Menka Gomis was born in France, but has decided his future lies in Senegal, where his parents were born.
The 39-year-old is part of a growing number of French Africans leaving France, blaming the rise in racism, discrimination and nationalism.
BBC Africa Eye has investigated this phenomenon – dubbed a “silent exodus” – to find out why people like Mr Gomis are disillusioned with life in France.
The Parisian has founded a small travel agency offering packages mainly to Africa, aimed at people looking to reconnect with their ancestral roots, and now has an office in Senegal.
“I was born in France. I grew up in France, and we have certain realities. There has been a lot of racism. I was six and at school I was called the N-word. Every day,” said Mr. Gomis, who to school in the southern port city of Marseille, says the BBC World Service.
“I may be French, but I’m also from elsewhere.”
Mr Gomis’ mother moved to France when she was just a baby and cannot understand his motivation for leaving family and friends to go to Senegal.
“I am not leaving for this African dream alone,” he explains, adding that it is a mixture of responsibility he feels towards his parents’ homeland and also opportunity.
“Africa is just like America at the time of… the gold rush. I think it is the continent of the future. There is still everything to be built and developed here.”
Ties between France and Senegal – a predominantly Muslim country and former French colony, once a major hub in the transatlantic slave trade – are long and complex.
A recent BBC Africa Eye investigation revealed migrants in Senegal willing to risk their lives during dangerous sea crossings to reach Europe.
Many of them end up in France, where a record number of asylum seekers applied for asylum last year, according to the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA).
In total, around 142,500 people applied and around a third of all requests for protection were accepted.
It is not clear how many of them will choose to make the reverse journey to Africa, as French law prohibits the collection of data on race, religion and ethnicity.
But research shows that highly qualified French citizens with a Muslim background, often children of immigrants, are emigrating quietly.
Those we met told us that attitudes towards immigration in France were hardening, with right-wing parties exerting more influence.
Since their appointment last month, Prime Minister Michel Barnier and Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau have pledged to crack down on immigration, both legal and illegal, by pushing for legal changes at national and European level.
Fanta Guirassy has lived in France all her life and has her own nursing practice in Villemomble, a suburb of Paris, but she also plans to move to Senegal, her mother’s birthplace.
“Unfortunately, we have felt less and less safe in France for a number of years. It’s a shame to say it, but that is the reality,” the 34-year-old told the BBC.
“As a single mother and with a fifteen-year-old teenager, you always have a little knot in your stomach. You’re always afraid.”
Her wake-up call came when her son was recently stopped and searched by police while chatting with his friends on the street.
“As a mother it’s quite traumatic. You see what’s happening on TV and you see it happening to others.”
In June last year, riots broke out across France following the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk – a French citizen of Algerian descent who was shot by police.
The case is still under investigation, but the riots shocked the nation and reflected an undercurrent of anger that has been building for years over the way ethnic minorities are treated in France.
Homecoming – BBC Africa Eye investigates the ‘silent exodus’ of French Africans who are leaving France for good to reconnect with their roots.
Find it on iPlayer (UK only) or on the BBC Africa YouTube channel (outside the UK)
A recent survey of black people in France found that 91% of respondents had been victims of racial discrimination.
In the aftermath of the riots, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) called on France to address “issues of racial discrimination within its law enforcement agencies.”
The French Foreign Ministry rejected the criticism, saying: “Any accusation of systemic racism or discrimination by the police in France is completely unfounded. France and its police fight resolutely against racism and all forms of discrimination.”
However, according to statistics from the French Ministry of the Interior, racist crimes increased by a third last year, with more than 15,000 incidents recorded based on race, religion or ethnicity.
For teacher Audrey Monzemba, who is of Congolese descent, such social changes have become “very scary.”
Early one morning we join her on a journey through a multicultural working-class community on the outskirts of Paris.
She travels by bus and train with her young daughter, but when she approaches the school where she works, she discreetly takes off her headscarf under the hood of her coat.
In secular France, the wearing of a hijab has become hugely controversial and twenty years ago it was banned in all public schools. This is one of the reasons why Ms Monzemba wants to leave France to move to Senegal, where she has connections.
“I’m not saying that France isn’t for me. I’m just saying that I want to be able to thrive in an environment that respects my faith and my values. I want to go to work without having to leave my veil,” says the 35 year old.
A recent survey of more than a thousand French Muslims who have left France to settle abroad shows that this is a growing trend.
It follows a spike in Islamophobia in the wake of the 2015 attacks, when Islamist gunmen killed 130 people in several locations in Paris.
Moral panic around secularism and discrimination in the labor market “are at the heart of this silent flight,” Olivier Esteves, one of the authors of the report France, You Love It But You Leave It, told the BBC.
“Ultimately, this emigration from France represents a real brain drain, because it is mainly highly educated French Muslims who decide to leave,” he says.
Take for example Fatoumata Sylla, 34, whose parents are from Senegal.
“When my father left Africa to come here, he was looking for a better quality of life for his family in Africa. He always said to us, ‘Don’t forget where you come from.’”
The tourism software developer, who moves to Senegal next month, says that by setting up a business in West Africa she is showing she has not forgotten her heritage – although her brother Abdoul, who like her was born in Paris, that’s not. convinced.
“I’m worried about her. I hope she’s okay, but I don’t feel the need to reconnect with anything,” he told the BBC.
“My culture and my family are here. Africa is the continent of our ancestors. But it’s not really ours because we weren’t there.
“I don’t think you’ll find an ancestral culture or an imaginary Wakanda,” he says, referring to the technologically advanced society featured in the Black Panther films and comic books.
In Dakar we met Salamata Konte, who co-founded the travel agency with Mr. Gomis, to find out what awaits French Africans like her who choose to settle in Senegal.
Ms Konte exchanged a well-paid banking job in Paris for the Senegalese capital.
“When I arrived in Senegal three years ago, I was shocked to hear they called me ‘Frenchie’,” says the 35-year-old.
“I said to myself, ‘Okay, yes, indeed, I was born in France, but I am Senegalese like you.’ So at first we feel like we’re saying to ourselves, ‘Damn, I got rejected in France, and now I come here and I get rejected here too.'”
But her advice is, “You have to come here with humility, and I did that.”
As for her experience as a businesswoman, she says it has been “very difficult.”
“I often tell people that Senegalese men are misogynistic. They don’t like to hear that, but I think it’s true.
“They find it difficult to accept that a woman can be CEO of a company, that a woman can sometimes give ‘orders’ to certain people, that as a woman I can say to a driver who is late: ‘No, it is not normal that you’re late.’
“I think we have to prove ourselves a little more.”
Nevertheless, Mr Gomis is excitedly awaiting his Senegalese citizenship.
The travel agency is doing well and he says he is already working on his next venture: a dating app for Senegal.
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