3 ideas
After Henri Collomb took over the Fann psychiatric clinic in Dakar in 1959, patients were admitted with a family member who stayed on the ward, and regular pénc, village-style open assemblies, brought patients, relatives and staff together. Collomb and his team also sought contact with Wolof and Lebu healers and rituals such as the ndöp, and published the resulting 'Fann School' work in Psychopathologie Africaine.
A legacy is 'impossible' when successors must claim it to secure their prestige and identity but cannot fully own it. The Fann experiment is such a case: it was led by a European during the colonial-to-independence transition, it rested on conditions that no longer exist, and it is now judged by later critiques. Heirs therefore invoke, adapt and partly disown the founder all at once, and that tension becomes a defining feature of the institution.
Read the stories an institution tells about its past as active labor that serves present needs, not as neutral record. What staff choose to remember nostalgically, what they omit, and whom they credit or blame shows their current struggles over authority, funding and belonging. Contradictory memories of the same past can coexist because each does different work for different people.