New York, NY —
This week world leaders have been gathering for the U. N. General Assembly, delivering speeches and holding summit meetings and snarling up traffic on the East Side. But for some presidents and prime ministers, the trip to New York has a local dimension too. It’s a way to connect with immigrants from their country who live here and send money home. And immigrant leaders look forward to the chance for face time with the head of state. Unfortunately it doesn’t always work out the way they hoped. WNYC’s Siddhartha Mitter reports.
REPORTER: On Monday evening, the thirty-first floor corridor of the Waldorf Astoria was crowded with people from Senegal waiting to meet their president, Abdoulaye Wade. One group with an appointment was the Association of Senegalese in America, an umbrella organization based in Harlem. But as Ibrahima Diafouné, the group’s head, expl;ained the next day in his office on 116th Street, they never got through the door.
DIAFOUNE: Everyone was here, people from Los Angeles California to Boston, Connecticut, all over, Senegalese people.
REPORTER: The group included representatives of many different ethnic and religious communities. But the president’s staff said only four people would be allowed in. Diafouné refused to break up his delegation.
DIAFOUNE: And by principle I said no. We can’t do that, because that was not the purpose of the meeting. To see the entire community, some people who are here more than fifteen years and never go back to Senegal, at least see the president, shake his hand, that would be nice.
REPORTER: During the back and forth a separate group of about sixteen people turned up and were led straight into the inner sanctum. Apparently, these were U.S. based members of the president’s political party. Diafouné said watching them waltz in just added insult to injury.
DIAFOUNE: Receiving his political party and telling the community we cannot receive you, because of what reason it is, I don’t – that’s not right. That’s why we are frustrated.
REPORTER: The aborted meeting was the hot topic at the association’s office.
GAYE: it is a big frustration. Of course it is.
REPORTER: A man named Tekhe Gaye said the whole idea of having to meet the president at his hotel was flawed in the first place.
GAYE: Most of the time our president is in a big hotel, Waldorf, where you cannot meet a community, it’s impossible. What they need to know is when you come here, the best thing for them to contact their community is to go where they live.
REPORTER: President Wade has come to Harlem before. Diafouné said that when Wade ran for office, he campaigned in Harlem, door to door and business to business. The Senegalese community in New York has become that influential back home. But Wade was re-elected this year, and now, Diafouné said, he no longer needs them.
DIAFOUNE: The frustration will remain to us. We have been hurt, we have been frustrated, and that’s not nice.
BABOU: I don’t think it really matters.
REPORTER: One veteran of the local Senegalese scene downplays the whole incident. Dame Babou is the U.S. correspondent for a Senegalese newspaper and radio group. He’s been in Harlem 18 years. On Tuesday afternoon he was listening to his radio station over the Internet. The devotional music marked sundown in Dakar, and time to break fast in this holy month of Ramadan.
BABOU: Actually these meeting with the president, I don’t see the interest beyond the entertainment part of being there, meeting with the president, him giving a nice speech, but there is nothing in these meetings. It happened, it didn’t happen – It doesn’t change much in our lives here.
REPORTER: In fact, even the association members agreed the government is quite responsive to their needs, especially with paperwork like passports and birth certificates. Senegal is the only country to have its consulate in Harlem – on 125th Street. Besides, Babou said, most U.S. Senegalese are entrepreneurs and aren’t looking for government support. And he said you need to look at what happened at the hotel from both sides. All kinds of people come out of the woodwork to try to see their president, and security can get overwhelmed.
BABOU: Even one day they had this incident at the Hyatt hotel, some people right in the hall of the hotel ordered food, African food, and they started eating. And the general manager of the hotel had to come and threaten them to take the head of state out, otherwise they had to get out of there.
REPORTER: The man with the task of keeping everyone happy is Cheikh Niang, the general consul in New York, who is well regarded in the community. Over coffee at the Waldorf, he phrased his own reaction diplomatically.
NIANG: I am sure that some people are going to be disappointed but I think it’s mainly a misunderstanding between the presidential staff and the people who came.
REPORTER: So I thought I’d ask President Wade directly for his thoughts on the matter. I had an interview set up through the proper channels. But when I came back to the Waldorf for my appointment on Wednesday night, I too got bumped – by George Soros, the billionaire financier and philanthropist. And there wasn’t much I could do about that: there is a pecking order after all.
REPORTER: For WNYC, I’m Siddhartha Mitter.