Doomi Golo- The Hidden Notebooks, a novel by Boubacar Boris Diop helped me a lot to get familiar with the social landscape of Senegal. Senegal does not seem to be an alien place anymore. The novel is in the form of notebooks (journals) written by a grandfather for his grandson who has left to live and work in another country. The notebooks include the history of both their ancestors and the history of their homeland. Diop says that we create our ancestors the same way that our ancestors create us. The novel has a very strong critique of the post-colonial ruling class, with satire targeting the President and armed forces of Senegal.
In addition to history and critique, the novel is very rich in spatial description and mythical imagination. The Senegalese and Dakar’s geography is described very well. There is black magic with monkeys behaving like humans, and gorillas uprooting the French-built railways. The story of Belgium’s colonization of Congo and the French role in the Tutsi genocide are also shared along with the histories and myths of Senegal. Those two aspects give the novel a Pan-African outlook.
The novel was originally written in Wolof, the mother tongue of Diop. Diop used to write in French. He started writing in Wolof as a mark of protest, after learning about the role of French forces in the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda. Many writers from post-colonial societies preferred to leave their homelands for working and teaching in the land of former colonizers, and write in the language of colonizers while critiquing colonialism and colonization. The primary audience of such authors and even academicians seems to be the colonizers and not their own people. Such an approach of writers from post-colonial societies is very hypocritical. Like Kenyan author Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’ O, Boubacar Boris Diop seems to be very critical of this approach where one critiques colonization while sitting in the lap of colonizers. Diop lives his politics, where he creates post-colonial literature for the masses of post-colonial societies and does not limit his works to western audiences. He writes in his mother tongue and for his people and lives and teaches in African countries. His works wider audiences in distant parts of the world through translations, including in French.