G R A N D P A

2019 was my 3rd year of college.

3 years away from the home town and, so much has changed. I know I have.

I always thought exploration would make me understand life more, it only made me feel more lost, but then I found out that feeling lost is normal, it means you’re doing something right. Life shouldn’t be predictable.

The only person who respected my deepest desire to understand life, in its true form, was my grandfather.

He understood me like no one else could. He rarely tried to put me in a box, but instead challenged me to think higher, deeper.

He was full of wisdom himself, but life hadn’t always been kind to him, so he resented her.

We talked a lot about spirituality - something I had always been fascinated with since very young.

We talked about anything I wanted to talk about, and he gave me personal advice I still keep to this day.

“Write everything down, so you can remember.”

“I believe in you.”

And the last thing he told me:

“Intelligence, Volonté et Tenacité, c’est tout ce dont tu as besoin et ça, tu en es bien pourvu.”

Because of course, when he got sick, nobody told me.

They didn’t have to. I just knew.

I knew because everything felt so silent, and yet loud at the same time. I knew because everybody dies, even though I truly thought, out of anybody, he could live forever.

My mom told me she found, par hasard, a ticket to Senegal that was incredibly cheap, very out of the ordinary.

Of course I said yes to going, it was January of 2019 and, I needed to know what was going on with my grandfather.

He wasn’t doing okay. He had always been a strong, tall, handsome and dignified human being, looking nothing like his real age of 84.

This time though, he looked old, and for the first time in my life I understood how fleeting life was.

He was dying. He did die. May of 2019.

It’s May of 2025, and I promise, I still can’t fully understand that he is gone.

I will circle back to his life story.

But his death, I have nothing else to say about the matter.

Just know, that this story changes drastically after his death.

I 100% never was or am the same.

R.I.P Ismaila Ba.

Job well done. 🤍