TESTIMONY. Entering France illegally at 16, Mamadou raises cows in Béarn, “a place where you know you can be in peace”

Seeing him being so comfortable in the middle of the herd of suckling cows, nothing suggests the life that Mamadou had to face. Leaving his country, Ivory Coast, when he was barely 16 years old, he had to relearn how to live in France. It is in Béarn, on a farm, that he finds daily support, advice and the foundations of a peaceful life.

On the Béarnaise farm, Mamadou Bamba has rebuilt his life alongside David Couture who welcomed him three years ago. It was then as part of an apprenticeship, before the bond between them became unbreakable. And that Mamadou, born in Ivory Coast and arrived in France illegally, discovers the profession of cattle breeder.

“He stayed there the weekend, we quickly hit it off,” remembers David who had been looking for someone to help him on the farm for a long time. “I saw with Mamadou a boy who wanted and wanted to fight.” This desire and mutual trust made it all happen. “It’s been two wonderful years,” insists the tutor. I taught him things and he taught me things, we formed a duo”. A duo that lasts beyond learning. Today, Mamadou feels at home on this farm, with the one who gave him his trust.

“The calf raised under the mother, before, I knew nothing about it”said the young adult from the confines of Ivory Coast, smiling. “I learned all these techniques from him.” Mamadou now experiences consecration alongside David.“It happens that he leaves the farm to me for a week,” he confides, as a guarantee of knowledge and mutual trust. Before continuing, a big smile drawn on his face, “you can say that I am moving towards my goal.”

And yet nothing could make the young man think that he was going to be able to live this life. When he leaves his home in Ivory Coast, he leaves a grandmother, a mother and a sister, he also leaves insecurity, hunger, and above all war. Coming from an ethnic group that was the victim of reprisals, he spent his childhood fearing the conflict to come. A fear that he tells with his childish eyes “In Ivory Coast, it was not the first war nor the second, in the history we learned at school (…)

In 2002, there was a war. In 2007, it wanted to start again, and in 2010, it came back.

Mamadou Bamba

Agricultural apprentice

With restraint, Mamadou explains that he was unable to realize what had happened during previous conflicts. “In 2010, I was really into it, because I saw everything, I saw people killing in front of me, I saw lots of things.” Lots of things that he has trouble talking about and that he doesn’t want to rehash. In times of war “people are ready to do anything to be able to get something to eat”, he sums up soberly.
It was then that the idea of ​​exile began to germinate in his head, often expressed by his compatriots, his neighbors, his friends. “Little by little, it settled into my head… and that’s it, it happened.”

Mamadou is quite discreet about his escape. He briefly talks about his arrival in Barcelona, ​​the fact that he does not speak Spanish and that he was advised to come to France. This is how he decides to cross the border with three companions in misfortune. Of the four, he is the only one who was able to set foot in France, in Irun, before saying “Here it is, a place where you know you can be at peace.”

Taken to Bayonne as an unaccompanied minor, he was quickly taken care of and met Danielle Ganchu-Lumier, a volunteer with migrant aid associations and RESF, about whom he speaks with stars in her eyes. It was this woman who took him under her wing and did everything so that he could do what he wanted: study agriculture.

When Mamadou boarded a train in France for the first time, he was finally able to look at the landscapes around him.“I saw a tractor in the fields and everything started from there.”

Lhe amused young man remembers the questions from his supervisors. “They told me, SO, Don’t you want another thing like your other friends, going into the building?” but Mamadou knows too well what he wants.

I said no, I like farming.

Mamadou Bamba

Agricultural apprentice

This fascination with agricultural work has very deep roots, “this path is ancestral” tells the young man raised in the middle of the fields, “I can say my father, my mother, my grandfathers, my grandparents, they all come from an agricultural background”. The one “who lived in this”, quickly realizes, upon arriving in France, that, “it was not at all the same way of working.” Far from the pastoralism practiced in his country, he wishes at all costs to learn the basics of this discovery.

After numerous language and level tests, Mamadou joined the Orthez vocational high school at the end of the year. In mid-December, at the blackboard, Mamadou concentrates on the chemical formula that he has learned by heart. He places his hydrogen and nitrogen molecules like any student of the current year. And yet, the young man has come so far. His work bore fruit. He is currently in the first year of BTS Bioqualim at the Montardon agricultural high school, alternating with an apprenticeship on a farm in Lescun.

Today, I can say it and I say it loud and clear: what I learned is worth it, because this thing can make me eat and save lots of lives.

Mamadou Bamba

Agricultural apprentice

“Because at home” resumes Mamadou, “It is said that the economy of our country, Côte d’Ivoire, is based on agriculture.”

What Mamadou learns, he wants to pass on, as we were able to do with him. He wishes to bring all this acquired knowledge to his country of origin, where “farmers don’t make a living from their art” he said. According to him, in Ivory Coast,“the land is not exploited” or with difficulty, and what’s more, people are working themselves to death as there is so little mechanization.

“Farmers have thousands of chances to be able to get by in the future, but since they don’t have the material means and the knowledge, it’s a little complicated for them.” he believes.

And later, I would like to try to bring the knowledge I gained here, home.

Mamadou also plans to send them suitable agricultural equipment. “Even if it’s old equipment.”pour “that they be more autonomous.”

A project, but above all knowledge of which he says he is “proud”, before concluding: “When I see my future, it is vast. Tomorrow, everything can change.”