equatorial guinea

the gurungu pledge

by juan tomás ávila laurel

translated by jethro soutar

THE GURUNGE PLEDGE by Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel (translated by Jethro Soutar,) is essentially a selection of short stories. Each is told against the backdrop of Gurungu mountain in Morocco, where desperate men and women gather to wait for the opportunity to cross from Africa into Europe across the shared border between the continents in Melilla, a small town in southern Spain.

Each chapter tells a new traveller’s tale but what they share is the context of a few days on the mountain, where the community plans a soccer “World Cup”, a heinous crime is committed, and a surge for the border is planned. As each story unfolds, we see how connected they are, how one thing inevitably leads to another, how a decision in the corrupt leadership of a west African country, can lead to the suffering of a stranger from a different part of the world.

It was even more poignant to read this book with the knowledge of the recent massacre in Melilla, Spain where 37 African refugees were murdered when Spanish security forces opened fire on them as they tried to make the crossing. None of these men where identified or given the dignity of an autopsy before they were buried by the Spanish authorities.

Refugees are demonized by the countries they go to for shelter, often the same countries who were entitled enough to carve borders into the African continent based on shared ownership decisions made in Europe but which had nothing to do with cultural, language, or nation identity of the Africans who lived there. These same colonizers stole natural resources, helped themselves to untold riches, took people, and decided what crops to plant and farm, with no thought to feeding the local people, and set the prices for those crops based on European market demand. African people lived and died based on whether asparagus was popular in France for a season.

THE GURUNGU PLEDGE tells the stories of the human beings who are sitting on the other side of those tall fences and gates guarded by armed soldiers as if in a war situation. The mostly men and some women who have left war-torn countries, led by corrupt leaders, born of colonial neglect, and traveled thousands of miles for a chance at building a life for themselves.