Where is the love? asked Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway in their beautiful 1972 hit single Where is the love? Where indeed. A country, a world, increasingly at odds, even at war, with itself. Was everyone doing bad and no one doing any good? Of course not.
It’s just that bad news sells more newspapers, gets better TV ratings, than good news. Nigel Farage, who has done more than most to fuel racism and xenophobia in our country, must be feeling absolutely sick today thanks to the efforts of Mamoudou Gassama.
Mamoudou Who, you might ask? Oh no, not another migrant. Haven’t we got enough already? Except that this one, a 22 year old from Mali, is now a national hero.
Mamoudou was not supposed to be in France. He was an illegal migrant. Then, he saw a four year old child hanging from a fourth floor balcony, climbed up Spiderman like, and saved his life. In an act of sheer humanity and incredible courage, he instinctively went to save a child’s life, in the full knowledge he would be exposed as an illegal and sent back to danger. Except that President Macron had other ideas.
Not an illegal but an heroic human being who was subsequently invited to the Élysée palace where he was told he would become a naturalised French citizen and be given a job as a volunteer firefighter.
So, it turns out we are not, as Farage’s poster pointed out, at ‘Breaking Point’ after all. Mamoudou Gassama is a great human being. Where is the love? There is the love.
