Olivier, Jean-Baptiste and Jean Bertrand. These three Ivorians, like so many other Africans, have left Ukraine in spite of themselves that they had chosen to continue their higher education. Finding themselves on the roads of exile as soon as the war started, they chose France. Three years later, another obstacle course started.
For the past year, these former newly graduated students, Olivier Gueu and Jean Bertrand Somlaré, have placed their luggage in Nantes, in the west of the France. Everyone lives separately. Direction the home of young workers, at Jean-Baptiste Ahoua, the only one who continues his studies while working. Braided hair, all three is like the musketeers, united in the face of adversity. It is in Ukraine And on the roads of exile that this siblings were built. Since then, they have not left each other.
“” From Ukraine, it has become more than a friendship. We are more brothers than friends. We know that one can count on the other, whatever the problem. We have done the course together from Ukraine to France “Says Jean-Baptiste, his gorge knotted. The young man still has difficulty erasing from his memory this rushed departure under the bombs: ” I only had my backpack with my documents and a pair of shoes. For me, it was a daily trip. I found myself overnight in France, it was not easy. »»
“” It’s been eleven years since I was in Ukraineexplains his comrade Olivier Gueu, engineer. When you arrive in France, you really don’t know what to do. I was in the second year of doctorate in aeronautics. Leave it all behind and come to a country, France, where, even to regularize you, there was no visibility. All this was a big stress. And I had become a little Ukrainian too ».
“” I think we all feel Ukrainians, in one way or anotherabounds Jean Bertrand, who landed in kyiv just after his bac. On his laptop, he still remains connected with his friend Oleg. I recently saw that the authorities took young people for mobilization, to be able to go to the front. I sent a message to my friend whom I still have in Ukraine, asking him if he was fine. He just answered me, he told me that he was fine, that it is quite tense around him, but that everything is fine. »»
Olivier was hired at one of the flagships in the French aeronautical industry. The admission of his comrades, it was he who kissed Ukrainian culture the most, knowing how to speak Russian. At 32, this young man considers himself the group’s big brother: “ These are my little ones, they are my babies, I don’t know what they could have done without me “, He concedes, moved. Because it was a real obstacle course that started for his friends.
While he was about to finish his studies after five years in Ukraine, Jean-Baptiste had to start all over again and change the sector. Always in a good mood and laughing, Jean Bertrand has not yet emerged. With a one -year residence permit for job search and business creation, it has little time left. The phone vibrates on the other end of the wire. It was Ben, the doctor of the group, now installed in Côte d’Ivoire, who graduated in the middle of the war in Ukraine. All joke to forget. It’s been a long time since they could not hug their parents.
Read tooIn Paris, the galley life of African students who fled Ukraine