Daughter and granddaughter of Vietnamese women
After tracing the history of the Vietnamese who settled in Africa in the fifties, we wanted to meet with this Black Asian community. A woman whom we will call “Alima” shares her Vietnamese family’s journey and her experience of belonging to a community that is slowly fading into the Senegalese nation.
Thank you again for accepting our invitation to tell your story and sharing your family archives. Before getting to the heart of the matter, can you briefly introduce yourself ?
You can call me “Alima”. I am a 55 years old woman, born in Senegal. I am a Senegalese citizen but my parents are from Mali and Vietnam. I live in Dakar, with my husband and my children.
Tell us about your father. How did he end up in Indochina?
My father is from Kayes, in Western Mali, a city near the border with Senegal. His father passed away early, and he quickly became the sole breadwinner of the family. He emigrated to Senegal to find a job and support his mom and sister, who remained in Kayes. One of his cousins, who would later serve in Modibo Keita’s military staff (1) helped him get into the French army of West Africa. After the war broke out in Indochina, he was mobilised to fight against the rebels in Asia.
What about your mom? What was her name?
As this is quite an exceptional story, before I tell you about my parents, let me first tell you about my grandparents. My grandmother is a Vietnamese woman named Thaï Thi Lan. She had a daughter called Thihanye, which means “big sister” in Vietnamese. Thihanye’s father, my granddad, went missing during World War II and was presumed dead. In the 1940s, grandma Thaï Thi Lan met Abdoulaye Diallo, a Senegalese. He was actually a Black French from Saint-Louis because Senegal was still a French colony (2). Abdoulaye had been assigned to Vietnam during World War II and for some reason, he hadn’t returned after the victory of the Allies. He spent fifteen years in Vietnam and spoke Vietnamese very well. My grandfather Abdoulaye eventually married my grandmother Thaï Thi Lan and adopted her orphaned daughter Thihanye that he renamed Michelle Diallo. Michelle thus became the eldest of a Vietnamese-Senegalese family composed of my mom and her mixed brothers and sisters who were born in Vietnam.
How did your parents meet?
When my father arrived in Saigon with the French troops, he heard about this atypical family composed by one of his fellow Senegalese and a Vietnamese woman. He went to meet Abdoulaye Diallo, whom he asked for the hand of his adopted Vietnamese daughter Thihanye, now called Michelle. When the war ended in 1954 and the French army withdrew, my father returned to Senegal with his very young wife, his in-laws and their young Senegalese-Vietnamese children aged 8, 6 and 4.
How did your mother get used to her new life in Senegal?
My mother learned quickly the new codes of the Senegalese culture. She was still young, actually she was in her late teens when she arrived in Dakar. At the time, there was no running water in the neighbourhood. Like other girls and women, Mom had to fetch water from the standpipe, a few blocks away. That’s how she made her first Senegalese friends and uttered her first words in Wolof. Twenty years later, our household grew bigger but she remained the house manager and carried on with the responsibilities she took at a young age. Even when my father took two other wives over the years, she adapted to the new setting of the family. And that was far from easy, especially when you have left everything behind to follow her husband. Mom was lucky because she had moved to Senegal with her mother, which gave her the luxury of continuing to speak native tongue and maintain her Vietnamese heritage on a daily basis. Astonishingly, my mother and my grandmother both kept their Buddhist faith despite raising Muslim children and living in a predominantly Muslim country.
Did your mother keep in touch with the other Vietnamese expats in Senegal?
Mom and Grandma’s Vietnamese friends played an important part in their new life. The women had this tradition of hosting these backyard parties and they took turns at hosting the event. On New Year’s Day, the Embassy of Vietnam in Dakar, which no longer exists, used to organise an event that would bring together the entire Vietnamese community.
Mom was one of the few Vietnamese women who maintained her autonomy with a day job. She was employed by an Asian restaurant called La Tonkinoise, on Albert Sarraut Avenue, in Plateau (3) and frequented by Vietnamese people and war veterans.
Did your mother or grandmother get to visit their family left in Vietnam?
No, Mom never went back, just like her mother and her siblings who were born in Vietnam and raised in Senegal. I recall Mom receiving letters from her family and my young uncle, who had learned Vietnamese before coming to Africa, reading them to her.
How did you experience being mixed and having Black and Asian heritage during your youth?
I have fond memories of those years. We grew up in a quiet neighbourhood in SICAP(4). My mother had 4 boys and 3 girls born between 1956 and 1969. Growing up, I didn’t really perceive being mixed as a problem and we really embraced our multiple identities. To this day, I speak three languages fluently: Wolof, Bambara, Vietnamese, and French. That adds up to four languages actually! Outside our house, I was, obviously, a little different from girls who were my age, physically speaking. My long black hair was drawing way too much attention. When I was in elementary school, there was a bully or two who used to tease me or pull on my braids for fun. But one day two other Vietnamese-Senegalese, the Wone brothers, stood up for me and no one ever bothered me since. My dad never wanted us to go to private school, he wanted to put all of his kids, and we were 28 siblings, on an equal footing so we all went to public school.
How did your mom pass on her Vietnamese culture to you?
Beside speaking Vietnamese with Mom, food and gastronomy was really an important part of the transmission of our Asian identity. We often ate traditional dishes at home: nems (springrolls), phô, bò bún and so on. My mother and my grandmother are no longer with us and today, it is my aunt who perpetuates our Vietnamese culture, traditions and memories, with letters, photos, stories and, of course, recipes. She is the living memory of our family; she still tells us stories or anecdotes about the lives of our parents back in Vietnam. I also play my part to keep the heritage alive, I work part-time as a caterer specialised in Vietnamese cuisine. Sometimes, I need to call my aunt to refresh my memory about the details of a recipe or get help for a difficult technique.
Have you had the opportunity to go to Vietnam or reconnect with Vietnamese culture or language?
No, I’ve never been to Vietnam but why not, I would be glad to go if I ever get the chance. I would love to discover this country that my parents and my grandmother cherished so much.
How do you transmit this Vietnamese heritage to your children today?
My children were lucky to meet and share moments with their Vietnamese grandmother and great-grandmother, although they were young at the time. They know and love all Asian and also Malian dishes. I speak Bambara with them and they also know some Vietnamese words. I am very proud of my Vietnamese heritage and it is important to me to pass on my Asian heritage. We think it’s very rich and worth keeping, even though we have spent our entire life in Senegal.
(1) Modibo Keïta was the first President of Mali
(2) From 1916 to the independence of Senegal, only people born in the 4 towns of Saint-Louis, Dakar, Rufisque and Gorée could claim citizenship in the whole French colonial empire.
(3) Plateau is the district where the colonial administration and businesses were settled in Dakar. After the independence of Senegal, it remained the central economic and political stronghold of the Senegalese capital
(4) Sicap is a district located in the inner suburbs of Dakar
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