Open letter to parents who sent their kids to study abroad

Dear parents,

You want to know why your kids haven’t graduated since 5 years, or claim that they keep switching programs; you want to know why they are not coming back home? Forget the brain drain, the fact that salaries are more competitive in rich countries, try FREEDOM…

Comme quoi, il n’y a pas que les esclaves qui essayaient de quitter le bateau.. We are still slaves, just different kinds… We the Senegalese youth, are our parents’ slaves and it ain’t about to change…

As soon as puberty hits, one thought in our mind, like pinky and the brain(minus diop et cortex sakho):
-”Brain, What do you want to do tonight”
-” the same thing we do every night Pinky, figure out how to get the f*** out of Dakar… ”
Only one legal solution: Get the BAC aka high school diploma! For some, there was no way to take the s-series (scientific) since that would increase their chances of failing, which means staying one more year in Dakar… That’s how you have people who graduated with a literature baccalaureate become scientists for NASA.

The top 3 « freedoms » Senegalese youth seeks when away from mommy, daddy, the extended family, the neighbors, the « gardiens » who got all type of dirt on us, and everybody who got something to say in general:

Free to be your own boss: oh what? You got your own place? It does not matter if it’s a small dorm room; all that matters is that it’s yours and yours only. It’s always going to be your favorite secret garden. It can be dirty, decorated in all black, in bright ass colors, in zebra print…. It’s your right and only your opinion counts. You can go to class if you feel like it, or not… spend your money on clothes or on food (either or situation), make stupid economic mistakes on purpose and wait for that wire transfer to end the hunger strike….

Free to spend the night wherever aka ‘’le découchage ”: oh what? You got your own keys? You are about to get your sleeping bag and go sleep wherever the wind blows…. At your bff’s, your boyfriend’s? Your girlfriend’s? Strangers? Weekend escapade in Vegas? Why not, nobody cares right? Especially, nobody can check…You haven’t been home in like a week except that one time when you went and got a change of clothes? Oh yeah, WELCOME TO THE GOOD LIFE (*T Pain voice* with autotune and all)

Free to get f****d up: and this is worst when all your life you never had the right to do anything…. Could not go to birthday parties that ended at midnight, Couldn’t go to the effin Cathedrale fair (first week of May remember?) and then sneak out to go clubbing at Aldo’s matinées good times, couldn’t even go around the corner of your house to play “élastique”, “égatt” (billes), la marelle, le “any’’, etc.…. Well now this is your chance to go wild, try cigarettes, try weed, drink until you drop, party like it was your last chance, straight wilding out, oh what? Nobody to tell on you because everybody else doing the same thing? “Aight, I can get used to this”, dixit any international student, any day. I am not saying international students are turning into drug addicts, I am just saying 95% are going to feed their curiosity until obesity.

Dear parents, your kids are getting degrees, some of them but please believe they are wilding out. Some of them will go natural, get dreads, become rappers, leave biology to become dancers or poets…The more you kept them on a leash before they left, the more they will surprise you, and the more they will switch programs to be FREE longer, sorry.

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