Nice feature article by Jackie MacMullan about how Tacko always stands out but takes the attention graciously.
HE TRAINED HIMSELF to be gracious, even though no one afforded him the same consideration.
When kids in Senegal taunted him simply because he towered above them, he refused to retaliate, refused to dissolve into tears, refused to scamper home and tattle to his mother, even though he was just an 8-year-old boy.
"I could not tell my mother," Tacko Fall says. "She would have killed them."
So when they mocked him and called him Botoumboo, a goofy Senegalese cartoon character, he stood straight and silent, just as his mother had taught him. He quietly absorbed insults from boys four years older -- poking fun at someone so big made them feel tougher, stronger, cooler.
"As a kid, these are things you go through," Fall explains. "These are the things that make or break you."
HE TRAINED HIMSELF to be gracious, even though no one afforded him the same consideration.
When kids in Senegal taunted him simply because he towered above them, he refused to retaliate, refused to dissolve into tears, refused to scamper home and tattle to his mother, even though he was just an 8-year-old boy.
"I could not tell my mother," Tacko Fall says. "She would have killed them."
So when they mocked him and called him Botoumboo, a goofy Senegalese cartoon character, he stood straight and silent, just as his mother had taught him. He quietly absorbed insults from boys four years older -- poking fun at someone so big made them feel tougher, stronger, cooler.
"As a kid, these are things you go through," Fall explains. "These are the things that make or break you."
