Mother Khady's Land

Mother Khady’s land

Khady Faye is an 60 year-old woman who lives in Joal, a peninsula 114 kilometres south to the Senegal’s capital Dakar. Joal is located along Senegal’s little coast in the region of Thies, the town where Mother Khady came from some 40 years back to settle in the coastal town of Joal.

Mother Khady is a businesswoman who sells everything, except land.
We ask her what land means to her she answer:
To me, land is life. At a young age, I started doing several jobs considered then men’s jobs, when I was 19, I bought my first house in Thies.

When I first came in Joal in 1968, my mind was set on one thing: to find a safe place for my children for a sane home is the main factor for a child’s success. My first year in Joal, my husband, my three kids and I lived in one single room. Therefore, for the family’s fulfilment, I needed a safer and larger home. Having achieved it, I decided to buy land in a neighbouring village for farming purposes. Farming contributes to the family’s development.

Through land you can teach life and many others things to a child.
Only land is concrete, only land is real: the water we drink, the food we eat, all come from the land. We build houses on the land to shelter ourselves, and when we die, our body returns to the land.

Everything disappears, only land remains.

Mame Fatou Ndiaye
Senegal
World Pulse