Translating Amadou Bamba

I met Abdul last year. He was hired by the Shady Shack -- the snack bar serving both ISD and the Club Atlantique -- to serve ice cream from a soft serve-style dispenser. Abdul was the ice cream guy, but I came to recognize that he was misplaced, in disguise.

Abdul is the son of an Imam, and he learned Arabic at a young age. He is a linguist, with a degree from the University of Dakar. But, like so many here, there is no work in his field, and he is left to find what work he can, for meager wages.

I befriended him last spring, and he became my Wolof tutor, making more money in the few hours we spent together a month than he made preparing ice cream full-time.

Abdul is married, with three school-aged children. He supports not only his immediate family, but also members of his extended family. There are many mouths to feed. After leaving the Shady Shack, Abdul went on to work at a restaurant, but was, again, laid off. He dropped by the school unannounced one afternoon last month to see if I was interested in renewing our Wolof classes. There was a tone of desperation in his relating his circumstances. I agreed to begin meeting again.

It is a great irony that someone so bright and well-educated, with such love of learning and expertise, would be relegated to selling ice cream or doing dishes. I perceive in Abdul a extremely contradictory nature: a would-be college professor, conducting classes on the etiology of language, alongside a man who feels beaten-down and worthless. In working with him, there can be a shift in tone from one of equal status, two friends and colleagues, to a disconcerting realization that this is a temporary illusion. Sadly, it's a common scenario here. Abdul is miscast and suffers for it, perhaps more so than others, because of his education.

We have begun two projects, which will likely run through the remainder of my stay in Senegal: first, we will collaborate on an audio CD of introductory Wolof, tailored to new ISD staff; second, we will translate some of the core writings of Amadou Bamba, Saint of the Mouride Brotherhood, from the Arabic into English.

The latter of the two projects was begun last week. We're translating one of Bamba's Qaside, a prayer in the form of a poem, into English

For links to audio excerpts, see:

qaside1 qaside2 qaside3

More to come.