Women have Hearts

Author’s Note

Author’s NoteDakar, which incredibly rapidly became the centre of French Colonial Society in the twentieth century, required a great deal of construction and public works to make the living conditions suitable for Europeans.

From a handful of European merchants and Company employees in 1900, the white population of Dakar rose to two thousand five hundred in 1910.

The high ideals of France’s policy of colonisation and total assimilation in Senegal was helped by the increasing presence of European women.

There were over one thousand by 1926 and they all made a great impact on the domestic scene. There was a series of colonial handbooks dedicated to the problems of their activities and diversions. These included Care of African Children and Studies of Flora and Fauna. Evening dress was compulsory on most social occasions.

When I visited Dakar in 1979, I found it an impressive and beautiful City and a perfect holiday resort.

President Leopold Sedar Senghor, whose encouragement of black culture and art has had a huge effect in raising the status of the natives, is France’s most famous modern Symbolist poet.