Seydou

“You look like an Arabic,” Seydou told me.
“ No I don’t,” I responded.
“Yes, you look like an Arabic. I know Arabics, and you look like one.”
“Well, you look like a Senegalese man,” was my intelligent reply.
“I am not Senegalese, I was born in Mauritania,” Seydou explain.

I sat down in the low uncomfortable wooden chair to hear his life story. He told me that when he was little his father was a politician in Mauritania. In 1989, when Senegal and Mauritania started a border dispute, his father was arrested. At the time of his father’s imprisonment, he and his mother, brother, and sister, were sent to live just over the border in Senegal in a refugee camp. His family was given a little plot of land, on which they built a small house. His father was released from jail three years later in 1991 when the war ended. His father died soon after he was released.

Seydou excelled in school and was energized to learn English. He confided that he was terrible at first but then was motivated to learn and worked very hard to master his lessons. He did well enough on his BAC (the exam taken to pass high school) to qualify to attend Universite Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar. He moved in with his cousins in Mamelles and began to take classes at the university. During breaks, he visits his family, who still live in the refugee camp in the North of Senegal. With aspirations to become a professor, he privileged his studies and worked hard. He talks of going to the United States for school as his dream. Despite his grammatical error above, he actually speaks English very well and does so with unparalleled confidence.

Seydou helps out around Chez Alpha Books whenever he is needed. For some time he worked as the guardian but he felt it interfered with his studies so he gave it up. Now he comes by to check out books from the library, practice his English, and lift heavy boxes for us.

While the details of Seydou’s story are unique, the general theme is not, in Senegal. Students work hard, are motivated, and have a desire to learn, but their degrees if issued in Senegal are not valued as much as those from Europe or America. This fosters a desire to leave the country. While the rich students can leave, the poor ones can only dream. They sit at the public university squished in a classroom with hundreds of other students crammed into a room to hear a professor lecture. Students sit on the floor, windowsills, and hallways, just to cop down what the professor dictates.

Seydou is lucky that he was given the opportunity to study. Countless other children, mainly girls, never even get the option to go to school because of school fees and other costs associated with education. This creates a complicated web of privilege, which permeates Senegalese society.