Aladj Fallou Mbacke sits at booth 18 of 47 W. 47th St. (Telephone: 917-617-0826) repairing jewelry under a lamp. Customers walk in and happily speak to Mbacke as if they are reuniting with an old friend. He looks away from the scattered rings and stones to exchange smiles and laughs before customers hand over their precious jewels.
Behind him in gold, round frames are photos of his three children: 14-year-old Absa, 12-year-old Alassane and 7-year-old Penda.
But Mbacke didn’t always have his own booth in a polished building in the Diamond District.
Twenty years ago, Mbacke landed a job as a jeweler in New York, just two weeks after he emigrated from Senegal. Mbacke was 24 at the time, and his English was poor. He was hired by a man named Jack Gindi, the same man who had hired his father when he had come to New York just two years earlier.
“This guy hired me by just believing what I’m saying,” Mbacke recalled. “I worked for him for six years.”
Mbacke remembered having Wednesdays off during middle school when he lived in Senegal. On those days, he would shadow his father in a small shop.
“My father had nine kids, and I’m the only one who became a jeweler,” he said. “For me, I got a lot of experience from that shop. I learned from the best.”
After Gindi’s shop closed, he encouraged Mbacke to use his talents in a rented space elsewhere.
“He’s the one who pushed me to come to 47th Street to get my own booth,” he said.
Gindi gifted Mbacke with most of the tools from the closed shop for his new business and even paid for him to go to the Gemological Institute of America to become a certified stone-setter the year after he arrived in the United States.
“That did change my life, and I’ll never forget what that guy did for me,” he said. “And he’s still my friend.”
With the help of Gindi, Mbacke had a booth in the basement of 76 W. 47th St. for 13 years. He said the most difficult time was during his first year of business. He met so many new people and realized that many customers were skeptical of his ability and honesty.
“I always do the job in front of them,” he said. “I’m showing them my talent to take that [distrust] away from them.”
He said one of the most important things he learned from his father in the jewelry business was to never take the jewelry out of the customer’s sight. To this day, Mbacke still seeks his 70-year-old father’s opinion when he is unsure about something.
“I’m feeling good to do this job every single day,” he said. “It’s a good business, and I have this gift from my hands to do this job.”