A bad dream” “

“I wish to go and try to fulfil myself in Europe” says an adolescent from Cameroon. What prompts an African youth to leave his own homeland to emigrate to a Western country? Father Ludovic Lado, writing in the fortnightly Italian Jesuit review “La Civiltà cattolica” of 17 September, analyses “the African image of the West” to explain “the survival of the myth” of Europe and of the West as a whole. THE WESTERN DREAM. “In recent years – says Father Lado – ever larger numbers of African youth are tragically ending their earthly destiny in the waters of the Mediterranean, whereas they had dreamt of fleeing clandestinely to Europe to try their luck” in the West. So, while “Europe is questioning itself about the permeability of its frontiers to clandestine emigration from Africa and trying, in collaboration with its neighbouring countries in North Africa, to finds ways and means of controlling this situation”, it is inevitable, in Father Ludovic’s view, that we pose the question “how the Western dream of African youth is to be explained”. In the judgement of the Jesuit, “the survival of the myth of the West in postcolonial Africa is also a question of symbolic seduction, whose roots should be sought in an environmental image based on asymmetrical relations dating back to the colonial period”. Today, “leaving one’s homeland” to go “to make one’s fortune among the whites” “has become – says Father Ludovic – a dream for many African youth frustrated by depressing socio-political situations” at home. Questioned by Father Lado, a youth from Cameroon, determined at all costs to leave his own homeland, explained his decision as follows; “In this country it is impossible to get on. Here everything is traded! That’s why I want to go and seek my fortune in Europe. Over there it seems things are better”. According to the Jesuit, therefore, “the infatuation of African youth for the West is explained by the demand for a prosperity that people imagine is more accessible there” because Europe is seen “as a place where people always end up making a fortune”. In fact, says Father Ludovic, “Western materialism fascinates and seduces many in Africa”, and in this a considerable influence is exerted by television that proposes “Western television series in which a degree of libertinism is combined with boundless luxury”. So, “through Western TV channels, arguments that were once considered taboo in Africa, such as homosexuality and paedophilia, have recently made their eruption on the public scene”. CLANDESTINITY. For many African would-be emigrants “the desire to emigrate is often hampered by the lack of financial means”. The only solution seems to be ‘clandestinity’. The underground networks of emigration are known in Cameroon with the term ‘sources or channels of confidential information’ (tuyaux). “Investing in a tuyau – explains the Jesuit – means exposing oneself to enormous risks”, and not only financial: “many attempts to emigrate clandestinely end up in jail”. Notwithstanding, these problems do not make people change their mind or stifle the determination to emigrate to Europe, as explained to Father Lado by a girl from Cameroon: “I arrived in France a week ago; I had to get into serious debt to cover the cost of the journey. Now I need to repay the debt and I have to say it’s not easy. Moreover, I haven’t yet matriculated at the University due to lack of money. Here it’s very cold and it’s difficult for me to get acclimatized”. In spite of the problems, such as integration in the host societies, the overcoming of racial prejudices and a series of complexes, “the majority of those who succeed in getting out of the ‘jungle’ – observes the Jesuit – have no intention to going back there soon”. A DIVIDED IMAGE. If, on the one hand, “the white man still evokes, in many people in black Africa, the traumatic history of slavery, colonization and, hence, defeat and humiliation”, and “this painful memory is at the root of nationalistic sentiments that go hand in hand with resentments”, on the other, “the white man” has become “a role model to be copied, often without discernment”, to achieve development. “Africans – writes Father Ludovic – study Western languages, neglecting their local ones; their governments succumb to the needs of Western investors, and place themselves at the school of Western democracy; they go to the school of Western science and technology, hoping in this way to extricate themselves from their problems”. There are also problems of identity among African youth: “being inspired by a model is perhaps useful, but imitating the West cannot be another name of development for Africa: it is, on the contrary, a lethal ambition, i.e. suicide”.