Diary Sow, the talented Senegalese student who went missing in France since 4 January 2021, has made contact with authorities in her country, explaining that she was on “a little break to regain her senses”.
Sow, who has been described as the “best student in Senegal”, has won several national academic awards and has been studying physics, chemistry and engineering at the prestigious Louis-Le-Grand school.
She is a second-year pre-university student at Louis-Le-Grand, having received a scholarship for excellence.
She also published her first novel in 2020.
Authorities in France and Senegal launched a hunt for her when she failed to show up in school after the Christmas and New year holidays.
Now Sow has written a letter to Senegal’s Water and Sanitation Minister, Serigne Mbaye Thiam, explaining her disappearance.
In a thread on Twitter, the minister shared extracts of her letter – with her permission, Sow said she was “not the victim of any kind of pressure” and apologised to those worried about her.
“I am not hiding. I’m not running away. See it as a kind of welcome respite from my life,” she wrote.
She said her failure to show up for school on 4 January was not “about overwork, or madness, or the desire for freedom”.
“I am not sorry to have left, I am sorry for the inconvenience caused by my departure and for the people I made suffer,” she said.
