normal part of life in Dakar, which made things uncomfortable in the rather intense heat.

Andrew then went to St. Louis to pursue his university study. St. Louis has colonial architecture, much like Charleston. He primarily lived in university housing and spent weekends with his host family. The mother of this family is a doctor and is president of the local Rotary Club. The Club only had 15 members. However, it was very active, sponsoring many local activities, such as cancer screening. Being a member of Rotary is a status symbol in Senegal.

Andrew found the people of Senegal, who are primarily Islamic, to be very aggressive, outgoing, hospitable, honest and frank. He also learned that the price of everything in Senegal is negotiable, including a taxi ride. He traveled the entire country, visited Morocco and Guinea Bissau, and attended a Rotary district meeting in Cape Verde. Andrew enjoyed the people and the food, rice is the staple of their diet, and feels the experience stimulated personal growth. He concluded his presentation with a slide show of some of his experiences in Senegal.