Birago Diop was a Senegalese poet and storyteller whose work restored general interest in African folktales and promoted him to one of the most outstanding African francophone writers. A renowned veterinarian, diplomat and leading voice of the Négritude literary movement, Diop exemplified the "African renaissance man".
Early life
Son of Ismael and Sokhna Diop, Birago Diop was born on 11 December 1906 in Ouakam, a neighborhood in Dakar, Senegal. His mother raised him with his two older brothers, Massyla and Youssoupha; his father, for unknown reasons, disappeared two months before Diop was born. Diop's childhood exposed him to many folktales, which he later used in his literary work. In 1920, Diop earned a scholarship to attend the French-speaking school Lycée Faidherbe in Saint-Louis, which was then Senegal's capital. During this time, he became fascinated with the poems and style of writing of Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, Edgar Allan Poe and several others and began writing his own. In the late 1920s, he served as a nurse in a military hospital and later went on to study veterinary medicine at the University of Toulouse in France, graduating in 1933.
Career
Although he was mostly recognized for his poems and folktales, Diop also worked as a veterinary surgeon for the French colonial government in several West African countries, spending 1937–39 in the French Sudan, 1940 in the Ivory Coast and French Upper Volta, and 1950 in Mauritania. Throughout his civil service career in 1934, he collected and reworked Wolof folktales, and also wrote poetry, memoirs, and a play. He also served as the first Senegalese ambassador to Tunisia from 1960 to 1965.
Early literary work
During his time in France as a veterinary student, Diop met numerous African, African-American and Caribbean students, among them Léopold Sédar Senghor, who later went on to become Senegal's first president after its independence. Inspired by these young black intellectuals, artists and poets, Diop drafted his earliest poems in L'étudiant noir - a student review that established the idea of the Négritude movement, which protested against the assimilation theory in favour of African cultural values.
Inspiration
During his work as the head of the government's cattle-inspection service for several regions in Senegal and Mali, he was introduced to traditional folktales, most of which he committed to memory. These served as the main inspiration for much of his literary work. Indeed, most of his poems and tales have their roots in oral African traditions. Generally recited to a group at night by a professional storyteller, called a griot, folktales were repeated in different places by the people who heard them. These ceremonies commonly consisted of songs and dances in addition to these folktales. Although the tales served as entertainment, they also had the greater purpose of teaching younger generations about the beliefs and values of their ancestors. By combining his mastery of the French language with his experience with African folktakes, Diop was able to spread the values and beliefs of his ancestors throughout the world.
In the early 1940s, during World War II, Diop was forced to return to France for two years. Homesick, he began writing down adaptions of folktales as advised by his fellow Negritude writers. The following excerpt illustrating his homesickness can be found in "The Humps": When Diop finally returned to Africa, he served as a director of zoological technical services in Ivory Coast and Upper Volta. His first literary piece Les Contes d'Amadou Koumba was published in 1947. The work, totaling three volumes, managed to earn him the Grand prix littéraire award. Each volume contained a collection of short stories: animal-centred tales he directly transcribed from the griot Amadou Koumba's accounts. These tales provided a combination of humor, fantasy and realism where people, supernatural beings, and animals interacted.
"The broken pen"
As soon as Senegal gained its independence, Diop was nominated as the first Senegalese ambassador in Tunisia. Upon accepting this position, he claimed to have "broken his pen," suggesting that he was ready to give up writing altogether and focus on his diplomatic career. It was not until the mid-1970s, towards the end of his life, that his "pen was mended." He published La plume raboutée in 1978, followed by À rebrousse-temps, À rebrousse-gens, and Senegal du temps de....
Death
Birago Diop died on 25 November 1989 in Dakar at the age of 83. He was survived by his wife of many years, Marie-Louise Pradére, and two children, Renée and Andrée. His legacy includes the titles of novelist, diplomat, a founder of the Negritude movement and veterinarian. Even now, decades after his death, his stories and poems remain, sharing African values and culture.
