Colorado Senegal, 10 years later.

Good actions continue years after tragedy.

Colorado residents recently visited the West African village of Diorbivol on the 10-year anniversary of Oumar Dia’s death and perpetuated a tradition of solidarity between the communities.

Dia, a Senegalese immigrant, was murdered by a self-proclaimed skinhead in Denver. He died on the night of November 17, 1997, while waiting for his bus to get home, after a long day at work.

The trip was co-sponsored by the African Heritage Celebration and the Denver Senegal Humanitarian Foundation; two Colorado based not for-profit organizations that promote education and friendship between Africans and Americans.

Myriah and Anthony LaChance, Eric and Kevin Miller and Theresa Neuroth of DSHF and I arrived at the village on the night of Nov. 3rd, after a 9-hour ride from Dakar, Senegal’s capital. The village had a big welcome ceremony to honor its guests. Elders, men, women and children all came out to celebrate the visit.

During the four day stay the group held meetings to assess the village needs and distributed school supplies to the 5th and 6th graders of the local elementary school. We also distributed hats in conjunction with the Eagle Scout project of Michael Linville, a Littleton Boy Scout. We toured the fields where villagers grow various crops, visited the site of a planned middle school building, and viewed major water well, storage tank and distribution project that is underway in conjunction with a United Nations sponsored humanitarian aid program.

We learned that the projects to build the middle school and water facility are currently the most important undertakings in the village. The school project, just initiated by the villagers, aims at curbing the drop out rate among students who make it to the 7th grade. The difficulty to continue education beyond the 6th grade resides in the fact that Diorbivol only has classrooms for 1st through 6th grades, and most parents can’t afford to send their children to others villages for further education. The water project will help establish a relatively clean water source to the village, which relies primarily on a couple of existing small wells and the highly-polluted Senegal River.

We left the village on the morning of Thursday Nov. 7 after a short but very successful interchange regarding future ways that DSHF and AHC can provide humanitarian support to the people of Diorbivol.

Since 1999 Denver-based organizations such as Project Cure and International medical relief have sent equipment, supplies and groups of health care professionals to assist in Senegal. More than 70 Americans have visited Senegal and have been impacted by the experience of their stays. These visits always provide opportunities for the Coloradans and Senegalese to celebrate life through work, food, music, dance and song.

Mohamadou Lamine Cisse