Nothing: Senegal and Momo Essay

Submitted By chynabrown48
Words: 1269
Pages: 6

Mouhamed Diallo

His full name is Mouhamed Diallo which means the last prophet of God, the messenger of Islam but his friends just call him Momo. He was born on Sepetember 19, 1990 in a city in Senegal called Pikine Dakar. He has four brothers and three sisters. The reason Momo moved from his home in Pikine Dakar was because his father lived in Cincinnati for seven years and told Momo that "America changes the future of any African because of the opportunities here, you can find a better job and a recieve a better education," so when Momo reached thirteen he moved to Cincinnati with his father to start on his new life as an American citizen. Momo goes to school at the University of Cincinnati and is majoring in business marketing, after he graduates he hopes to save enough money so that he can move his mom and siblings to Cincinnati with him and his father. It was very hard for Momo to move from the place he called home to a new strange place where he never been. He began to tell me how difficult it was to leave his friends but even more difficult to leave his mother and siblings. He then began to talk about the first time he set foot on American soil, he didn't know what to think. "All I remember was stepping off of the plane and my dad was there standing with his hands in his pockets looking at me and smiling. That was the first time I seen my dad in two years, I ran into his arms and hugged him. America was different from Senegal, the building were bigger and the environment was more relaxed and less hectic." After we discussed the more serious part of the interview, I began to ask him what he liked to do for fun when he was a kid growing up in Senegal; he told me that there wasn't much to do, he mostly just played soccer with his friends and helped his mother take care of his siblings. I couldn't imagine taking care of my brother and sister at the age of nine and ten, thats when your suppose to enjoy your chilhood not become an adult. Momo and I started becoming more and more comfortable around each other he started telling me how he remember a song in Senegal called Yaye by Ndongo it was his favorite song as a child growing up. It talks about the love this man has for his mother and talks about him being a mommy's boy and how much respect he has for his mom. Momo seemed really into this song when we were listening to it, I knew he was thinking about his mother back home and was missing her. When I first met Momo I heard him talking on the phone in a different language, and my first thought was "what in the world is he saying?" Eventually we became friends and he told me about his family and even taught me how to say a few words in a language called Wolof. One phrase that he taught me how to say was, whats up in Wolof you would say Naka mu ? Unlike me who can only speak one language, Momo can speak five different languages, His native language is Wolfo but he also can speak French, Fulani, and English. It wasn't that easy for him to learn english, he went to an ESL school and after four months of hard work he was able to speak english very well. He discussed how he sometimes mixes up languages when he's around his family and friends because they know what he's talking about, but when he first meets someone he speaks the language that they know how to speak. When I asked Momo what he knew about the colonization of his country he told me "I know the french colonized my country until April 4 1960 which is why french is the most common language out of the 9 languages in my country." He also continued to discuss how the colonizing of his country didn't really effect him as much as it did his parents. He began to tell me how his parents and many other adults revolted against Senegals government because they were trying to take their jobs, but when the police got involved they had to back down or else they would have been put in jail. The part of Senegal that Momo lived in was a poor part of Africa, when Senegal