recently discovered. I was quite shocked
since I do not speak a word of Wolof.. My
father told me that “Diouf” is a popular
family name in Senegal, and that we are
not the only family to be named “Diouf”. I
naïvely asked “So, I have more family relatives?” My father laughed and kindly assured me that no, we were not related to all
the other Dioufs. Having Diouf as your last
name could lead to confusion; as people
believed that my father was the football
player Pape Diouf or the recently deceased
actor Mous Diouf.
I didn’t have a problem with my
recently discovered Senegalese genes; but
I still couldn’t live in harmony with my hair.
I hated it. I hated it because it drove people
away, or attracted them only for them to
laugh at it, or even pull it. I considered that
heritage as a curse. All I wanted was to
be normal, to not have to wake up in the
morning and find this capillary haystack
that is growing curlier and curlier. I wanted
people to finally accept me. As a result of
the many hair treatments I went through,
the haystack started to calm down. This
year I decided to stop all the treatments
and see how my hair would react. To my
surprise, I fell in love with it.
All these years of straitening my hair and
searching for a better treatment finally
made me realize how much I actually despised it. How I was ashamed of it, because
of the negative remarks of my friends and
classmates. How I actually believed that
straightening my hair would make it go
away, but I was wrong.
Now, when I look at myself in the
mirror, I don’t see someone who is the
whitest ethnic girl in the family, , but a girl
who fought many battles against herself,
before finally dropping her weapons, and
welcomed a new face, a new state of mind,
a new identity, at last.
{ }
Did you know?
Wolof is the second main Senegalese language after French.
It is somewhat close to Arabic.
For example,
to salute an individual,
you address them as
“salamaleïkoum”.
If you wish to say
“How are you ?”,
it would be “Naa an tudd”
Paradise Lost, sculpture by Amelie Iselin
Mexican Day of the Dead Skulls are a staple in Mexican
heritage. Every November first, everyone goes to the
graveyard with treats and special sugar skulls to present
and honor to their dead ancestors. This skull was made
out of beads , marbles and tictacs, reflecting upon the modernity of today’s materials while skill keeping the “sugar
skull” aspect by having the teeth made out of tictacs.
Bilingues Et Artistes - N*13
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