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Much has been written on the “public” or “international” Senghor. This paper focuses more on the “private” Senghor, the thinker and teacher who travelled the length and breadth of the country’s neighbourhoods. It examines how the memory of Senghor was constructed by writers nostalgia for the school system of their youth. More broadly, it demonstrates how Senghor, in his early political career, managed to make the nascent nation-state project attractive by using local vernacular resources to create a kinship based on jokes, and the impact this had on the way he is remembered. Finally, it shows how the memory of Senghor has become an issue and an argument in contemporary debates on national identity in Senegal.