Client  Stories

Between black and white, an infinity of colors

Entre le noir et le blanc, une infinité du couleurs

Fatimata grew up in tropical Dakar, the westernmost city in Africa, in the country of Senegal. The easternmost point on the African continent, located in Somalia, is more distant from Dakar than New York City is from Los Angeles. These days, Fatimata finds herself raising two tiny daughters in a considerably smaller city with a much cooler climate, far from the Atlantic she last crossed in 2003. Her journey to Columbus, Ohio, was more coincidental than purposeful. At the age of 40, she holds little hope of dreams coming true. Instead, life happens.

Fatimata's father, an electronics professor, wanted the best possible future for his daughter, one of twelve children. In Senegal, a former French colony, Fatimata was schooled in two languages, French and English. She also learned to speak Wolof and Fulani, the ethnic languages of her parents. Her family was displeased when, at 18, she courted by a divorceé twice her age. Flattered by the older man's attention and impressed by his lavish gifts, Fatimata fell hopelessly in love. After marrying her suitor, she went on to obtain a college education as a marketing technician but was unable to find a suitable job in Dakar, where unemployment is chronically high.

Shortly after giving birth to a son, Fatimata divorced her husband of seven years because of his habitual infidelity. Polygamy is permitted in Senegal, but Fatimata was disdainful of the practice. "Sometime, you always asking God to change the man," she explained, "but if you know he didn't change, you have to go." She did not want to watch her son grow to be like his father.

To support herself and her son, the young mother opened a retail shop in Dakar, where she sold beautifully appliquéd children's clothing and women's bikini swimsuits in hues of tangerine, crimson, turquoise, and lime. She and the two seamstresses she supervised constructed the garments from traditional Senegalese fabrics in a dozen torrid colors. To American eyes, the designs evoked the sunlit Caribbean.

Selling bikinis might have seemed an improbable business venture in Senegal, where Islam is the predominant religion. But Fatimata reassuringly explained that Senegalese women covered the scanty swimsuits with pareus or sarongs. She noted that Dakar, with its population of more than million, was more secular and tolerant than one might imagine. She and many of her neighbors there celebrated Christmas as well as their own religious holidays. The city of Dakar has long been noted for the strong European influence on its style. Once a busy departure point for the African slave trade, it is now a well-known destination for American and European visitors.

A Belgian Peace Corps volunteer stationed in Senegal helped Fatimata expand her garment manufacturing business. The young man introduced her to Anne Coppieters, general manager of Citizen Dream, a fair trade company with headquarters in Brussels. The retailer's website advertises, "We wish to sell products that are beautiful in their form, their colours and their materials, but also in what they signify: each article on sale in our boutiques has been made under good conditions, by craftsmen and - women who receive a proper wage."

According to Fatimata, Ann Coppieters visited her rented shop and stayed at her home in Dakar. The quality of the garments designed by Fatimata pleased the Belgian importer, and on a return trip, she brought samples of children's clothing. Fatimata was asked to reproduce the styles using Sengalese fabrics she carefully dyed in vibrant shades. Fatimata said thousands of garments she and her employees produced were eventually sold under the Citizen Dream label. Their hangtags bore the legend, "Entre le noir et le blanc, une infinité du couleurs."

Fatimata traveled to Brussels and Paris, and throughout Senegal, selling Citizen Dream merchandise from open-air stands at festivals and bazaars. She also made two trips to Washington, D.C., to visit her sister. In a shop there, she met a Sengalese merchant who was nine years older and resided in Columbus. They began a flirtation, but Fatimata's religious beliefs prevented her from visiting him after he returned to Ohio. To do so, she explained, would have marked her as a concubine.

One month after meeting her, the Columbus man asked Fatimata's parents for permission to make her his wife. Their marriage ceremony took place in a mosque in the U.S. capital while the groom was in Columbus. By Senegalese standards, this was not extraordinary. Only the older men in the Islamic community attended religious marriage ceremonies. The brides were never present. A reception celebrated by the couple in a more Western style typically followed the wedding. For Fatimata, there was no celebration after her second marriage. She simply boarded a Greyhound bus and travelled to Columbus, where she was greeted by her new husband.

With a 12-year-old son still living with her retired parents in Senegal, Fatimata again became pregnant. Before the baby's birth, her new husband returned to his homeland for a visit, during which she made discreet inquiries from Columbus concerning his whereabouts. Friends informed her he had another wife, whom he had kept secret. Fatimata felt betrayed, yet her parents dissuaded her from considering a scandalous second divorce. One of her husband's countrymen living in Columbus stepped forward and offered to help care for Fatimata and her infant. She was grateful.

A year after Fatimata's daughter Marieme's birth, the child's father returned to Columbus, apologized to Fatimata, and said he regretted deceiving her. He stayed only three weeks - long enough to father Awa, who is not yet old enough to walk. Although her girls' father occasionally phones, Fatimata has refused to take his calls. She is disillusioned. Parting brocade drapery the color of claret, edged with heavy bullion fringe, she gazed without rancor at fat snowflakes in the tarnished sky. "I don't like my life this way," she said. "It's not marriage."

Two years ago, one of the four Sengalese in the East Columbus apartment complex where Fatimata lived persuaded her to seek the assistance of Jewish Family Services. The neighbor was a career counselor with the agency. Another Jewish Family Services caseworker visited her apartment and found her distressed and in tears. Fatimata said, "she listened to me."

Fatimata's case was assigned to Kara Cantu of Help Me Grow, Jewish Family Services' educational program for parents whose children are three, or under. Help Me Grow offered health and development screening for the little girls, referrals to community services, and supportive home visits. Kara Cantu provided the distraught mother with transportation to a government job and family services agency and showed her how to obtain Medicare and day care for her daughters. "They helped me to take out my stress," said Fatimata.

With the assistance of her neighbor, the Jewish Family Services employment counselor, Fatimata was soon hired as a seasonal worker at Red Envelope's warehouse on Creekside Parkway in Lockbourne, Ohio. When the online gift retailer's business is good, she works seven days a week. When sales are slack, she doesn't work at all. Her specialty is custom embroidery and engraving, but she also performs tasks such as packing, shipping or pulling orders.

Displayed on a shelf above the television in her apartment is a silver ornament from Red Envelope that Fatimata inscribed with Marieme's name and birth date. She likes her job at the warehouse, though she works among employees who occasionally speak of her using racial slurs.

Her caseworker from Jewish Family Services also helped Fatimata locate a neighbor willing to teach her to drive. Fatimata's budget will not stretch enough to cover the purchase of a car, so she has not yet taken the driving portion of the driver's test. She relies on other Sengalese living in Columbus for transportation to work. She sends money home to her parents and her 14-year-old son, whose father tells him Fatimata is not a good mother.

Fatimata said Anne Coppieters has occasionally called to suggest she return to work for her in Dakar or Brussesls. Fatimata searched for the fabrics she would require in order to resume manufacturing embroidered children's clothing for Citizen Dream, but the material is unavailable locally. She daydreams of having a container of Sengalese fabric shipped from Africa to the U.S. and, in turn, sending completed garments to Belgium for sale. Such a business arrangement would be inefficient and cost-prohibitive. "All the time, I go to Jo-Ann Fabric," she sighed, "and I want to buy a sewing machine." She has no money for such expensive purchases.

At 40, not unlike many American women at significant junctures in their lives, Fatimata's innate strength is being tested. In Columbus, where she is no longer surrounded by familiar faces, she can find a few reminders of home at two Sengalese markets.

Fatimata can be thankful for a father who venerated education. In Senegal, less than one-third of the female population is literate. In Columbus, her older daughter, Marieme, will enter preschool in a few months. Thanks to the assistance of Jewish Family Services, Marieme speaks four languages just like her mother.

Fatimata (who asked that her last name and photo be withheld) was interviewed by professional writer, Robin Mizell.