The commitment of Father Pedro Opeka for the poorest in Madagascar is told in a comic strip. Akamasoa, Father Pedro, humanity through actionpublished by the Reunionese publishing house Des Bulles dans l’Océan, was presented on Saturday March 26 at the French Institute of Madagascar in the presence of Father Pedro and his Malagasy authors and illustrators.
With our correspondent in Antananarivo, Laetitia Bezain
The 64 pages ofAkamasoa, Father Pedro, humanity through action trace the journey of this Argentinian priest who succeeded, in 30 years with his association “Akamasoa” (“good friends” in French), to lift thousands of Malagasy people out of poverty. They are today 25,000 to live in the villages built by this association.
In 1989, in the open-air landfill of Andralanitra, on the outskirts of the capital Antananarivo, families dig through the garbage to survive. ” Despite the pestilential smell and the heaviness of the air, a force pushed me to continue my exploration in this strange jungle », says in this comic the Father Pedro, narrator and main characterto the children of the villages of Akamasoa:
” Akamasoa is mostly children. There are 17,300 children and young people who study in Akamasoa, torn from the streets, torn from the dump. It was a great idea for me to tell the story of Akamasoa to children who were born there, who did not see the suffering, the pain, the dramas that their parents experienced. Our story is a daily struggle. It is a hand-to-hand combat with extreme poverty. It cannot be told with ostentation but with the greatest simplicity. This comic was born and I think it could inspire others, because all that is beautiful is that it is known, so that it is made elsewhere. »
Under the realistic but gentle features of the cartoonist Rafally, the work also reveals the brutality of poverty and the obstacles to be faced in this struggle which makes it possible to restore dignity to the most deprived. ” I put all my emotion into drawing “, he explains.
A humble immersion in Father Pedro’s fight, says Franco Clerc, one of the screenwriters:
” There are a lot of books that came out on Father Pedro and Akamasoa, and we thought we were going to get out of all that and that we were going to tell the human behind the fight. After a year of exchanges, discussions, I really tried to highlight his thoughts, at the same time also doubts about the course. Comics have a much greater impact than books, for example in Madagascar. We don’t yet have this habit of reading and comics allow simple reading with lots of images and that makes it possible to reach a lot more people, especially young people. »
The initiators of the project hope to make this comic strip more accessible by translating it into Malagasy.
” The new youth has a fairly mixed level of French, and this first work, we did it in French because we want to sell to bring in revenue, to help Father Pedro expand his association, to build more houses. But the ideal would be that we could make a work at a reduced price, in Malagasy, so that it would be more popularized within the population. “, underlines Etienne Léong, the other screenwriter, at the origin of this comic strip project with Father Pedro.
Akamasoa, Father Pedro, humanity through actionpublished by Des Bulles dans l’Océan, is available in Malagasy bookstores at the price of 75,000 ariary and in France.