OPINION | “Doff Yi": My Struggles with Depression
By Amran Gaye (contributing author) In 2011, while in college in the US, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. It was a new label, for things I had always felt, as far back as I can remember: my changing moods, my insomnia, my endless anxieties... I was lucky enough to be in a country with a mental health care system: medication and therapists and psychiatrists, a whole system set up to take care of me and people like me. Most Gambians living with mental illness do not have this privilege. * The earliest "doff" I remember is the toubab "doff". In primary school, standing at the gates of the national library, I saw him. Stark naked, his skin sunburnt almost brown, a distracted look on his face, muttering to himself as he walked slowly down the street. And behind him: a train of children, holding long branches which they used to poke his butt from a safe distance, giggling at this impossible sight suddenly appeared in their day. I ran into the library, and by t