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  • Lark Mirror:African Culture, Masculinity, and Migration to France in Alain Mabanckou's Bleu Blanc Rouge
  • Wandia Njoya (bio)

Every now and then, the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea claim the lives of hundreds of Africans willing to trek in the hot sun and board overloaded, rickety ships at the coast of Tunisia, Libya, and Morocco in search of a better life in Europe. Meanwhile, on the continent where the unfortunate immigrants hope to improve their fortunes, the European Union has passed the "Returns Directive" legislation which allows governments to detain illegal immigrants, including pregnant women and unaccompanied minors, for up to eighteen months and expel them.

While the draconian immigration laws have been protested against by social groups within Europe and by world leaders such as Bolivian president Evo Morales, lingering questions remain.1 Is life in Africa so poor and desperate that it is worthwhile to endure the treacherous hazards of migrating to Europe, and the possibility that one may live in poverty or worse, be deported? Or, as Senegalese writer Boubacar Boris Diop asked in 2005, following the reports of West African migrants dying in the Sahara Desert and at barbed wire fences surrounding the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Mellila, "people are ready to sacrifice their lives to leave their homeland, but where is the willingness to serve that country, to invest a life there, at least in the interest of future generations?"2

These questions underlie the reading of Alain Mabanckou's Bleu Blanc Rouge [Blue white red]. The Congolese writer's first novel captures the fate of Massala-Massala, a poor, lackluster young man who decides to seek his fortunes in France upon inspiration by Charles Moki, a flamboyant migrant who regularly returns home for the holidays with considerable wealth and [End Page 338] exaggerated tales about easy success in France. Upon reaching France, Massala-Massala rudely discovers that contrary to Moki's stories, Moki and his friends live in an abandoned apartment and earn their living from illegal trade. On his first attempt at selling public transportation tickets bought with money obtained by cashing stolen checks, he is arrested and imprisoned for eighteen months. The novel begins with Massala-Massala contemplating his fate after having served his prison sentence and while awaiting repatriation home, and ends with his vow to make a second attempt to return to France, because "c'est une affaire d'honneur" [it is a matter of honor].3 Like the desperate determination of real-life migrants to reach Europe, Massala-Massala's resolve to return to France raises the question of whether he is fatalistic, or whether risking his life and dignity in Europe compares favorably to living at home in Congo-Brazzaville.

Odile Cazenave uses the "miroir aux alouettes" [lark mirror], a metaphor in French for that which is pleasing and deceitful, to describe the determination of African migrants to seek their fortunes in France despite the legal and economic hurdles they face.4 The metaphor is based on the hunting decoy that was used in Western Europe during the seasonal migration of larks from the seventeenth up to the early nineteenth century. Arentsen et al. explain that the lark mirror consisted of a block of wood embedded with small pieces of mirror or glass, attached to a peg that was inserted in the ground. The head of the decoy would be rotated by a spindle pulled from a few meters away, and the scintillating light would attract the birds. As the larks drew near, they would be shot by hunters waiting close by. As some dropped dead, others would fly away, but unable to resist the attraction of the mirrors, they would return seconds later. Scientists have yet to determine what exactly attracts the birds to the mirrors with such a force.5

Cazenave applies this metaphor to point out that the author of Bleu Blanc Rouge assigns responsibility to people like Moki who mislead their compatriots to seek in France adventures which are doomed to end in misfortune. However, placing the onus of Massala-Massala's fate on Moki becomes problematic because it minimizes the legacy of colonialism in Africa that leads people like Moki...

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