So distant from my life by Monique Ilboudo

So distant from my life by Monique Ilboudo

Burkinabe fiction

Original title – Si Loin de ma vie

Translator – Yarri Kamara

Source – subscription edition

I have subscribed for a couple of years now to Tilted axis as they seem to be bringing out some wonderfully challenging and exciting books for us to read in English. So when they brought out their first book from Africa I was keen to see what it would be and when this was the book from Burkina writer Monique Ilboudo a writer well known in Francophile African writing. She is a writer and human right activist, She was in the documentary Femmes Aux Yeux Ouvert (woman with open eyes)where she read a poem about how men in her country are in charge of sexual relations and the effect that has on women in her country. She is currently an ambassador in the Nordic and  Baltic states for her country.

Everything went well the first few months. A carpenter friend had made a nice signboard for me: Business letters – Beautiful love letters – Debt recovery letters – All your letters – Cheap prices. I didn’t like the last line, ‘Cheap prices’, which he had added as a favour to me, but I didn’t say anything. Anything free comes with a price. My lovely signboard brought in my first customers, who, satisfied, brought in more customers.

Within a few months, my bench was never empty and Doulaye, the shopkeeper, thanked me for the customers who passedf me and went and sat on his high stools to order a coffee or tea or even an omlette or fried eggs while waiting their turn

His letter wrting business does well to start off with.

What she does in this short novella is capture so many young men’s lives from Africa it is a sort of universal warning and insight into the struggles and desires of young men told through one man’s world. Jeanphi is a young man who is a go-getter in a way as he sees his life outside his home this is the fictional African city of Ouabany is like many of the large cities of west Africa brimming with life and those wanting a better world away from it. He tries to make his way with the modern take on a letter-writer trade. Doing his letter writing in a cyber cafe through the net helps people connect but all the time there is a draw to that route many a man takes to North Africa to try and make the way to Europe and he tries and fails a couple of times but when he does he meets an older gay french man and connects with him and lives with him in his home back in Ouabany as he becomes his assistant will he ever get to Europe what is this relationship with this gay french man all about?

Comfort is a drug that enslaves quickly. It was just a year ago that I moved into the enchanting pink villa. Yet I had the impression that I had always slept in an air-conditioned room, in a big soft bed. Having a bank account that was never in the red seemed the most natural of things. Eating, not just to satisfy my hunger but also my whims of the day, going to the cinema, to restaurants, as I wished, living without worrying about tomorrow all quickly became habit. Above all, I had become accustomed to the respect and deference that people showed me. All that was about to collapse.

He lives the Lux life in the older man’s villa later in the book

I said this is a universal tale and I think that is why she picked a fictional city as it removed place from his story it could be Dakar, Lagos, or Ouagadougou  Jeanphi being drawn to Europe and the journey to North afirca and then the wait and see if you get the chance to get to Europe the most dangerous part of the journey. not this is one man’s journey but is actually everyman’s story of those that never even get to north Africa this is a tale of a man that does fail and tries again like many but it is also a look at the pitfalls of that journey and challenges. She also shows hope is alive in west Africa but life is hard he tries to get on but then his relationship with the older french man is maybe another darker side of the way people can get into Europe usually a female but yes men can also get caught up he isn’t gay but the man is and maybe this is a way to escape. This book uses short choppy vignette-like chapters that make it feel like a much larger fuller book than it is which is just over 100 pages. At times I felt lost but maybe that is the world of our characters! Have you read this or any other books from West Africa that talk about migrants’ journeys?

Winstons score – +A – A universal take on the migrant journey from west Africa and the pitfalls of this journey.