Sarr, Sheriff Samsudeen (1951 - )

Sheriff Samsideen Sarr was born in 1951. He started his carrier as a teacher and later on proceeded to study in the USA. He came back to The Gambia for a while before going back to America where he is presently residing. Meet me in Conakry has been, in the eighties, one of the most popular Pacesetter novels read by teenagers. It put S. S. Sarr on the list of the favourite African authors.

Meet Me In Conakry is a 152-page novel published in 1984 by Macmillan Education. The narrator, Sam, is a 19 year old young man who has just completed his secondary school education. He explains how, in 1971, he ran away from home on an adventurous journey along with two of his friends, Tam and Edi, to Senegal and Guinea Conakry. They were travelling without any official documents. They had no passport, no I.D. cards and they were as broke as a church mouse. In addition to their difficulties, they were faced with communication problems. Hiking in the Gambia towards Senegal, Job-hunting in Tambacounba, Senegal, hitchhiking to Guinea and finally, life in a military settlement at the Guinean border, makes reading Meet Me In Conakry, a suspense-filled novel for teenagers very exciting. The political tensions between Senegal and Guinea and the harassment of security personnel led them to return to their “Home, Sweet Home”. This novel was written during the period of the Senegambian Confederation (1981-1989). It depicts, among others, the nationalistic feelings of Gambians at the period