Bousso Dramé is a young Senegalese woman who recently won a French language competition organized by the French Institute of Senegal. She was awarded a return flight ticket to Paris and a training in documentary film-making for winning said competition. She however renounced the whole thing after finding herself on the receiving end of vexing and humiliating comments from employees of the French Institute and of the French Consulate in Dakar.

This could have ended there and nobody would have ever known about it. But unlike those who have been in her shoes before her, Bousso Dramé penned a candid and eloquent open letter to the French Consul-General in Senegal, first published on DakarActu and later republished on Rue89, that has been making the rounds of the French- speaking African net

She makes clear that her decision, in her own words, is “not a sanction against individuals but against a generalized system” in which visa applicants are met with suspicion and contempt before anything else, and that she renounces “in the name of those thousands of Senegalese who deserve respect”. Those words have brought her much praise from fellow anonymous visa applicants and Africans in general. They have however been met with more interrogations than approval from French readers who have been asking what she is refering to exactly.

Indeed her letter speaks volume to those who already know what she is putting her finger on but appears elusive to those who do not. She did go into more details in the interview that she gave to Jeune Afrique. More than the clerk at the French Consulate who reportedly told her “she wasn’t paid to hand out smiles” — the kind of rudeness one can face in any (French) administration no matter who you are, it is the “recommendations” from French Institute staffers that are most telling: because she would be “representing the French Institute”, she would have to “behave” and resist “shopping temptations” despite a “very generous per diem”. The concerned White man telling the little Black girl to keep clear of his world’s niceties for fear she be bedazzled into oblivion… Sounds familiar yet?


www.africasacountry.com/senegalese-award-winner-tells-france-to-shove-it/

Black is beautiful. Nice one mademoiselle !

Trez bien,belle Maidemoiselle