In her book “De si longues nuits: La solitude des épouses d’émigrés en Afrique de l’Ouest” (So long nights: The loneliness of emigrants wives in West Africa), Aurélie Fontaine tries to deconstruct the narrative surrounding the migration phenomenon. The journalist starts from the observation that in West Africa, in Europe, we often talk about those who try to reach European shores, those who succeed and those who tragically die on the way. In this book, she prefers to focus on those who are forgotten and particularly on the wives of emigrants, those who remain in their country, who wait. She tells of their solitude, their dream of money gone, and the moral and sometimes physical abuse they experience. Not without drawing attention to the fact that after waiting for many years, some manage to get out of a marriage and long nights that they no longer want.

Briefly introduce yourself to our readers?

I am a journalist and I have worked as a correspondent for many French-speaking media for ten (10) years in different African countries, including Senegal where I lived for five years. It was in the land of Teranga that I started writing this book. 

As a journalist, I have worked with France 2, BBC Afrique, RFI, Jeune Afrique, Ouest France, Le Point Afrique, Radio et Télé Suisse (RTS), Radio Télévision Belge (RTBF), Medi1, the Moroccan French-language radio station.

I have been back in France, in Brittany in the Finistère region to be precise, for two and a half years now.

Where did you get the idea to write the book: “De si longues nuits – La solitude des épouses d’émigrés en Afrique de l’Ouest“?

When I was in Senegal, I had read the crime novel “Hivernage” by the French-Senegalese writer Laurence Gavron. In this book, there was a small paragraph on the wives of immigrants. And the author mentioned the solitude they experience.

I thought to myself, this is crazy because I had been living in Senegal for two years and I hadn’t heard about this issue. It was at a time when there were many young men leaving the Senegalese coast in dugout canoes. And that was talked about a lot without asking the question of those in particular who were left behind. I had never read or heard about this issue and I became interested in it.

Migrants’ wives rarely confide in books. How did you manage to convince them and bring them out of their reservations?  

This is not peculiar to emigrant wives. It’s difficult for anyone to confide in people they don’t know, in this case journalists, about their personal stories or experiences. You have to gain people’s trust. With the photographer Laeïla Adjovi, we met women in Senegal in Louga, in Côte d’Ivoire in Abidjan and in Burkina Faso in Béguédo. And it was mainly in Senegal that we had to take more time to meet women. We brought them together. We presented the project to them and reassured them that they were not being recorded. For the pictures, the photographer made sure that we didn’t see their faces.

And once we started to ask raw, factual questions, questions about emotions and feelings, they opened up very easily. It felt good to talk about their stories knowing that their anonymity would be respected and that they would not be singled out. So they tell their personal stories but also those of hundreds of thousands of immigrant wives. They are thus somewhat dispossessed of their stories in the sense that they remain anonymous. And that is simply good. Especially since they have kept this inside them all these years while trying to hold their heads high and save face in the eyes of those around them. Indeed, there are huge disillusions when they realise that this is not the dream they were sold, especially in terms of money. Financially speaking, in the end, it is not true. It exists but for a very limited number of women and families are financially well off. 

Is there an anecdote that particularly struck you?

I would say a situation where it was very complicated to meet a woman in Louga who wanted to separate from her husband whom she had not seen for years. Her marriage was arranged. And as she had a lover for a long time, she wanted to stay with him. So, so that her family-in-law would not know that she was talking to us, we made an appointment with her at one of her friends’ houses and we talked for thirty minutes. No more than that! I thought it was crazy that she had to hide from others to tell her own story. 

You went to collect testimonies in several countries. Is there a specificity from one country to another?

In Senegal and Burkina, we didn’t find too many differences. In Burkina, for example, we went to Beguedo, a small town in the centre-east of the country. In fact, in the 1970s, there were many Italian entrepreneurs in this region. And when they returned to Italy, they proposed to the Burkinabé men from that small area to follow them to Italy to work. At the time, there were no problems obtaining a visa. These “Burkinabe Italians”, as they are called, in turn brought their relatives and little by little the community grew in Italy. In Beguedo today, there are a lot of immigrants. And so there are many women who live there without their husbands.

In Côte d’Ivoire, and particularly in Abidjan, the context is totally different because it is a large West African city where the profile of the women is different. They are largely middle class. In Beguedo in Burkina and in Louga in Senegal, it was more women from the working classes who were in situations of poverty. 

In Abidjan, it was the middle class or CSP+ class, women who had been educated. And here, we wanted to show that it was not only a financial attachment but that marrying an immigrant is also a question of social status. Because these women were more or less financially independent. Even if some of them helped their boyfriends or their husbands to fund the trip, it was certainly a financial consideration to be able to have more money for health and education for the children, a better life in short; but also a question of social status.

You seem to bring out the sad and unhappy aspect of migration in these women. Do you also bring out the other happy side of the immigrant woman in West Africa?

In any case, we bring out hope. Because they still have hope that a better situation will come about despite the years. And I also met girls in Louga who explained that they could see their older sisters, aunts and cousins marrying immigrants and that in the end it didn’t do them much good. If not a lot of loneliness, a lot of despair, a lot of sadness. They said that they did not want to rely on men to provide for the family.

Migration is nowadays portrayed as an evil with often sensational and dehumanising stories. Shouldn’t we deconstruct this narrative and show the lighter side of the phenomenon? 

I think it’s up to journalists to talk about it. It’s true that this is a real fact and that we can read and see it in the media. But it’s really up to journalists to tackle this issue head on.