footsteps of home
Back in
Mayotte after three years, the effects of waves
long history regular movements now. This time it's been three years, perhaps the next will pass less, the distance does not have time objectively measurable returns and departures are proper times, measurable only by the moods and stories of those who made the trip. Three years away from the island, far from home, not the only, but among those who have scored more.
In these years of travel and distant experiences the fate of no return, however, has been signed. You can tell when you return to the places lived with greater intensity, photographs engraved in the memories of those most sweet and full of nostalgia: memories of childhood.
Images from time to time modified by slight changes that may cross a small island in the Indian Ocean. Small improvements that do not affect the overall vision of the landscape, roads, villages. But in such a small island to change more, paradoxically, is the geography of the people who live there and the friendships they make. Just because the parts are constantly and rapidly, in arrivals and departures, in births and friendships.
Young people are not missing due to a continuous supply fed by many French from metropole, the Mainland France, who come to do business, groped for the long shot, for the improvement of life in a tropical paradise, then there are many state employees, to all teachers, also young people who come to the early years of their career or to raise their children in proper contact with nature. Given the high birth rate, thanks to the many who arrive illegally Comorian, the school and the maternity ward may be considered the main industries of the island.
Finally there are those who do not fit into any of these macro-categories, but for years, wandering spirit of youth and then stabilized in the years live in countries French overseas for passion and love of the tropical seas, from the
Reunion Martinique, a people indefinitely expert sailors.
And watching the movements of persons to which is subject to a small island, similar to the departures and arrivals that characterize a holiday village, which develops the idea of \u200b\u200banother way of life based on housing cycles: an event can life cycle hypothesis of
suggested by Franco Modigliani, but applied to lifestyle choices and the size of the urban center where there is poured.
a lifestyle that does not impose a clear and definitive choice between city and country life urban or harmony with nature, or art of getting work. One could theorize a model that you are moving at the right time to exploit what they can offer a better context in a particular stage of life, a more livable cities, yes, but also greater interconnection with the campaigns and the possibility of interchanging when necessary. A sort of cursus vitae natural
born and grow in nature, move to the city average for adolescents, training, work and become a man in the big city before returning to nature with children, making him the first trace the path again.
Also because
what is happening is just that, but one way: young people in small towns anywhere in the world when they grow up they want to start to come true in the city, where the opportunities are created and everything is achievable. In fact, only recently has tipped the balance for the first time more than half the world's population lives in cities, leaving the dying small towns are not connected, who have not re-invented, which had a loss of vital energies. A point of no return, which is causing one thing: the sprawling suburbs.
The villages are dying in the meantime, and even in Italy to prosper are the medium-sized cities: the major cities have reached a stop-hit after the strong growth of this century, indeed show a gradual depopulation of its centers to the outer areas, but better connected, the province or in the suburbs, leaving the so-called decentralization urban centers increasingly empty and at risk
gentrification.
in Mayotte the needs of young people are the same as their peers in the rest of the world, from the need to create a wide gap with the older generations, who feel young bilingual French, as well as maoresi, leaving behind older generations of self in which relationships are still strong traditional family ties and religious.
Perhaps for this reason I have not even fired a classic B & W photos depicting an African immersed in the customs and traditional activities such as prescribing any good reporter by the superficial look and folklore in search of powerful images: in Africa trying to change the images are other more suitable to describe the state of things.
The current state is represented by a school, always full of young players who think that more departures returns. Sunsets seen from the windows of his class who are sighing and sinking of young people dispersed throughout the world. The house is a gift received at birth, the few remain today, many people leave, but no one forgets. Nostalgia is the feeling of those who can not return, the discomfort is shared by those who could not leave.
Mayotte fact not claim to be increasingly France, to be increasingly connected to the rest of the world, not be left to itself as the nearby Comoros
. For this a few months ago, 95% of maoresi
said yes to a referendum to become Overseas Department in 2012, the French state more and more opportunities, but also more obligations.
So back to the place of childhood and adolescence we remember that the central theme of this trip is the house, where to look for and how to find it. The house now more than ever to be selected and constructed, even if everyone chooses the same place.
The concept of home is changing in these years and not only for business and prosperity, but because so many houses are formed of way, friends that you change who you become. The words of farewell with a distant friend increasingly becomes "You know where I'm there, you have a home."
You can not keep them all, let alone live them, but not abandon them. Sometimes we are born, others get there, often you leave. Going home does not mean finding places geographically the same, or at least not only, but find their friendships those that define your identity. Why look for a house today also means to build an identity, the two studies are related and dependent, there is no one without the other.
For this we must carefully ponder or rethink the discourse of cultural preservation and identity, using as a shield which the defense of identity, culture, tradition, logic require highly obscurantist preventing the emancipation and awareness of people.
There are things that should not change yet change, others that it hopes to overcome but to no avail, as the traditional relationships that affect the freedom to make friends among maoresi and French, landfills, open burning steadily waste generated outside the island, the fear of being robbed continually, the culture of eighty pounds to take first child, birth rates of 8.9 children per woman, arranged marriages, the invasion of illegal immigrants, the aftermath of the old colonial policies, the women reluctantly selling to the market, and others that fortunately does not change, the age-old baobab tree inside which you can hide, turtles and dolphins that can cross in the warm waters, coral reefs, on an island without being able to swim.
The changes follow insistent, needless to fade away in the hope that their retreat unchanged, closing unnecessary, but better to go with the tide starting to imagine the docks. After many departures now imagine what will be the return, take the liberty and courage to build them according to their conscience.
