North To Paradise - Ousman Umar

    2019 (first published), 2022 (translated); 143 pages.  Original Title: Viaje al Pais de los Blancos.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Autobiography; Travel Memoir; Non-Fiction; Africa.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

 

    We call them many things.  Immigrants, foreigners, undocumented aliens.  Some come from Central and South America northward.  Others travel from Eastern Europe westward. 

 

    For what?  What motivates these folks to leave their families, possessions, and homeland behind, and embrace an uncertain future?  How dangerous is their long trek?  What percentage of them reach their destination?  What kind of predators lurk along the way?

 

    If only one of them would write a memoir, telling how harrowing (or not so harrowing) such a migration is.  But that’s unlikely, because even if they are successful in their journey, they rarely sit down to write their story and get somebody to publish it.

 

    But Ousman Umar did, after leaving his small village in tropical Ghana on foot, and with a goal to somehow reach Spain.

 

North to Paradise.

 

What’s To Like...

    It’s not a spoiler to reveal that Ousman Umar did reach his destination, although it took him five years to do so.  There were languages to learn along the way, including both Catalan and Spanish once he arrived.  North to Paradise was originally written in Spanish, and recently translated into English by Kevin Gerry Dunn.

 

    Traversing the Sahara Desert with only what one can carry is daunting enough, to do it on your own, as a youth, verges on suicidal.  Worse yet, the need for water and avoiding the authorities meant a straight-line journey was impossible.  There’s a map at the beginning of the book showing the route he took; he was forced to meander all over northern Africa.

 

    The first chapter describes Ousman’s life as a child in Ghana, and gives the reader a great “feel” for what that’s like.  In some ways, life was very modern – in school they had computer classes, including how to use MS-Excel.  But other aspects were sadly outdated – there were no actual computers in the computer classes (the teachers drew pictures of the screen shots for Excel on the blackboard), and Ousman has a traumatic first meeting with an escalator, something he likens to an “enormous python”.

 

    After leaving Ghana, Ousman’s trek takes him through another ten countries, the last being the Canary Islands region of Spain.  It takes him five years to get there, four of which were spent in Libya, trying to eke out a living and save enough money to be smuggled into Spain. 

 

    Being a memoir, the book is written in the first-person POV.  The writing style is straightforward: “I did this, then that happened”, but in amongst all the events he sprinkles some remarkably adult-like insight about life.

    Don’t stop reading when you reach the end of the tale; there are a number of “extras” tacked on, including some great Photographs of the author and his families (89%-92% Kindle).  Then there are Afterword, Author’s Note, and Acknowledgements sections that tell you what Ousman has been up to since gaining citizenship in Spain.  It'll leave a lump in your throat.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 7,938 ratings and 572 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.27/5 based on 7,706 ratings and 534 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Trotro (n.) : in Ghana, a minibus.  Google-image it.

 

Excerpts...

    The first stage of my journey wasn’t too rough.  My concept of time was entirely different: if you had asked me what I would be doing five years in the future, I wouldn’t have known.  Long-term planning wasn’t a priority; my concern was what I would eat that day and whether I’d have anything to eat the next.  In Ghana, buses depart only when they are full; there’s no hurry, and people wait patiently until all the seats are taken.  You can’t make many plans.  (loc. 305)

 

    Another aspect of life here that I could never wrap my head around was this idea of “vacation.”  I took time off work only when I had exams.  Once, I went on holiday with a girlfriend, and it was really hard because I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with myself.  Why were we wasting time like that?  I need food, I need clothes, but I don’t need vacation.  I didn’t understand that I had the right to take time off work, and to be honest, I still don’t totally get the point of doing nothing on purpose.  (loc. 1421)

 

Kindle Details…

    Right now, North to Paradise sells for $4.99, although ISTR I got this as a freebie on Amazon’s “World Literature Day” or whatever they called it.  At present, it is Ousman Umar’s only published book, although you can get the Spanish and Catalan versions for $6.99-$7.99.

 

Given all the hardship I’ve experienced, it would be easy to think that the world is full of bad people, but I prefer to think that most people are good.  It’s just that the good people make less noise.  (loc. 1442)

    I don’t really have any quibbles about North to Paradise, but there are a couple things to be aware of.  First and foremost, at 143 pages, it’s a very short book.  The writing may be straightforward, but it’s also powerful, and I would’ve loved for it to be twice as long, particularly since some of the countries Ousman Umar passes through, such as Togo, Burkina Faso, and Tunisia, are barely mentioned.

 

    I don’t recall any cusswords, but as a small, male youth, the author twice has to find off attempted rapes.  Acronyms are sometimes introduced without what they stand for, such as “NGO”, but hey, that's what we have Google for.  Also, there are some brutal scenes – Ousman comes across withered corpses in the Sahara; some of his traveling companions die along the way: of the 46 that start out, only 6 survived the trek across the Sahara; and the plight of the “sinkers”, migrants who are stuck in some woeful place with no means to go forward to their destination or back to their homeland, is utterly heart-wrenching.

 

    Finally, at one point in his Spanish residency, the author mentions that his grades at the university weren’t good enough to get into the school's Pharmacy program, so he had to "settle for" the Chemistry program instead.  As a degreed chemist, I’m just a little miffed.  😊

 

    Despite its brevity, I found North To Paradise to be a fantastic book, providing a rare look at life in the African equatorial subcontinent, as well as stark insight into the challenges faced by undocumented migrants anywhere in the world when they travel through dangerous and foreign lands.  Those who undertake such a venture are not suicidal, just desperate.

 

    9 Stars.  One last thing.  I was impressed by Ousman Umar’s balanced views on humanity.  Yes, as a black migrant he is introduced to racism, but some of the best and kindest people he meets are also white.  Yes, there are some nasty people in Ghana, North Africa, and Europe, but all those places have lots of kind and helpful souls as well.  Some reviewers gave up on North To Paradise as soon as the subject of racism cropped up.  You stopped reading too soon, folks.