Senegalese award winner tells France to shove it: After winning a free trip to France, Senegalese consultant Bousso Drame is saying “No, thank you.” Drame recently penned an open letter to the French consulate in Senegal claiming she was subjected to humiliating remarks and treated with suspicion when she applied for a visa. Her trip was sponsored by the French Institute of Senegal, a government-operated cultural center, as the top prize for a French language competition. In her letter, Drame claims that her experience at the consulate is representative of the treatment received by many Senegalese people when dealing with French authorities. Here is the letter; My English-speaking friends in Anglophone countries have urged me to publish my Open Letter in English, as they would like to be in the loop and take part in the ongoing discussions. I have received a very nice and supportive email from a French citizen named Jacques Enaudeau who voluntarily took the initiative to translate my Open Letter in English. After jointly editing it with him, we agreed on a final version which I totally approve of and publish herewith. Jacques can be contacted on Twitter at @jacksometer. Thank you, Jacques! Open letter to the French consular and diplomatic authorities in Senegal: No, thank you. To His Excellency the Consul-General, To the Director of the French Institute of Senegal, My name is Bousso Dramé and I am a Senegalese citizen who, on this day, has decided to put pen to paper so that a message that I care deeply about can be heard loud and clear. Out of interest for the language of Molière, I decided last April to take part in the 2013 National Spelling Competition organized by the French Institute as part the Francophonie Prizes. The competition brought together a few hundred candidates, aged 18 to 35, in the French Institutes of Dakar and Saint-Louis as well as the French Alliances of Kaolack and Ziguinchor. After some written dueling about an excerpt of L’Art Français de la Guerre by Alexis Jenni, which received the 2011 Goncourt Prize, I had the honor to be declared the winner of said competition. I was rewarded with a Dakar-Paris-Dakar flight ticket and a CultureLab training in documentary film-making at the Albert Schweitzer Centre. During my short life, while being open as the citizen of the world that I am, I have never ceased to defend my pride of being a Black and African woman. It goes without saying that I absolutely believe in the bright future of my dear Africa. I am equally convinced of the necessity to put an end to prejudices that prevailed about Africans and Africa due to the colonial era and the difficult contemporary situation of this continent. It is high time for Africans to respect themselves and demand to be respected by others. This vision of a certainly generous and open, but also proud and determined, Africa, demanding the respect that it is owed and that it has been denied for far too long, is a strong conviction of mine that enables me and literally carries me forward. However, during my numerous interactions with, on the one hand, some staff members of the French Institute and, on the other hand, civil servants at the French Consulate, I have had to deal with conscending, insidious, sly and vexating behaviors and remarks. Not once, nor twice but multiple times! I have really tried to ignore these behaviors but the appalling welcome I have been greeted with at the French Consulate (a “welcome”endured by most Senegalese fellows applying for visas) has been the last straw that, unfortunately, broke the camel’s back. As an authentic individual who does not know how to cheat, a difficult but necessary decision became an obvious one for me. An all-expenses-paid trip, even the world’s most beautiful and enchanting one, is not worth the suffering that my fellow citizens and myself endure from the French Consulate. No matter how exciting the training, and God knows this one really appealed to me, it is not worth the pain of enduring these kinds of behavior unfortunately widespread under African skies. As a matter of coherence with my own value system, I have, therefore, decided to renounce that offer, despite being granted a visa. Renounce symbolically. Renounce in the name of those thousands of Senegalese who deserve respect, a respect they are being denied within the walls of these French representations, and on Senegalese soil moreover. This decision is not a sanction against individuals but against a generalized system which, despite the ever-increasing list of complaints from my fellow citizens, does not seem inclined to question itself. Furthermore, I find it particularly ironic that the partial headline of the training that I will not attend reads: “Is France still the homeland of human rights? To what point are French citizens also European cizens and cizitens of the world?” It would be, without a doubt, an interesting subject for a documentary shot from an African perspective and I hope that I will have the chance, by way of other means, to participate in a CultureLab training in the future. I shall thank the French Institute nonetheless, for this competition initiative, which in my opinion deserves to continue to exist, and even to be held more frequently in order to stimulate the intellectual emulation between young Senegalese and for the pleasure of those who love the French language, among which I count myself. To the lady clerk at the France Consulate’s visa counter – I do not know your name, but regarding that visa that I will not be using, let me tell you: no, thank you. Proudly, sincerely and Africanly yours
Posted on: Sat, 13 Jul 2013 05:43:35 +0000
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