Hello to all,

Isn't the major problem of the diaspora the transmission of sooninké culture.

I am one of these children born in Europe.
Our parents never really teached us our language and only the basic of the costums.
We didn't know better so we didn't ask much about it. We grew up, went to school and all our basic needs were met but when it came to culture ...

Our parents worked hard, treated us well now and then scrapped money together to send one or two of the many children to see the capital, the village and meet the extended family. But what is a 16 year old kid going to learn in 3 weeks vacation ?

I have always been jealous of my chinese, arab, pakistani friends of whom most seemed to have parents that teached them the language whether individually or in weekend schools, even going as far as forbidding them to talk french at home !! Most also frequently went to vacation to the country of origin and were pushed to pursue higher education.

Me ? I have a little anecdote. When i was 16 years old I was so happy because i had my first little holiday job. All my other sooninké friends were hanging and hustling but me I was going to earn my money legally and then go see my home country once again and all paid by myself since my parents couldn't afford to send us every two years so I was proud I was going to pay for the trip myself.
Well I worked the whole month of july and wanted to take the plane to the capital in August. My father came at the end of the month and told me that I needed to give him most of my salary because he needed to sent money to finish the house in the village and for the basic needs of his 2nd wife and her children in the home village. Needless to say I ended up with the hustlers and no good boys in what we called "encore un été a la cité".

Till this day I don't get how so many of these sooninké migrants move away from their home country to live in Europe, work hard, teach your children right from wrong, basics of islamic religion but don't really bother with transmitting the sooninké language and culture and then be surprised when their children go and marry white or arab women, don't want to know about sooninké culture anymore, ...

Well i understand that from 0 to 21 years old priority went to eating, housing, clothing, school. But then don't expect us to become full members of sooninké society you just didn't care enough to prepare us for it. And if you think I'm too harsh I'm asking why can the pakistanis, the turks, and other people do what we can't ?


ps. Sorry I haven't got much time so I've been very direct.