Sadly there are NOT plenty more fish in the sea thanks to overfishing, illicit practices, and climate change, among other things. But just go with it, read on and you’ll see that in some ways it is an apt cliche to introduce this woman, Madame Diouf, known to her friends as Yayi, who I was fortunate enough to meet yesterday. She is a beautiful soul, a feminist, a natural storyteller, whose personal tragedy propelled her to take action.

Fifteen years ago, her 27-year-old son went to sea with 47 other young men from his community for a long-haul fishing trip. Their catch was inadequate, and to return home with empty nets would have been shameful. They decided to continue to Europe and try their luck as illegal immigrants. However none of them were ever heard from again. Their boat was found adrift, empty.

In Yayi’s metro-Dakar neighborhood, sons who had successfully migrated and could send remittances back to their families in Senegal raised the prestige of their families as well as their quality of life. Which is why it seemed worth the risk to these 48 fishermen.

By the same token that a son’s success as fishermen with big catches or as illegal immigrants reflects well on their families, shockingly, the loss of these 48 young men at sea was not seen as an unfortunate and tragic accident, but as something that discredits and dishonors their families.

The community stigmatized the grieving mothers of these young men. Yayi was having none of it. She used her voice to sway the community’s opinion, and then to try to find options for local families to find livelihood opportunities to try to reduce the pressure on young men to take desperate measures to find income for their family, and to prevent them from taking the fatal gamble her son had taken.

This remarkable woman intuitively understood, in spite of all cultural markers and societal norms that would have insisted otherwise, that this stigmatization was unjust and that she needed to stand up for herself and the other mothers and wives who lost fishermen on her son’s ill-fated pirogue.

Yayi began a series of appeals to influential figures in her community, and secured the patronage of an influential elder through his third and favorite wife to ultimately secure a license begin fishing, taboo and theretofore unprecedented for women. She established a training center to teach other women and men skills to fish, began mussel aquaculture, and related petites entreprises. The training center is on hiatus due to COVID and lack of sustainable funding, but members are still fishing and farming mussels and other ancillary microenterprises, like canning and selling preserves on the domestic market. They are still 375 members that are in a solidarity fund, saving and providing microcredit within their group to fund their ongoing small business activities.

Yayi understands that fish stocks are under pressure due to a variety of factors, but she remains optimistic that the sea can continue to provide income opportunities to keep men from considering the last resort of heeding the siren’s call of migration to Europe. And to hedge their bets, she’s encouraging and supporting other small business opportunities through the solidarity fund she’s kept going. Because of her, for people in Thiaroye-sur-mer there are more fish in the sea for the time being.

You can read more about her in this recent NYT article.