�������t¶��

Aimé Henri Konan Bédié was born on May 5, 1934, in Dadiékro, about 150 miles north of coastal Abidjan in what was then called French West Africa.

This included the men and women who had come to try to make their fortune in the markets of Saint-Louis, one of the gateways to the West, and for a good period, the capital of French West Africa.

After going to high school in Saint-Louis — the former colonial capital of French West Africa along Senegal’s Atlantic coast — Mr. Sarr, like many of his home country’s brightest students, came to France to further his studies.

At 18, he enlisted in the colonial navy and was posted to Dakar, then the capital of French West Africa.

The story goes that a cook named Penda Mbaye created the first thieboudienne in the 1800s in Saint-Louis, which was then the capital of the French colony of Senegal and later of French West Africa.