So Long a Letter

Rama recounts for Aissatou how she first met Modou. Both Rama and Aissatou were studying at the teachers’ training college. Rama and Modou met at a dance, and she knew instantly that the “tall and athletically built” (13) man before her was the one she would marry. Rama and Modou date throughout their university years and maintain a long-distance relationship when he travels to France to study law. He misses Senegal, and she misses him. Despite the disapproval of her mother, who sees Modou as slick and “idle” (15), Rama has fallen deeply in love.

Rama asks Aissatou if she remembers their old headmistress, who strove to have the girls question their customs and superstitions, to want something beyond what traditional Senegalese Islamic culture would allow them to have. Though Rama’s mother pushes her daughter to marry Daouda Dieng, a prominent local man, Rama marries Modou. Shortly afterward, Aissatou marries Mawdo, a doctor friend of Modou’s. Their marriage is a source of much local gossip, as Aissatou is the daughter of a goldsmith, while Mawdo is a privileged, wealthy son of the aristocracy. Rama and Aissatou, now married women, live lives “in parallel” (19). They work as teachers and endure slights from their in-laws, all while tending to their husbands’ needs.

As Rama and Aissatou teach children, working hard to shape young minds in a changing Africa, their husbands progress in their careers, as well. Modou becomes prominent in the local trade union, and is respected and liked by employers and their employees, both. Mawdo’s medical practice grows. In West Africa, Rama remembers, “there was unrest” (25), as countries transitioned from colonies controlled by white, Western powers to independent nations. West African style changed from traditional clothing to short skirts and Western-style menswear. The change is rocky, as Senegal struggles to develop its own infrastructure. Meanwhile, Mawdo’s mother, still angry he has married lower-class Aissatou, plots revenge.