BIRAGO ISMAEL DIOP BIOGRAPHY

BIRAGO ISMAEL DIOP BIOGRAPHY

Birago Ismael Diop, Son of Ismael and Sokhna Diop, was born on 11 December 1906 in Ouakam, a town in Dakar. He and his two older brothers, Massyla and Youssoupha were raised by their mother. His father, disappeared two months before Diop was born. Diop’s childhood exposed him to many folktales which he later used in his literary work.

Diop earned a scholarship to attend the French-speaking school Lycée Faidherbe in Saint-Louis in 1920, 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 which influenced him into 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, and graduated in 1933.
Diop was a professional veterinary surgeon, although he was mostly recognized for his poems and folktales. Birago Diop also worked as a veterinary surgeon for the French colonial government in several West African countries, spending 1937- 1939 in the French Sudan (now Mali), 1940 in the Ivory Coast and French Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), and 1950 in Mauritania. It was during his civil service career in 1934 that he collected and reworked most of Wolof folktales, and also wrote poetry, memoirs, and a play. He also served as the first Senegalese ambassador to Tunisia from 1960 to 1965.
Just as history will bear witness, intellectuals attract each other. It was during Diop days in France as a veterinary student, that he met numerous African, African-American and Caribbean students, among them Léopold Sédar Senghor, who later became the first president of the independent Senegal. Inspired by these young black intellectuals, artists and poets, Diop composed his earliest poems in L’étudiant noir (the black student) – a student review that established the idea of the Négritude movement which protested against the assimilation theory in order to promote, survive and sustain African cultural values.
When Diop was working as the head of the government’s cattle-inspection service in Senegal and Mali, he was introduced to traditional folktales, most of which he never forgot, and they later served as the main inspiration for much of his literary work. Evidently, most of his poems and tales have their roots in oral African traditions. Folktales are traditional stories that are recited to a group at night, most times during moonlight night, by a professional storyteller, called a griot. Naturally, folktales were repeated in different places by the people who heard them. During the moonlight, in addition to folktales comes varieties of songs and dances in addition. Apart from entertainment, moonlight tales also have the greater purpose of teaching younger generations about the belief and value system of their ancestors. By combining his mastery of the French language with his experience with African folktales, Diop was able to spread the values and beliefs of his ancestors and Africa in general throughout the world.
At the dawn of World War II in the early 1940s, Birago Diop was forced to return to France for two years. Homesick, his fellow Negritude writers advised him to start writing down adaptions of folktales.

When Diop finally returned to Africa, he served as a director of zoological technical services in Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso, then Upper Volta. His first literary piece, Les Contes D’Amadou Koumba was published in 1947. The three volumes work, earned him the Grand prix littéraire award. Each volume contained a collection of short stories which are animal-centered tales that 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.
When Senegal gained her independence, Birago was nominated as the first Senegalese ambassador in Tunisia. Having accepted his new appointment, Diop stopped writing so as to pay full attention his diplomatic duties. In the 1970s he returned again to the literary and published La plume raboutée in 1978, followed by À rebrousse-temps (1982), À rebrousse-gens (1982), and Senegal du temps de…(1986).
In 1989, Birago Diop died on 29th day of November 29, 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. He has made in mark on the sand of time. Even now, decades after his death, his stories and poems remain, sharing African values and culture.