Early Life
Son of Ismael and Sokhna Diop, Birago was born on December 11, 1906 in Ouakam, a city just outside of Dakar, Senegal. His mother raised him with his two older brothers, Massyla and Youssoupha, in the absence of his father, who, for unknown reasons, disappeared two months before Birago was born. In his childhood, he was exposed to many folktales, which he later used in his literary work.
In 1920, he earned a scholarship to attend the French-speaking school Lycée Faidherbe in Saint-Louis, which was then Senegal's capital. During this time, he became fascinated with the poems and style of writing of Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, Edgar Allan Poe and several others and began writing his own. In the late 1920s, he served as a nurse in a military hospital and later went on to study veterinary medicine at the University of Toulouse in France.
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