I was a miner and the government seized the mine when the French withdrew. I had no wages for two weeks. I needed work. Without work, there was no money. With no money, I could not pay for my one room flat. I packed what I owned into a beat-up suitcase I salvaged from the garbage of a French family.
A week later I arrived in the Ivory Coast. With the remainder of my money, I secured a spot in a flat with eight others. Beginning in the morning, I would go to the city center and try to find work. Each day I found odd jobs to do. Laying brick, minor construction, hauling trash. With the money I earned I could afford a bowl of soup and drinks at a bar in the squalid neighborhood I lived in.
The most important reason to work was to be able to afford drinks. I know you want to judge me. I know you want to say I should not drink. Drinks are my method of escape. Drinks lift me out of the mess and dirt of life. At the bar, I could talk with other men and we share. Not about how miserable our life is. We share our dreams. I have lots of dreams. My belly is often empty. My bed is a jumble of blankets on a concrete floor. I have dreams. Getting white women into my bed. Being a millionaire with a jet. Being a French movie star. Winning an award at the Cannes Film Festival. My dreams are always there. Softening the hunger and squalor. The drinks let me get lost in them.
My name is Antoine. I am black. I never attended school. I can speak French. I dream. An anthropologist who visited my village when I was a boy said we weren’t supposed to dream if we were hungry. Unless the dream was about food. I laughed and went back to drawing water from the well as I dreamed of being the President of France.