(en) France, Alternative Libertaire AL #227 - Read Mahmoud Traor?, Bruno Le Dantec, Dem ak Xbarr "Go and tell" (fr)

Go and tell is the modern Odyssey Mahmoud Traor?, one of the thousands of young African 
men and women who take the road in the hope of a better life in Europe. ---- It starts in 
September 2002 in Dakar, leaving his job in a woodworking shop to follow his friend Bambo 
Sane. " You're here with empty hands and you are tired of too much hassle and wait for 
something, you know, will never come to you if you're not gonna get it with your feet. 
Then one day you shake your frame and you try your luck in telling you that if something 
goes wrong, there will be time to turn back. "Across the Sahel, Sahara and the Maghreb, 
by dint of tenacity, resourcefulness and courage, it arrives safely. September 29, 2005, a 
thousand African and African wanderers launched an assault on Fortress Europe, it is those 
who manage to put your feet on the floor of the Spanish enclave of Ceuta.

Bambo was not so lucky, having followed a different route, he disappeared in the Straits 
of Gibraltar, like so many others.

Now living in Andalusia, Traore says his adventure. " He is a voice for anonymous 
missing, a whole forgotten youth pushing against the front gates in search of a world in 
which it would no longer be excluded. "in the words of Bruno Le Dantec has collected and 
rewrote his story. This is a unique testimony to the organization of migrants 'houses', 
"ghettos", makeshift camps dotted along their travels. An underground society that has its 
roots in African culture, with its own laws, its mechanisms of domination, hierarchies but 
also its solidarity, its resistance, revolts.

It also describes the parallel economy that has developed around the exploitation of 
migrants, and those who benefit: police, customs, military, landlords, employers, 
carriers, whose rapacity is growing as we approaches the goal. In the afterword, Le Dantec 
shows how " the border is a bizness "also for the Maghreb states mint their 
collaboration in the migration policy of the European Union, and ultimately to global 
capitalism that imposes the worst conditions farms and life to those who manage to cross 
the borders and what they think they might be the Eldorado. The African Odyssey is a 
celebration of youth and adventure, a plea against the enclosure of the world and for 
freedom of movement.

Herv? (AL Marseille)

Mahmoud Traor?, Bruno Le Dantec, "Dem ak Xbarr" Go and tell. Story of a clandestine 
African en route to Europe , Editions Lines, 2012, 320 p., 23 euros.