After pondering on my coming of age experience, I don’t want to highlight a single moment out of it just because I was pretty much in the same state of mind all throughout of it. In addition to that, not to say that I was unhappy, I knew that happiness was down the road. I knew this because all my discontent came from the fact that I could not live my life the way I perceive it due to the “Great gulf” that separates me with my parents to refer to Rebecca Raby who express how much of a gap there are between the worlds in which teenagers live in and the ones in which researchers—adults—live in. In comparison to how teenagers leave their parents’ houses at the age of eighteen, in my country—Senegal—after they graduate from high school, young people wish to go on with their studies in western countries like France, U.S.A. or Canada. For me knowing that and knowing that my parents would want me to go one with my studies abroad, all throughout junior high and for most of middle high I long for graduating from high school for what it was going to make happen in my life. So if we consider that my coming of age doesn’t stop at me graduating from high school, and I am to single one moment of it at all I would say graduating from high school. Not only because it was going to allow me to pursue my higher education abroad but more because was going to be the leader of my destiny.

All throughout that period of not unhappy but also not happy, there was one thing that gave me the strength and the patience to think all of this is just a matter of time: music. It is just like a medicine on me it makes me think optimistic not matter how difficult a situation is. There are a lot of songs that I listened to and I still do when I feel sad but among my preferred ones is this Whitney Huston’s song called One moment in times. The lyrics and the melody are beautiful and uplifting to me.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96aAx0kxVSA

In the culture I am from, people don’t express their love by words or at least my mum didn’t. She would do everything for me but would never say the words: I love you. In my life every time I struggle with something, I try to find a way around to cope with whatever the situation is. Because I could not express all the love I had for my mother, I once sneaked one of her pictures that I absolutely love and every time I felt like expressing my love I would pull out the picture and fulfill my desire.



There is actually no clear explanation I can give to how it makes me feel better but it sure does. For example, for some people the sight of a beach and the sound of the wind are mind-clearing. I think it is natural reaction that human beings have to try to cope with uncomfortable situation by finding a way around it. To illustrate this, we can consider Persepolis where the author, Marjane Satrapi, because she felt powerless in front of the inequalities that she was witnessing imagine she had conversations with God.

Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis. New York: Pantheon, 2003.

Raby, Rebecca. Across aGreat Gulf? New York: New York University Press, 2007.