Au revoir Omar
It’s tough for a guy from Burkina Fasso with no family to come here to get a job. It’s tough from Mali, from the Gambia. Dakar is full of young men like Omar. Lillian has said that this has changed Dakar the most in the thirty years she’s lived here. Used to be that the families and neighbors kept everyone accountable and cared for, but there is a growing mass of people, like in any big city, who are etrangers. Omar is a little unusual. He works on his English. We’ve employed him chez nous as our guard/gardener from early on. From the first day, he made it clear that he wasn’t a gardener, and it has proved to be so. What he does have is ideas…. for himself. His previous employer gave him their old SLR camera as a parting gesture. To them it was probably an ancient relic, to be put in a drawer with the sextant and slide rule. To Omar, it was a prize. We spent some afternoons together with me trying to translate the manual for him. Soon after, he realized how much film and processing costs. I haven’t seen the camera since. Instead of going in the slide rule drawer, it probably went in the pile of things that no African can afford the accessories for. I imagine a pile of sewing machines with no needles, copy machines with no toner. Maybe they are being used the same way we use all of our home fitness machines- as something to drape something else over. Anyway…. He’s moved on now. He’s managed to find the real prize- a full time job at another American’s house. His departure from our employment seemed too sudden. I only had time to pack a small bag of clothes and food.
I hope the cardboard from all of our packing boxes holds tight on his house, at least until the rainy season. I hope someone comes up with a bicycle that he can have for the money he’s saved up. Bonne chance, Omar.