by Ben Dosso
After hours, days, weeks, and months of traveling in painful conditions in the long truck, they finally saw the light from the next country. The joy burst on all the faces and these calcined faces started flickering. But Samba Diallo was really sad. He did not want to get out of the long truck. The long truck was the only way he could smell his homeland. His tears started flowing one after other and wet his chest like a gardener who was watering the flowers. He already was too far from home. He probably would not see his toys anymore. However, the only memorable thing that he had brought with him were the only clothes he was still wearing that day. But, no one was seeing the sadness that weighed on his mind. Despite the unlivable conditions in the long truck, Samba Diallo preferred to stay there. He did not want to get out of it because the people around him brought him a huge comfort. Even if they were in a painful condition that nobody would wish being in, but the people who were at his side were reassuring him even more. He knew when the truck would be parked, he would no longer see those people. Even if these new faces were not familiar to him, there was a certainty that he would sink deeply into a new loneliness in their absence. Many questions were running around in his mind. Is it wise to follow someone we did not know before? Is it the wise to live alone? Who could better accept him such as he was? Samba Diallo, who did not know how to wash a fork. Finally, no idea came to his mind. Few minutes later, the truck nailed its nose in a monster traffic jam at the frontier. All the drivers were patiently waiting for their passes before crossing the security barrier. In this circulation dense of vehicles, motorcycles, and pedestrians, the commotion of engines was preventing to hear all distant conversations. There were some itinerant traders, almost mobile traders. Young girls of small size, sneaking out between the vehicles at a tardive hour in the night to sell some crackers. Samba Diallo did not know the exact hour. He did not have a watch around his wrist to let him know the time. But the sun had already set behind the mountain by the time the long truck was close to the river located at some kilometers from the frontier and the moon was strongly lighting, as if someone had put a power in it. There was not the eclipse of moon that day. On these itinerant traders’ heads, the big metal plates with goods to eat and drink, trying to sell to the passersby in order to earn something for their families. In the plates, there were some freshwater wrapped in plastics, oranges, crackers, grilled peanuts, boiled eggs, and bushmeat grilled with palm oil, that was shining under the light. Samba Diallo’s stomach was completely empty. He was salivating for meat. He wanted to leap onto the meat plates, but he dodged against heart because all his two pockets were empty like the vacant expressions of his fellow travelers.
After hours in the waiting line, the long truck finally crossed the first security barrier. Beyond that border of Mali, everything changed. Even the flag that was winging in the wind in Samba Diallo’s High School yard, that students and teachers were singing national anthem to during national ceremonies, had changed its colors, besides the rectangular shape that was still the same. However, they were still on the same unpaved road, crammed into the same long truck.
Behind this artificial barrier that the long truck had just crossed, covered with dust, people started calling these travelers “strangers.” People were looking at them as if they had got out of the deepest part of the Earth. The travelers were dirty after spending thousands of hours without taking a shower, apart from the rain that was washing and cleaning the dried blood stuck on their skins.
After getting out of the truck, Samba Diallo immediately followed people who were heading to an old storage store. They got in that old gigantic store and as Samba Diallo was drunk with sleep and the tiredness had weakened his whole body, he fell asleep in a second on a knitted bamboo bed and covered himself with a hand-woven mat. Every time he rotated on another side, the bed made a weird noise. All travelers spent the night in that old gigantic store where the insects were peacefully living, without fear, and the spiders had woven their roofs. The burst of the moon penetrated in the store through the rusty windows. Close to the old gigantic storage, a stream of dirty water was flowing. Despite the bites of the mosquitoes and the bedbugs, nothing could prevent Samba Diallo to fall asleep. He was so tired. He had spent thousands of hours not closing his eyes and fell asleep in a bamboo bed that was more comfortable than sleeping in the long truck. But, the bamboo bed was still less comfortable than the mattress that his genetic umbrella had bought for him. The bed that his genetic umbrella had bought was a comfortable bed with pillows and new blankets, the toys and the books with fanny drawings on the cover and the pages. In the bedroom, all comforts were there. Samba Diallo could not bring his toys and his bed when he was leaving his home. He did not know he would leave his home. Anyway, even if he had brought his bed, the other travelers would never let him get on the truck with his bed in such a journey. At early morning, when Samba Diallo had a bunch of traces on his whole body, he had the impression that someone had whipped him all night. He developed painful muscular pains deep in his bones. His eyes were swollen like the eyes of a tarsier.
The sun had browsed the quarter of the day, it was about 10:00 at morning, and the presence of travelers had spread throughout the new city in a new country. Some good-hearted women brought the millet grits to kids. Adults could untangle to find food as best as they could in a new city where they were strangers. That dish was a gift from heaven for Samba Diallo and other teenagers who were traumatized by hunger. Samba Diallo had never eaten that before. The sun was continuing its way and the misery was continuing to rain on travelers in their journey. From the beginning, none of travelers believed that the journey could take this long.
At nightfall, a category of men was watching a dance of komo (mask dance). Samba Diallo had no chance to watch that dance because of his young age. According to the traditional myth, the dance was prohibited to young women to watch at the risk of not procreating anymore, teenagers also. The old women could watch the dance because they could not give life to a child anymore. So, they could finally watch the dance without any risk. For this ethnic group which Samba Diallo belonged to, there was no separation between the traditional spirituality and the layman. Everything was ruled according to the spiritual laws, from birth to death, which meant the soul of the human being having set a good example on Earth joins the world of their ancestors. Each family is connected to a totem animal for the respect for living beings; natural creatures possessing the divine plot help them learn the aspects of life and the rules of life and to be an accomplished individual in the society. The education system was very strict. Whatever the social status, everybody had to be submitted to this law of nature. The less affluent educated their kids according to the religious conception and their cultural identities. A neighbor could whiplash a child of his neighbor if this child disrespected his parents. On the other hand, the affluent educated their kids according to the religious conception and an Occidentalized vision. Over time, Samba Diallo started to get used to the new life, too far from his home country. It was hard for him at first. But it was necessary to find a balance between his old life on a scale and his new life on a termite mound. Samba Diallo felt a little bit comfortable because the new culture was the same as his genetic umbrella had taught him in his cradle. In other words, he was still at home according to the tradition, in the same Mandingo Kingdom that had been founded for centuries by their ancestors, except the accent that was a little bit different. But the mental line that had been drawn by the settlers during the world civilization that Diallo Samba had just crossed had its principles and its laws. It was the first huge obstacle. Even if he was speaking the same language as the other members of community, the same cultural identities and the same traditional customs, that did not make him a son of this new country. Being born on the other side of the border made him automatically a stranger to the law in the same community. He was less useful than a cockroach with this hat of foreigner that they had obligatorily made him wear because of a simple line. It was so hard for him
to overcome this pain when he was seeing his identity diluting in the wind. And he started learning then that humanity was no longer united, but rather plural since the settlers made their divisions.
Samba Diallo was living with this pain among kids of his age. Kids had rather welcomed him as a friend. They did not want to know where he was from, despite the hate they were feeding against each other when they were playing hide and seek on the street in bare feet. That was consoling him a little bit about his internal injury, about his frustrations that were gnawing at him like a piece of wood in a termite mound filled with termites. From that day, Samba Diallo started to understand that the beautiful moments of life are to be a child. That did not mean that children think positively than most adults. Basically, children love each other much more than ninety percent of adults. For kids, whatever the gravity of their quarrels, it lasts only a few minutes and they reconcile themselves as if they were not fighting. And they continue their friendship. They quickly forget why they were angry with each other. On the other hand, the adults, no matter their social class, whether woman or man, their little quarrels are sometimes a nightmare for kids, and become a source of division of society. Samba Diallo was then wary of adults. He no longer wanted to suffer cruel words from adults that were ringing in his ears like a bell song during the recreation. He trusted the kids more than adults. He did not want to get out of the skin of his childhood. Because with kids, the life was wonderfully great, despite begging together on the street for finding something to eat. Samba Diallo did not want to grow up. He was really scared to grow up. He was scared to be inaugurated in this monstrous society after growing up.
All these teens full of hope, who had held Samba Diallo’s hand, were from other cities and villages, here to attend the school year. In the evening, Samba Diallo would watch students coming back from school with their backpacks on their backs. He used to envy them for getting a chance to go back to school since the road to school was closed for him. It was in a dream where he saw himself in a school uniform with a backpack in his back. He did not want to wake up and see his dark shadow sitting in the same place, especially on the street. Even though it was written in the UNICEF decree that the school was for all children around the world, Samba Diallo felt excluded from that UNICEF decree. Also, nobody wanted to take the risk of assuming the responsibility of a stranger. Most of these children were joining their teachers, like everywhere in Africa, kind of informal school for not staying on the margins of education. This education that consisted of educating children orally or verbally, but not taking notes. It is fine to be educated. But the parents of these teens were sacrificing their lives to give a radiant future to their kids entrusting them to the spiritual guides. And these were guaranteeing to students’ parents to give a higher education to kids. But, once children were under the authority of their masters, the reality was suddenly changing. The hell was opening its doors to them. Kids were becoming some Gerebu (beggars) against their wills. A source of enrichment for these masters. Kids were spending all their free time on the street doing the begging for their master counts instead of being educated. The entire collected amount served to fulfill the desires of their masters and the children received barely enough food to eat every day.
They were sleeping on empty stomachs and were fatally undergoing the misery and the suffering. And their masters were taking advantage of the low mentality of childhood at every moment of their existences. Their masters were making them believe that a disciple should suffer for his master and the virtual success would be certain in order to exploit them better. On same points, Samba Diallo and these kids had the common suffering of physical and mental abuse. It was these internal injuries that were uniting them together. And in this atmosphere of misery, they had become like a pair of buttocks, impossible to separate them from each other.
People totally forgot the rules of Sanakuya (alliance) and they focused entirely on the winning share. This fabulous alliance of the old days was playing the role of “pact of non-aggression” between the components of the Mali Empire under the reign of Sundiata Keita (king of Mandingo). All Mandingo clans were concerned by this alliance, the source of which was the valley of Nil and was spreading all over the kingdom of the empire of Mali. The real goal of this pact was to avoid the confrontations, conflicts, wars, and to calm down the tensions, even those present in the communities. The alliance was known under the name “kin relationships,” forcing the different clans to assist, to help each other, and to integrate mutual respect but allowing them to criticize each other and to tease each other. These alliances were existing as examples between some clans. It also applied between two members of different ethnicities. Mandingo Kingdom was maintaining this link. It was likewise for many ethnic groups. The prohibitions of the alliance were to avoid flowing the blood of their fellow men. But nowadays, they united only in case of a natural disaster. Everyone avoided the way of pardon and peace pathway. The hate replaced the love. The fraternity went out by the windows and refugees lost all tolerance. The liberty was buried under the laws and codes, only the strongest had the passwords, and the peace was crushed by these smokes. The flames burned the whole world. The sound of weapons replaced the roar of thunder that they were hearing when it was raining. The community wars were intensifying, and children became refugees over and over again and the incurable traumatism instilled in their memories. It became impossible to think normally and serve the society again.
In the hope Samba Diallo was dreaming to go back home voluntarily, but he did not know how to set up his return. And how to find his home after long time of trauma? It would be so hard. And everything was getting worse. He was not stable nor in peace. But, unfortunately, on January 2012, an armed conflict between the north and south plunged Mali in an insecurity and gunshots sounded again. This new war was involuntary pushing the thousands of civilians on the street. People were escaping the fire fields. They were heading to neighboring countries to find refuge. It was the day after which Samba Diallo never saw the band of his inseparable buddies nor heard something about them, and he could find again his home. The anarchy was reigning at that troubled moment. Samba Diallo was stuck. Forced to follow people again, avoiding the massacres committed by each other.
Shouting from pain when they got hurt to relieve their conscience, but when no one gave them a hand, they could only arm themselves to face what aggressed them. Everything Samba Diallo had endured was only the beginning of the hell of a journey he was enduring. Samba Diallo’s journey got prolonged.
“Even if my journey could be described in a thousand words, in two thousand phrases and thousand books, and published it in more than thousands of journals, that could never make silent these chemical weapons that are roaring around the world nor make docile this aggressive world. I was born probably during a spring troubled meteorologically by a kind of malediction,” said Samba Diallo, hanging onto a pickup truck. And he began again at that time a new journey opening the hell door. From one door to another door, he finally got lost in a darksome night of a hopeless journey.
In general, the wars definitively destroy most people during the quest of a safe roof and some people take advantage. In other words, the powerful people are under good solar umbrella lights and others swim in the hell of a boiling molten iron water on the road for exile. On the other hand, the war is so hard to understand when one has never lived in a war zone. They can’t really know if the night claws when they have never traveled during a darksome night of despair. And what kind of an adult do children become when they have known only wars? How to rebuild a childish life in an excessive violence? And what future is there to be for a kid who knows only wars?
Cursed be the day when a kid loses his parents in a young age. Cursed be the eternal suffering that will open to him its doors, as the incurable pain will instill in his heart.
At dusk, where the sun was tired, Samba Diallo rushed into another pickup truck, a little smaller than the first long truck. He did not have the t
ime to pack up his shabby life in a small bag. Anyway, it was already messy. It was his genetic umbrella who would bring order in his childish life, but unfortunately, his genetic umbrella could not be there at the time to bring order in his life. Meanwhile, the pickup truck was exiting the town and was taking a sandy road. It looked like the same road when Samba Diallo was leaving his home. And he had the impression that he was going back to his burnt home. He so happy and in pain too. He was happier for being on the way of return. He was so happy to see again his home, the land of his ancestors. He was so happy than all the other passengers in the pickup truck. He told himself that Almighty had answered his prayers. He told himself that the angels of heaven never let their children down. “The others’ misfortune is often needed when it leads us home,” said Samba Diallo, happily, looking up to the sky. He was nostalgic for his home. But, he did not really know where he was living before. It did not matter to him. He really wanted to be home. People were king at their home according to him. “It is much better to live on the street in one’s hometown than live on the street somewhere among people who believe that we are a real threat and need to be detected urgently for their neighborhood’s safety. We easily become a bag of human waste when we live on the street. People do take off the status of human being. Nobody thinks we could be able to move a mountain. We finally become a human waste. The fresh air remains the only common thing that its creator can provide the privilege of to breathe.”
