Is Africa failing to make room for people’s dreams?
Daniel Nelson
Twenty-six years after he unsuccessfully headed from Nigeria to Europe, Ike Nnaebue set off again, this time to talk to West African emigrants still lured by the vision of a better life on another continent.
No U-Turn is the result. It’s a quiet, thoughtful documentary, a reflective road trip that ends with two of the women he meets sitting on a North African shore and contemplating the timing and dangers of crossing.
Before that point, Nnaebue introduces us to a variety of people heading in the same direction, plus some whose journeys have stalled, probably forever.
They are dreaming of better lives, “hoping for a better tomorrow”, not seeking asylum. They often are influenced by dubious information.
Nnaebue’s voice-over offers his memories and thoughts, sometimes poetic, sometimes pedestrian, such as “Like food, music connects people everywhere you go” and the idea that as they set forth, the migrants “cook up a story and create an identity. In a way, the journey may be more about identity crisis than any other thing - the search for self, perhaps.”
The film pinpoints the stasis created by motoring along featureless, unending road through scrubby bush and time spent waiting for the next leg of the trip:: “Time freezes. Waiting is a huge part of this journey. Well, waiting is a huge part of life, so we wait.”
A woman who survives by begging on the streets in Morocco, where police harassment and Arab racism are part of life, insists that she is simply in a “transitional phase” while she looks for a boat: “It’s better than being a hairdresser in Nigeria.”
Some give up, because they have run out of money or because of fear generated by warnings of drownings and violence. Even then, they say the prospect of returning home is unthinkable. In an interview with Akademie, the director explains, ”There is a lot of stigmatizations associated with migration particularly in West Africa. When you leave, you don’t just leave for yourself. You are expected to come back with a certain level of what society recognizes as success. Without this you are seen as a failure who wasted everyone’s time. Another sad part is that the people you left behind have gone so far ahead and catching up with them is difficult.”
For many, the possibility of unknown opportunities keeps hope alive. “The unknown road is a pathway to wherever the gods lead,” he muses,
Nnaebue muses on the clash and coincidence of Cotonou’s former use as a slave port and its current function as a take-off point for young men and women migrating to Europe.
“I want to understand this hope which transcends fear of danger, he says. The answer seems to be a gnawing feeling that there’s more to life than staying put. ”Has Nigeria really changed in the last quarter-century? Africa,” he suggests, “doesn’t make room for people’s dreams.”