Thierno Diallo tells his migrant course in a book

"In my career, I have learned that life is a struggle," said a soft voice Thierno Diallo, a young Guinean who fired a book tests crossings between the flight of his country only 15 years old and obtaining a residence permit in France.

Six years after his arrival in Strasbourg, Thierno is a young man of 21 who still has the appearance of a frail teenager, combined with the maturity of an adult. This is the Malraux multimedia library, one of his marks in the Alsatian capital, he made an appointment to talk about his book. "Like all kids my age, I have many dreams: maybe one day I can share all that I experienced with those who remained in Guinea," he says, weighing although every word.


Her mother disappears

For Thierno, the great and terrible adventure of migration begins in a stadium in Conakry, September 28, 2009. Security forces are killing at least 157 people, opponents of the military regime gathered to demand that Camara will be present not in the presidential election. Hidden under a bench, Thierno see men and women get slaughtered. Her mother disappears. There is still no news of her today.

His life is threatened

After a stint in the jails of the junta, the youth is released thanks to the intervention of a family friend, but more matter of staying in Guinea, where his life is at risk: towards Greece, as a stowaway on a cargo ship. From Athens, he won Paris and Strasbourg is abandoned, without money or papers, the migrant with whom he traveled to Germany.

"I, smuggled 15 years"
A stranger met at the station leads to the door of a protective association of children's rights. "If someone tries to talk to you on the street, tell yourself that by offering him a few minutes of listening, you can change the course of his life," Thierno wrote in his book "I, smuggled 15 years ".

Culture shock
Placed Oberholz home Bouxwiller where live unaccompanied foreign minors and young French people under judicial protection of youth, Thierno is gradually adapt to life in France, a country whose language seduces. With self-deprecating, he tells in his book Culture Shock and against-induced sense that, like when making braces for teens jewelry.

Yet, all is far from rosy during this period. The teenager describes every turn of the administrative maze he must go, facing officials who doubt his presence in the stadium in Conakry.

"The release of the book, it's a dream come true"
This is also to put away the successive disappointments he starts telling them in a book. "The release of the book, it's a dream come true," he says today. "I realized that everything I was writing could help better understand what drives someone from home."

For Michel Bonnefon, department head at Oberholz home, "he owes this recognition we know is good to us educators who are fighting for decades with young people who are out of school, excluded 'incasables".

A residence permit
The story ends happily for Thierno: he obtained a residence permit and landed his tray. Today ends a BTS graphic arts. "It is important to show how these young people are courageous, daring and valiant," emphasizes Gaëlle Le Guern, deputy director of the home, which followed Thierno. "They almost all come to a situation of professional and social integration when they come out of the tracking device."

The human side
Despite his own success, Thierno do not forget the other migrants, of which he became a spokesman for the time of a hearing before a committee of the Council of Europe.

"We often hear politicians talk about immigration with complicated words and numbers. I, sharing my feelings, I can bring out the human side. The day we give more space to the human cause, we all solve our problems, same economic ", he concludes.

"I, smuggled 15 years" Thierno Diallo, publishing The Blue Swarm, 2015.

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