Reading time: 3 minutes
Company · Revelation
Episode #42
Reminder of the dilemma
A — You go back and invest in Thiès and suspend family transfers.
B — You stay in Paris and keep sending money every month.
If you chose A
This choice reveals the bet of the creative break: sacrifice the immediate stability of your own to build something lasting in the country. It's also accepting to be temporarily perceived as a traitor by those who you want to save.
If you have chosen B
This choice reveals the trapped loyalty: you maintain a system that slowly consumes you while preventing your family from developing its own autonomy. Love becomes an infusion from which no one can wean.
This dilemma is that of hundreds of thousands of Senegalese from the diaspora, trapped between the urgency of the family daily and the long-term vision. Remittances account for more than 10% of Senegalese GDP — more than official development assistance. Behind this dizzying figure lies a brutal human reality: men and women bleeding in western metropolises to keep whole families at sea. The system works, but it doesn't build anything. Money goes in Dakarian rents swollen by speculation, in imported medicines, in survival. Rarely productive investment.
Choosing option A is to break the tacit pact of the greedy diaspora. It's to face the reproaches, the distressed calls, the burning guilt of knowing that your mother may have to leave her apartment. But it's also refusing that your entire life be reduced to a Western Union transfer channel. The mango processing company, if successful, could employ your niece, generate local revenue, create an autonomy that a thousand transfers will never produce. The risk is immense. Hope too.
Choosing option B is honoring the emotional debt, remaining the pillar. But it's also locked up in a permanent exile where your own life is consumed with little fire. Your Montreuil studio shrinks every year. Your daughter grows up without roots. And Dakar, this city that has become so expensive, swallows your CFA francs without ever giving you anything — No housing, no recognition, no future.
The truth is, the choice is not between selfishness and generosity. It is between two forms of courage. Baobab does not feed the earth by letting its sap flow endlessly. He feeds her because her roots, first, dive deep enough to stand in the storm. Before offering its shadow to others, it anchors. Maybe coming home is not giving up yours. — It's finally planting your own roots so that the shadow, one day, is wider.
To go further
The Senegalese diaspora: between consumed manna and unexploited capital
Every year, the Senegalese diaspora transfers more than 1,500 billion CFA francs to the country — equivalent ...
Fractured humanity: what violence against women says about our societies
Everywhere on the planet, women are killed, mutilated, raped, silenced or confined in roles and...
Dakar, expensive city: how the Senegalese capital stifles its inhabitants
Between rising real estate, import pressure and rampant speculation, Dakar has become one of the most c...
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