J’ai lu ce livre de Hubert Reeves pour la première fois il y a déjà 9 ans de cela. J’étais en secondaire 5 à l’époque. Le livre s’intitulait « Compagnon de voyage ». Ayant écris quelques ouvrages d’astronomie et de physique pour grand public, ce livre avait pour thème l’univers dans son caractère philosophique.
La première partie du livre fait un éloge de la nature. Est-elle belle et cruelle? Tout dépend d’où on la regarde, déclare l’auteur… Il utilise plusieurs exemples avec un élan de poésie que j’ai bien apprécié. Un de ceux-ci nous amène sur the edge of a forest lake in the morning when the wind is not up yet. The man looks at the spectacle before him. The reflection of sun on water, the smell of pine trees, small insects flying over the lake and jump on a small ephemeral water almost stagnant. The man can not appreciate all this he derives a great moment of relaxation. Transposons us from the ephemeral side of now. He jumped on the lake in search of food. He must hurry because the wind is about to rise and will reach the earth. Suddenly, without even react, he plunges over an insect and swallows of a sudden. Is death. It may be cruel, this same nature.
I do a lot of parallels between this book and what I saw here in my corner of Burkina Faso. In newspapers, we read about the floods, famine, disease, corruption and poverty ... On the other hand, we hear the romantic, exotic or even always present in Africa. His music is authentic we dreamed, his energy crossing the continent. In all the movies you can always see a red sunset or the earth dozens of children, crying and laughing, chasing a car .... Africa is beautiful and cruel ...
Hosting Burkina Faso is exemplary. Welcomed into a family in the village, you can in the morning, get some bread and coffee they have paid for you ... For lunch, you will be entitled to the best piece of meat and cold water. All these little touches will move you. You did not by cons realized that this family has not been sent all his children to school, lack of money ... So much generosity not pay tuition fees and the time that children must take to help with household chores.
In a family, flying is prohibited. Even a white little risk of being robbed. Even with so little means, they will not try to take you anything. What you can not know by cons is that the daughters of the family may have all been excised. Nobody can see if a girl is circumcised. At the event, said to be ill, she has malaria (malaria). Then, life goes on, it becomes like any other. This is not written in his forehead, the small, it is excised ... How can a family she be beautiful and cruel in this way (from our point of view at least)? I
also conversations that show the wisdom of these people about their situation. This wisdom has no equal and really impresses me. A few minutes later, others leave me a bad aftertaste by comments full of prejudice and ignorance ... I am constantly confronted with this dualism, this opposition. However, I am very proud to see these differences and not to live in a glass house, as many foreigners do. Some see the bright side, other than bad ... but to learn and progress, we must be able to live in this nature is both beautiful and cruel.
