English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
It is not the landscapes that are missing, but the Africans 1:39 You've already spoken a bit about Africa, you have African experience since you lived in Africa, so the letter N is N for Niger. I imagine that evokes things for you. Was Africa, so to speak, a life lesson for you? At the very least. It's kind, the way you turn it that way, and above all it's relevant. More than a life lesson — I wouldn't be who I am if I hadn't been in contact, if not with Africa itself, at least with Africans. Because I won't start right away by saying what seems essential to me on a personal level; that's not the most important thing in our conversation.
2:14 Often I feel a nostalgia, that's normal, I lived there for quite a few years, but it's not Africa that I miss. I keep it deep in my heart — everything to do with landscape, scenery, all that, the climate, the changing seasons, the rainy season, the dry season, it's good. Reality only takes shape in memory, as Proust says. What I miss, on the other hand, is the Africans. That's something you can't... you can't... a kind of humor, of complicity, because I've been in Africa — I'm speaking personally here — but still, first as a pupil in primary school, I'll talk about my parents' postings, then as a teacher, still within the education system but on the other side of the desk, then as a schoolbook publisher — we have a level connected to the distribution of school textbooks — then to run this music training center, much later, in Niger, so, precisely, Land of the Blacks, Niger, you can't... And...
A colonist's son: the cook's lesson 3:17 You can't confuse it with anglophone Nigeria, of course. And so, I experienced... the class differences, you know, are sharply marked between colonizers and colonized. I was a horrible little son of a settler, like many, sociologically speaking, I mean, I'm not engaging in self-flagellation either, but I remember telling my domestic staff — because children often spend time with the domestic staff during the day, who are often more interesting than guests or things like that.
3:51 So, the cook, for instance, I would say to him, 'We've brought you schools, hospitals,' something like that... And he would say to me, with a lot of humor and tact — I was like the boss's son, and he was very fond of children. He wouldn't tell me, 'I looked at the hospital being built over there, and I didn't see a single white man working on that construction site.' That irritated me, I couldn't answer anything, he was right. 'You've brought us hospitals, but we're the ones building them.' So I had the same fears, the same anxieties, the same joys as all the kids, with my classmates — there were six little white kids.
Class rather than race: carnage and subsoil resources 4:26 There were about forty Africans, this was in Benin, my first years of schooling. So that left an enormous mark, especially — as I was trying to point out earlier — it's thanks to my relationship with Africa that I suddenly grasped how class relations were so much more decisive than relations of race, color, or identity. It's interesting to note, moreover, ethnic difference, because often the commentary on African issues, on the massacres still happening today in the Central African Republic — there's also a massacre in Nigeria with Boko Haram, in Niger, in northern Mali, and so on, especially in the African Great Lakes region, which has seen the greatest massacre, in total indifference for three generations now, I mean, poor countries in the East, the former Zaire, Rwanda — people forget it's a permanent massacre.
5:17 They usually present this to us as ethnic wars, people from the South against people from the North, and in Côte d'Ivoire — I forgot an important case, it's not that old — the Ivorian civil war, between the Gbagbo supporters from the South and the Muslims from the North, we're made to believe it's a matter of identity quarrels. Whereas in the African historical tradition, as we can establish it, there certainly were wars like that, even within the same ethnic group, but the wars were limited to the killing of three or four men, the abduction of a few women, and the collection of taxes in kind — that's not so far removed, but when it produces millions of deaths, there's something else at stake besides ethnicity.
5:59 It's that there are resources in the subsoil, or on the surface for that matter. Well, there, we haven't dwelt on it too much. So Africa, generally speaking, being expatriated to countries far less economically developed — no value judgment, of course, I'm no Rousseauian who'd link the two — somehow lets you see the problems that arise here, in the Paris basin or elsewhere, but in such an enlarged form that they can no longer be denied, without all the vagueness of the in-between and the middle ground that complicates things.
6:32 Here at home in particular, class relations are so blunt over there — I mean, I had a Tuareg watchman when I was in Niger who absolutely wanted, he said this in front of my partner, to give me his daughter in marriage. 'You are my father, you are my boss, so I'll do it for you.' She was a very pretty girl, but she was 9 years old. I was 46 at the time. And already my partner was wrinkling her nose when he wanted to give me his daughter — she was so pretty that television wanted to use her for advertisements, etc. And I saw the anxious girl looking at me, saying 'Is he going to accept?'
7:02 'It would have been good news for the family, a white man who has money.' Right? Do you see what I mean? Because if it's not me, she's going to be married off to some old Dioula man, as old as me or maybe even older, who already has 4 wives, and who'll take the youngest one — I don't need to draw you a picture — and who'll make her stew all day long. So it's terrible, how class relations, as we can see, having money is already seduction, you don't even need seduction really. It's security, an escape from nothingness, from nightmare, and from dread.
7:34 So seeing all that, broadly speaking, somehow, because either you become a gilded playboy if you're a little white guy over there, you become a 'gilded jacket,' or else you completely change your point of view. I had the chance to really change my point of view, not because I'm more clear-sighted than anyone else, but because circumstances meant I wasn't cut out to be a playboy of Abidjan, neither by nature nor by upbringing, that's how it is. So I owe an enormous amount, generally speaking, to having spent a large part of my youth, and later of my professional life, in so-called developing countries, where, once again, the decisive issues are far less concealed than elsewhere, and I will be eternally grateful, on a private level — what do I sell nowadays?
A language learned from African schoolteachers 8:22 Not just right now, speaking with you — what I sell, in the generic sense of course, what gives me a bit of value to trade on? It's my patter, it's hot air, I sell wind, strictly speaking — I've been a consultant, I've been a teacher, I've spent my life selling wind. But for that, you need command of the language. Who taught me my language? Beninese or Togolese schoolteachers. So the paradox is that the instrument that serves me, that lets me earn my living and gain social value, was instilled in me by sub-Saharan Africans for whom French was not their mother tongue.
8:59 So there, I pay tribute, in a way, to the francophone world — which has nothing to do with French domination, even though it's often linked to it in a conflictual relationship. Sorry.
