On Saturday 15 February 2025, at the Maison de la Conversation, the HIDA team organised the
second edition of its event “Meeting Our Elders”.

This gathering, which has become a space for intergenerational exchange, aims to explore and pass on the migration journeys of African and Afro-descendant parents. A way of reconciling past and present, questioning identities and placing individual memories within the larger collective story.

On this day bathed in winter light, the space filled with attentive listeners, faces sometimes curious, sometimes grave. At the centre of the stage, three figures, three destinies: Nafissatou Niabaly, Mireille Moguena and Sayouba Traoré. They are witnesses of an era, carriers of stories that were often silent. Facing them, Samba Doucouré, president of Africultures and moderator of the discussion, orchestrated the conversation.

Memories of a crossing: between hope and disillusion

Voices rise, cross and collide. Each speaker gives a part of themselves, reviving a memory once thought frozen, at times clenched in a cloistered past. The story of exile, of dreams broken or fulfilled, unfolds before the audience, oscillating between hope and disillusion. The evocation of hardships endured in the anonymity of big cities, of the simple joys of an integration won through hard struggle, but also of the deep wounds left by uprooting. The words are vibrant, the silences eloquent.

Some faces in the audience close up, others tense, marked by emotion. A young man in his thirties, sitting in the front row, takes the microphone. His voice trembles, but his determination is unwavering. He addresses one of the speakers, expressing his unease at certain words. This suspended moment reveals the whole complexity of transmission: between revolt and acceptance, between incomprehension and recognition.

A transmission without a will

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

This sentence by William Faulkner resonated at the heart of the exchanges. It reminds us that history, far from being a mere archive of time, continues to shape the present. As René Char also puts it: “Our inheritance was left to us by no testament.” There is no instruction manual, no universal guide for discovering what came before us. Today’s youth must then reclaim these memories, reshape them in their own way, and draw strength from them rather than a burden.

Mariama Bâ wrote in So Long a Letter:

“If dreams die as the years and realities pass, I keep my memories intact, the salt of my memory.”

This reflection illustrates the silent struggle of these generations in search of transmission and recognition.

Khalil Diallo also invites us to this necessary reinvention in L’Odyssée des Oubliés (The Odyssey of the Forgotten). His character, Sembouyane, a young migrant leaving his village of Malaimé for Morocco, illustrates with poignant accuracy this crossing through every danger, a path strewn with obstacles where dreams often break against the harshest realities.

“O world in perdition. Will someone come who, like Zeus, will remember and save the forgotten, does such a person even exist?”

– wrote Diallo, a question that also ran through minds that day at the Maison de la Conversation.

Anchoring and uprooting: a story of movement

The image is strong. Our elders are there, tutelary figures enthroned at the back of the room, like the anchored roots of a thousand-year-old tree. But while these roots nourish and support, they do not prevent the growth of new branches. The idea of movement is omnipresent: yesterday’s migrations continue today, and questions of identity and belonging are renewed.

Faced with this legacy, the stakes are high: how to embrace it without being locked in by it? How to transform it without betraying it? “We are responsible for what we do,” said a speaker in conclusion. There is no fatality, only a succession of choices to make, a freedom to conquer.

A memorable edition, a memory to carry on

As the room slowly empties and the last echoes of the voices fade, something of this meeting remains: a shiver, a reflection begun, an emotion close to the surface.

This gathering is not just an event: it is one more stone in the construction of a dialogue, a bridge stretched between generations. A gathering we leave with more questions than answers, but with the certainty that the past, in order not to be a hindrance, must be a springboard.

The story continues; it is for each of us to write what comes next.

Written by Modibo TOURE