Two journalists from Brut went to meet Yannick Noah in Cameroon. Indeed, since the death of his father in 2017, the former tennis player has returned to live in Yaoundé, the Cameroonian capital, where he grew up until he was 12 years old.
“Papa Yannick”, patriarch of a neighborhood
“I came back from time to time and then all of a sudden I had a call,” said Yannick Noah. Today, he plays the role of “village chief” in this district of Yaoundé. The inhabitants call him “Papa Yannick”, says the one who for years was the favorite personality of the French.
“I am the patriarch of what used to be a village and now it is one of the neighborhoods of Yaoundé,” explains Yannick Noah. Listening to the inhabitants, he must thus take care of “the young and the old” and from time to time drink a beer with the youngest. For this, Yannick Noah confides that he had to start learning and understanding the local dialect again.
“This is where I should be”
“My destiny is to protect the land that is mine and that of my ancestors, and to do something cool with it, because at my age, it’s the transmission that counts. I do it for my children, for my grandchildren, at least, I will leave it to them. (…) This is where I have to be, ”explains Yannick Noah to Brut.
Soon back in Belgium
And even if his life is now in Cameroon, Yannick Noah has not hung up the microphone. Initially scheduled for November 2020, then April 2021, then April 2022, his next concerts in Belgium are scheduled for next June.