Since he was very young, people have said of him that he has an old soul, that of someone who has lived and reflected on the world.
Going against the grain, Boucar Diouf always had the impression that he was older than his real age, which perhaps explains his relationship of affection with the past, old age and the wisdom of the ancients. “I have a special connection with older people, probably because I am an elder,” says the comedian and science popularizer.
An old soul
“This old soul that you name, my mother told me until her death. She always told me: “You are a living being from another era.” My parents were truly convinced that I was a soul returned to Earth. My father thinks I’m his father. He lost his memory recently, but he still called me “daddy”. It’s destabilizing. »
Words from a biologist
“Sometimes I feel young. I wrote a book called What life owes to death when my mother left, to tell people how regularly our bodies are renewed. The Boucar who left Senegal is no longer him. Our body renews itself almost every 15 years, apart from nerve cells. […] So, we are still young somewhere. But we are old too. We are the culmination of something that began more than 3.5 billion years ago. We share genes with bacteria, with fish. Evolutionarily, we are very old. It’s this side that got the better of me […] We can claim to be the age of life. I have a part of me that is 3.5 billion years old. »
In Quebec, a renaissance
“We are not only genetic, we are also cultural. The Boucar who speaks in the media, who has become a public figure, this Boucar is 33 years old. He was born in Rimouski in 1991. Because immigration is a new birth, without parents to accompany your first steps. »
Respect for elders
“I have often seen women [au Sénégal] bragging about being older than a certain person, when here, it’s the opposite […] How many times have I been told: “A little respect, I’m older than your mother!” Africans have boundless respect for the elderly. When you are in an oral tradition, the older the person gets, the more important they become in society because they have an experience that others don’t have. »
Old age, this gift
“Modernity tells us: we must eliminate the traces of old age. But the fact remains that it’s a gift, because if you don’t grow old, you’ll die young […] I don’t fear getting old. What I fear is pain. I live with chronic pain because I had polio when I was young, which threw my body out of balance. The doctor told me: “As you get older, you’re going to have problems.” It begins. »