I knew of the global migration crisis involving crossings of the Sahara long before I wrote a novel about it. Military dictatorships, interventionist policies by foreign governments, poverty, corruption, hunger and violence have left many sub-Saharan Africans feeling they have no choice but to abandon their home in search of perceived safety and prosperity in Europe or the US.
The continent’s many problems have instilled a sense of desperation among its youth. There is also the perception that anything western is superior due to a deeply ingrained colonial worldview.
But it was not until I had a chance encounter with a group of men in Ghana, who had been deported from Italy, that I had ever been up close to anyone involved in the crisis. They told me about their arduous journey through the blistering Sahara the dangerous terrain of Libya and across the treacherous Mediterranean waters. They spoke of the agent, or “connection” man, who extorted them at every turn, forcing them to work at rest spots along the road.
They described discovering human skeletons and the belongings of forgotten travellers strewn throughout the desert. One stored his money in an empty toothpaste tube to keep it safe from militias and robbers who might stop them on the road. Another described travelling across the sea in a tiny overladen rubber boat, and the stories they heard of drowning victims.
Meeting these men in their 20s had a profound effect on me. I never looked at the situation the same way after that. I began to research the migration crisis in depth, or what the American author Zora Neale Hurston termed “poking and prying with a purpose”.
During my research, I discovered novels that touched on the trans-Saharan migration crisis in general terms but not in great detail. I read My Fourth Time, We Drowned: Seeking Refuge on the World’s Deadliest Migration Route, by Sally Hayden, a terrific book that sheds light on the situation. But I wondered why there was not more literature and impartial reporting about it, considering the scale of the problem.
As I was preparing to write the first draft of The Road to the Salt Sea, I was also embarking on my own journey as a migrant. Growing up in Nigeria made me the writer that I am today. The water, the air, the noise and the experiences I inhaled nurtured creativity within me.
But I realised the lack of opportunities in Nigeria would probably prevent me from ever realising my full writing potential. I knew I had to leave.
I travelled to several countries, where I worked as a writer and teacher before moving to the US. It soon dawned upon me that I had more in common than I was willing to acknowledge with the men I had met in Ghana; that my hopes of a better life were no more legitimate than theirs, that all I needed was a series of unfortunate circumstances to place me in the same dire situation that forced them to cross the desert.
In the US, I started to write. The Road to the Salt Sea was my attempt to create what I wanted to read when I was looking for something to help me understand this issue, my attempt to reframe a migration crisis often viewed through a western lens.
The book follows Able God, who works at an upmarket hotel in Nigeria, until an incident sends him across the desert with other migrants. They hope to start a new life in Europe, but fall victim to human traffickers and must struggle for their lives and freedom.
The subject of the trans-Saharan migration crisis is unreported in the media, but also under-represented in fiction for many reasons. For one, the continent is rarely the centre of global attention, unless we are to be pitied or exploited. Often, African suffering is reduced to statistics and headlines, and pity-inducing images. In the US, the media are too preoccupied with migrants on the southern border to care about any others; Africa is too far away, too obscure, too unimportant.
The migration crisis is a tool for officials of all political stripes. On the right, it’s a demagogue’s dream: immigrants are scapegoats for domestic problems caused by conservative policies that have decimated the middle-class while enriching the wealthy. Liberal politicians use the immigration question to rally their supporters. On the left, performative activism and pseudo-allyship are commonplace.
Coverage in Europe seems to lack the perspective required to address the issue seriously. Most European governments turn a blind eye or close their borders or pass the buck, as seen in the UK’s now-abandoned Rwanda plan.
The under-representation of this crisis in literature reflects society’s lack of interest but is also part of a bigger problem of the publishing and PR machine’s practice of anointing African writers based on an overly diasporic and western-focused vision of the continent. Often, only one African writer can be chosen at a time; hence important stories are lost.
Furthermore, the subject may not always be appealing to western readers, who might see the situation as too intense and a problem that must be solved and removed from their view. Don’t we live in a real world where people are confronted with violence and its consequences on a daily basis? Since violence is part of our collective experience and consciousness, shouldn’t it also be part of our art?
Literature has the power to change the way we perceive ourselves and the world around us. This is my way of imploring you not to look away – to see migrants in all of their humanity. It’s me shouting from the rooftops that African lives matter.
Samuel Kọ́láwọlé is author of The Road to the Salt Sea and assistant professor of English and African Studies at Penn State University
