Listen to Selle Diop, from Dakar. In Wolof with Papa Sakho

He is a great tennis player and a great singer too. He lived and worked for some years in Paris and then moved back to his country Senegal. He has seen a lot and wants to share his experience and his views on migration.
This summer we have seen African migrants in small boats crossing the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean in an attempt to find paradise in Europe. Europe saw them in the news, especially when they failed: when they drowned or arrived dead. This summer on the coast of Spain we even saw dead babies.

In Senegal people hear what we don’t see: only the successful migrants call home. The dead don’t call. And when they come home they show how: their camera’s, their cars and clothes, their false gold. Their message is: I made it, so you can make it too.

When they fail to succeed in Europe, they don’t call. They don’t send money home. They can’t go home. Because failure is unacceptable. They would rather die than face their family. Deportation is the final fate. And many end up going mad or commit suicide rather than face this fate.
You can only go back to Senegal when you are strong.

How come, what is at the root of this miserable conflict, this clash of perspectives?
Ignorance, says Selle. Many people have never seen the sea before. They have no idea what waves are. They never tried to swim. They live in a myth, the myth that Europe is Paradise. They go without education or profession, without understanding the cultural differences between Africa and Europe.
Poverty. The mafia makes use of this ignorance and of the greed of the poor. They sell cheap visa and tickets for thousands of Euro’s, to people who can only pay by using all the resources they have: their house, their family capital, evrything. They risk it all, including their feelings of belonging, their family, their village, their self-respect and finally their life.
And the government? Corruption. Some officials conspire with the mafia to make more money, exploiting the citizens. They prefer to answer the call from Europe to stop the emigration, receiving military aid to guard their waters and borders (Frontex). This only makes the underground business of human trafficking more profitable.
This makes migration only more tragic. Diop thinks that some women bring their baby with them as a protection. With a baby the chance is better to get a residence permit for humanitarian reasons…

That is Selle Diops analysis. He never took a boat. He took the plane, like most migrants from Senegal are doing actually. He feels that he must do something about it. To educate, to communicate, to criticize. He intends to bring intellectuals and artists around the table to talk. How to get the message across to the young, the poor, the ignorant?
And they will report on Radio M2M on a weekly basis.

And then we sing the song: Il faut pas me prendre la tete. Don’t drive me crazy.