ABSTRACT
This was the original tale that was brought by a busybody muse who found me sitting with a vacant mind after completing my doctoral thesis. It was as though it was whizzing across the ethereal plane in search of an empty template, which it could fill in with its thoughts. The template, of course, had to have certain pre-programmed experiences about which it could prompt the victim to type. And so it landed in my mind and began to pester me day and night until I had finished its story. I had no idea what it wanted or where the story would lead, but as I typed away, I found it most interesting as it allowed me to include the adventures of my friends from the great continent of Africa – one a law professor from Senegal, another a Zulu philosophy professor and the third a humanitarian worker in the countries of the Horn of Africa. It was my friend Kine Camara and her mentor Saliou Kandji who inspired the sense of resilience of the slave to endure. As Professor Kandji argued:
In addition, in spite of 300 years of economic plundering and sociocultural destruction, the French language, which was the principal instrument of this enterprise of economic exploitation and cultural adulteration, is still not understood by the majority of the population. It is understood, in various degrees, by only 10 per cent of the eight million inhabitants of Senegal, whose exact frontiers are still unknown!1
