Today was the third day that I spent time working together with Mamadou
Diatta, more familiarly known as “Mo Préfet”. Mo serves as a Glosser
(translator) in our workshop, and he usually arrives a bit late and leaves a
bit early. During the time that he is present, we are usually able to work our
way through about two folders of material, each containing 10-20 semantic domains
where words were collected. From one perspective it doesn’t seem like a very
big contribution, considering that there are 126 folders altogether; on the
other hand, every little bit helps, and everything he translates means that much
less for someone else to do. It’s also enabled me to have more personal contact
with one of the participants that I would otherwise have hardly gotten to know.
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| Mo and I working together |
Mo is retired and doesn’t have the level of energy that he once enjoyed,
so he doesn’t work super fast, but he has a good command of French and has
adapted to working together with me. Since he doesn’t feel confident about his
ability to read the Gusiilaay words, that is my role; his is to come up with the
French equivalent. It’s really quite remarkable that I, as someone who does not
know the Gusiilaay language, am able to pronounce the words well enough that he
recognizes most of them. Sometimes, as he’s searching for the right word in
French to express the meaning of a Gusiilaay word, he explains at length how
the word is used and I suggest French words that seem to fit his description.
He then decides what to write and records it on the paper.
Today Mo gave me a tangerine in the traditional Gusiilaay way—when we
took our lunch break, he left it on the table in front of the place where I had
been sitting to work with him. (Another workshop participant explained to me
that, in times past, people did not give other people gifts directly, but just left
them where they would find them.) That gift led to a conversation where I
learned that he planted a number of citrus trees of various sorts and that tending
them in his retirement years is what he does to stay active and involved in
society. He has also taken some young men under his wing, to teach them how to
plant and care for fruit trees.
In talking with Mo, I learned that he spent a year in France, where he
was studying at a university. According to my understanding, he had chosen the
topic for the thesis or dissertation he was to write in order to obtain his
degree, but when he went to do the necessary research, he wasn’t able to gain
access to the part of Senegal that he was writing about. This was due to a
rebellion in that part of the country, making travel there difficult or
impossible. Unfortunately, he was unable to change the topic for his paper at
that late date, so he never did get his degree.
Upon his return to Senegal, he was integrated into the country’s
administrative system as a “sous-préfet”, which is a position that is roughly comparable
to an Assistant Superintendent of a township. Now that he has retired, he receives
a pension that enables him to take care of his basic financial needs. He is
glad to be able to play a part in this word-collection workshop, and I am glad
I had the opportunity to learn a bit about him through working together.
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