Keith Patrick
Political Science Major, Class of 2008
« Previous Excerpt | Next Excerpt »
I remember hundreds of children coming up to me and grabbing my arm hair. I wrote about these children pulling at my arm hair and I was kind of surprised that out of all the things that they could have seen that was weird about us – our color eyes, our skin color, our clothes, or hats, or anything, it was our arm hair that really intrigued them.
Several nights I slept outside of my tent and laid down under the stars with my back against the ground and didn’t move a muscle the entire night. I gazed up at the stars and wondered about that place and how it was affecting my life.
It was amazing to see how well organized was the structure of the village municipal council meeting. In a lot of ways it was very similar to any American city hall meeting. I had grossly underestimated the amount of enthusiasm and importance that many people in Niger had placed on installing Democracy.