Badiana: Former Senegalese gun Oumar Dieme, who has turned 90, considers it a miracle to carry the Olympic torch as part of the opening ceremony of the Paris Summer Games.
In the shade of mango and silk-cotton trees, he experienced the “Senegalese tirailleurs” – a group of African infantrymen who fought for France during two world wars and various decolonization struggles.
A typical boubou decorated with medals Dieme tells his service in the former French Indochina and later in Aliair, as he recalls that they did not return home.
“Many of his colleagues were left behind. Others came back injured (or),” he said.
Dieme explained that about 20 men from the village of Badiana in the southern Casamance region served in the Senegalese Tirailleurs corps until its disbandment in the 1960s.
“I was the only survivor. It’s a miracle that I was chosen,” he said, describing the family members and the destroyed building.
Dieme was chosen as one of the torchbearers to carry the Olympic torch as it passed through the Paris Saint-Saint-Denis section for the opening of the games at the end of July.
The committee accepted the offer from Diem’s office, where he lived before returning to Senegal in 2023.
“The election of Oumar Dieme contributes to an important act of remembrance, because the Senegalese gun has been forgotten in our collective memory,” Stéphane Troussel, president of the Saint-Saint-Denis chapter, told AFP.
“Considering my age, I want to be with my son,” she said.
Dieme was one of thousands of soldiers born in former French colonies in Africa to fight in the Tirailleurs Corps of Senegal, formed in 1857.
He was registered on March 6, 1953 after his father left neighboring Gambia, where the Imam had sent him to study the Koran.
Recruiters gave Diem a birth date of December 31, 1932, making him 20 at the time, but he thought he was at least two years older.
France, the US-backed colonial ruler, wanted to go to Indochina, where the Chinese-backed Viet Minh were fighting an independence movement.
“I see people coming back with medals and decorations, and I love that,” he said.
He told how 22 men from Dieme’s company fell in the bush and how the siege of Dien Bien Phu prevented him and his comrades from getting there before the defeat of the French Union forces in 1954.
After Dieme returned to his country, he left again in 1959, this time to fight in Algeria.
Here he first learned about Senegal’s independence from France in 1960.
Dieme was drafted and re-enlisted in the Senegalese army before retiring at the age of 36 and working as a security guard at the University of Dakar and as a bank courier until 1988.
Dieme then settled in Bondi, northeast of Paris, and with other armed fighters, faced another war, this time with the French state.
He eventually acquired French citizenship, and in 2023 the government allowed the remaining truckers to continue receiving the minimum pension without spending half a year in France.
Dieme later returned to Senegal and divided his time between his village and the capital Dakar, where he lived with one of his two wives and the mother of his many children.
“I am very happy with my job. I am sitting in a room of 17 square meters (in France). I do not see anyone. Everyone loves me in this village,” he said.
Diem’s opportunity to carry the Olympic torch is a testament to the efforts of Aissata Sek, local councilor in Bondi and president of the memorial group.
