By “A man in self-esteem need is a slave indeed.”
Every month, hundreds of young people in Algeria are chased outside their country of origin by an inner sense of uselessness and need for self-esteem. They risk their lives to reach richer countries in their hopeless search for this self-esteem. We call them “Boat People” or “illegal immigrants”.
Most “Boat People” are the product of the lack of consideration for them in their homeland. So, they commit the imprudence of leaving their homeland to one which is culturally different from theirs, and thus experience being different in the host’s context society.
In the present troubled times, in most countries to be a foreigner is often seen with suspicion and disdain, and sometimes associated with racial hatred and exclusion. This “illegal immigrant”, being culturally different in the host society, ignoring its language and social codes, feels completely lonesome. For lack of communication, this stranger is disruptive and disturbing. Then misunderstanding settles down with its corollary that is violence and intolerance.
This situation creates in the host societies, an unconscious and unseen social behavior which isolates, sometimes humiliates, traumatizes, and depreciates these undesired “immigrants” living on their territories. Through time, this behavior becomes a shaping process of these humans, some of which later rebel against this same society. Unwillingly, these countries manufacture human bombs that later explode at their faces.
Social behavior is a responsible behavior and a producer of human reaction. Thus, we are bound to manufacture the type of reaction that we will have in five, six, or ten years from these people or their offspring, whether or not we want it.
Most people totally ignore that human reaction is a provoked product and, in this context, the different racial exclusion and iniquities are a human product, a product of the society. And these are the dynamics underlying any fringe of the population’s development in any place of the world.
“Boat People” are no exception. If we do not want to have “Boat People”, there should be “consideration” for them in their homeland.
So, in order to avoid “illegal immigrants”, somewhere, somehow, build self-esteem in your people.
Otherwise, most of our societies, later or sooner, will have a genuine product of their own creation that will put to hard test their intelligence and their quietude:
Worthless young people that are ready to sell their lives so cheap to a dream that often turns to a nightmare, drowning their disillusion in the fathom of the seas.
Young people who feel useless and who are ready to sell their lives so cheaply for a dream that often turns into a nightmare, drowning their disillusion in the fathoms of the seas, leaving families in tears.
Letting despair win over our young people amounts to not helping someone in danger.
In Algeria, it is high time that self-esteem prevailed. It is about our future as a nation.
Abdelouahab Hammoudi, Screenwriter- novelist https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1495759773
