Albina du Boisrouvray: “I was surrounded by luxury, but the question of affection was the ice floe”

Madame Figaro

It wasn't really hell, but I only thought from home.

I was bored in this luxury and this ease that everyone dreams of.

I found my family rigid, cold, dysfunctional.

I didn't share any of his values, his taste for money, his obsession with socializing, his terror of strangers.

I'll give you an example that marked me for life.

When I was 5 years old, we lived in New York at the Plaza because my grandfather had decided to exile his whole family to the United States so as not to stay in occupied France.

My nanny, by order of course, prevented me from playing with the little black girls I met in Central Park…

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Is this one of your earliest memories of societal dysfunction?

I was very young.

I didn't have such a clear perception of it.

But I felt that there was something that wasn't normal, that didn't make sense.

And me, I like what is logical.

I believe that my capacity for disobedience comes from there.

Not to accept without questioning, of my inability to find my place between the two diametrically opposed worlds from which I come.

My great-grandmother ran a cafe in a small dirt square in a poor little village in the Andes.

My grandfather, Simon Patino, born of an unknown father, worked in the tin mines, at an altitude of 4,500 meters with his 10-year-old little brother.

It was the lumpenproletariat, until it discovered the largest tin deposit in the world and exploited it.

At 40,

he was very rich and decided to move to Europe to avoid having to measure up to the jealousy of the bourgeoisie of Oruro, a city in Bolivia, who could not bear that a bastard and poor orphan had been able to make a fortune.

On my father's side, it was a different story.

He was a Jacquelot from Boisrouvray, related to the Polignacs through his mother.

A French bon chic bon genre, at the antipodes of the other world.

Another world, then?

His family being broke, he married a Patino, my mother, to live in the comfort he felt was his due, as most penniless aristos did.

My aunt Marie-Blanche, daughter of Madame Lanvin, received Diaghilev and Nadia Boulanger in her living room.

The famous pianist Aldo Ciccolini played Chopin's

there .

Uncle Pierre had married Charlotte of Monaco.

We traveled a lot between America, Bolivia, Argentina, Switzerland.

And then as I suffered from the bronchi, the pulmonologist of the family decided that I needed to live in a dry climate.

Direction Morocco.

For four years, without my parents, I lived in La Mamounia, the palace in Marrakech.

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by Albina du Boisrouvray.

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What was your life like at La Mamounia?

I remember the absolute freedom I enjoyed, the oriental "diffas" I slipped through.

The waiters had become my friends and reserved portions of tajine and cake for me.

La Mamounia, at the time, was the privileged vacation spot of the rich and famous.

I learned very quickly to understand all the amorous intrigues which were woven between the customers of the hotel.

It amused me a lot.

I was going to wander in the souks and on the Jamaa Alfna square to see my friends the snake charmers.

On Saturday, it was tea dancing with soldiers from the nearby American base.

I circled my bicycle around Winston Churchill while he was painting his watercolors in the hotel grounds.

It seemed to me to enter the images of

.

I was spinning my bicycle around Winston Churchill while he was painting his watercolors in the hotel grounds

Albina du Boisrouvray

Did you feel good in this environment?

I was free and independent, but terrified that something might happen to Madame Henriette, the governess my mother had hired to accompany me.

We were only the two of us in this unknown world.

And if she disappeared what would become of me?

What if my father forgot to pay the hotel bills?

Where were we going to sleep?

I had only one idea in mind, to return to New York, which I was longing for.

But for that I had to buy a ticket.

With what money?

I didn't have any.

And there, I had the idea of ​​making small bouquets with flowers cut in the gardens, which I sold to tourists at the hotel entrance.

Much later, I told this anecdote to my flabbergasted father who said to me:

"But didn't you realize that you lived in a very wealthy family?"

Well no, I didn't realize that.

I wasn't living their life, I was living next door.

What did this episode of your life teach you?

I was between 9 and 13 years old, the age when one discovers the world.

On Ramadan evenings, from my room, I heard the fast-breaking festivities, I got drunk on the smell of spices, I watched the caravans of Tuaregs loaded with bunches of dates returning from the desert.

In the morning, I went to walk the dog, I used this outing as an excuse to go and read the magazines and books at the back of the hotel shop where I discovered Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, the existentialists and life exhilarating Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

I learned that it was possible to think for oneself and not mold oneself into the dictates of one's social environment.

My loneliness gave me my independence - a chance, in short.

I also noticed that cultures, ways of life,

religions could very well live on good terms.

There was everything in Morocco, Christians, Jews, Muslims.

I also learned about the palpable misery in the streets.

"It's tuberculosis," said Madame Henriette to me when I heard coughing in the street.

And I felt that behind the walls of the Mamounia, there were thousands of individuals who were suffering.

I said to myself: is this really the human condition?

What injustice?

What disparities!

there were thousands of individuals suffering.

I said to myself: is this really the human condition?

What injustice?

What disparities!

there were thousands of individuals suffering.

I said to myself: is this really the human condition?

What injustice?

What disparities!

Is this the origin of your humanitarian commitment?

Without a doubt.

Very young I began to understand that the world was going badly, that my life was chaotic and contradictory.

Didn't this lifestyle make you grow?

He taught me that life was only a series of parentheses, that I could only rely on my own strength and that my survival was my priority.

I've been surrounded by luxury, but when it comes to affection, it was the ice pack.

What were you missing?

The caring warmth of a family.

One day I fell two stories into an elevator shaft.

I was broken all over, I was bleeding.

I found myself on the sofa of the house.

They called my mother and entering the room she ordered: "Put him a cloth, the blood will dirty the chintz of the sofa".

I may have been born with a small silver spoon in my mouth, but as a baby, I had already been put away with my nanny on the top floor of the family mansion, at 32 avenue Foch.

I had a non-existent relationship with my mother.

With my father, it was different.

He was my hero.

He had been resistant during the war.

It was he who taught me to say no and not to accept the unacceptable.

He was an adventurer.

He told me how, living in the bush,

near the Congo River, he had led a prospection for gold and diamonds.

He had a tame lioness and a chimpanzee.

He was a free adventurer until his marriage to my mother, with whom he had nothing in common but his family had to be supported.

Why did you do the 400 blows?

I was rebelling, I didn't want to fit into the mold that was intended for me.

At the end of 1954, I was enrolled in a boarding school run by the Dominican women in Mortefontaine, in the Paris region.

I was hateful.

I made them see all the colors.

I was badly dressed, badly haired, my apron still covered in ink stains.

When we went, with the boarding school, to the Odeon theater, I managed to slip away and go to Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

I was intoxicated.

At the Gibert bookstore, I discovered texts by anarchists with whom I identified and perfected my culture as a “young revolutionary”.

In class, I sprayed ink on the walls of the room explaining that it was an artistic statement,

in the vein of what the painter Mathieu painted who came to have lunch with us.

At 16, banned from nightclubs, I bribed young people to get me into Whiskey à Gogo, Régine's club that taught me how to dance the cha-cha-cha.

I would hitchhike to Saint-Tropez with my guitar, I would sing on the harbor and collect coins.

I was what is called a good student with shortcomings and studies were not my forte.

I didn't even pass my second baccalaureate.

I spent it later when I became a mother.

I was singing on the port and collecting coins.

I was what is called a good student with shortcomings and studies were not my forte.

I didn't even pass my second baccalaureate.

I spent it later when I became a mother.

I was singing on the port and collecting coins.

I was what is called a good student with shortcomings and studies were not my forte.

I didn't even pass my second baccalaureate.

I spent it later when I became a mother.

You write that you have multiplied the adventures...

It's true that I had a lot of fiancés and that I wrote a lot of break-up letters.

I almost got married several times, to escape the family.

I was still very much in love with a Venezuelan, an older man who had wives and children, wanted to divorce him and marry me.

But I couldn't see myself breaking up a marriage, or finding myself the supported mistress of a man two and a half times my age.

Just as I did not see myself as a single mother.

In 1958, I had an abortion with the help of a friend.

Once the thing was done, I forbade myself to experience anything.

True to myself, I managed my mistakes.

My health was failing and the doctor suggested the mountain to fix me.

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Albina du Boisrouvray, president of the François-Xavier Bagnoud Foundation and Association, visits a police reception center for children living on the streets and in tunnels, in Mongolia.

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The whole elite was at your feet and you married a stranger...

The elite bored me to death.

In 1959, I returned to Valais.

One day when the snow had fallen and some skiers had not yet returned, a night rescue expedition was organized and I went to carry sandwiches and hot drinks to the rescuers.

On the chairlift, I met a tall, magnificent blond.

It was Bruno Bagnoud who was studying in Bern and came to help out the ski school during the Christmas holidays.

From that day we are no longer left.

I wanted authenticity, and to be in contact with nature, to belong to a region.

This boy had a family, roots, a life ethic, cohesion.

In 1960 we got married and I became a housewife.

I cooked, I made hare à la royale, duck à l'orange, which took up my day.

Then our son François-Xavier was born.

I devoted all my attention to him, he was the love of my life.

We lived in a property in Vaud that my father had given us.

Bruno created his company Air-Glaciers and led a passionate life as a pilot and instructor of mountain troops.

I was often alone and reading Betty Friedan's book,

finished convincing me that a housewife was not for me.

So I separated from my husband.

The elite bored me to death

Albina du Boisrouvray

Where does your leftist fiber come from, when you were destined to be heiress?

From my readings.

I read

, the

.

Or my friends.

I spent vacations at Jean Daniel's with Edgar Morin.

Their leftist fights became mine and their ideology spoke to me.

I had a sense of disparity, a horror of racism, snobbery and stigma.

I have always felt close to the oppressed, the weak, the destitute.

Communism seduced me until the invasion of Hungary in 1956. It was then that Latin America woke up.

Cuba appeared as the new Eldorado to fight against the system and capitalism.

Che made me dream because his action concerned me, I who descended from a family hated by the Communists!

Then there was May 68. This was the time when unfailing friendships were forged with Bernard Kouchner and André Glucksmann.

You say yourself that in the 1970s you put

I was very involved in revolutionary groups.

I sold

in the street, I sang

, I was behind Dany le rouge chanting “we are all German Jews”.

Then I found myself responsible for my production company Albina Production, which I had created to be financially independent.

A new period was beginning.

I was taking my first steps as a business manager.

But I continued to campaign differently for Médecins du Monde, which Bernard Kouchner had just created, for which I collected funds from my artist friends.

In 1974, I

, with Romy Schneider and Jacques Dutronc.

Then

with Miou Miou, Bruno Cremer and Claude Brasseur.

Alain Corneau offered me

with Simone Signoret and Yves Montant.

Françoise Fabian introduced me to the book by Pierre Drieu la Rochelle,

which I had adapted.

In the summer of 1983, the filming of

with Depardieu, Sophie Marceau and Philippe Noiret.

The film opened the Cannes Film Festival in 1984 and it was my greatest reward.

At the end of the screening, Daniel Toscan du Plantier turned to applaud me.

Meanwhile, my son was following in his father's footsteps.

His passion was to fly.

He studied aeronautical engineering at the University of Michigan then went to Air-Glaciers to fly helicopters and continue his mountain rescue missions.

And then there was this phone call from your ex-husband, on January 14, announcing the death of your 24-year-old son, in a helicopter following the Paris Dakar...

After his funeral, a cruel ceremony, I am entrenched in my chalet in Switzerland like a bloodless animal.

Stuffed with sleeping pills and supported by my friends, I remained cloistered there for almost a year.

When did you think of creating your association?

A year after my son's death, I went to Lebanon with Bernard Kouchner to distribute medicine and food.

This trip regenerated me... Two years later, I created the Foundation and the FXB Association, my son's initials, to offer the most unhappy children, AIDS orphans, the sick, a quality life. to make up for the little they had left to live.

At 48, I decided to reinvent myself and move forward.

I sold almost everything I owned - jewelry, paintings, properties - for 100 million dollars that I spent in my two structures with which I perpetuated François' passion for rescue and mine for orphan children in the AIDS.

What was your goal?

Modestly try to give birth to a more harmonious and united world.

I created our first FXB home in Washington to take in AIDS orphans, themselves infected, and offer them a smoother end of life.

Years later, President Hollande asked me why this program had not seen the light of day in France and I answered him: “Because in France it is always no”.

In 1990, I went to Uganda, the only country in Africa where the government had the will to contain AIDS, to do prevention, to break taboos.

I sat down in a village with the inhabitants and asked them: what can we do?

The discussion lasted eighteen months.

At the time,

people were lifted out of poverty thanks to micro-loans – a formidable invention by Mohammad Yunus in 1976 – which they had to repay.

One day, a woman stood up and said: if you gave me a cow, I could feed my children, take care of them, sell the surplus at the market and send two of them to school.

It was there that I decided that these people living in poverty exacerbated by AIDS, would not have to repay this microloan, but that FXB would give them the money.

Four years later, this woman had four cows, raised six children, two of whom went to secondary school, and planted a field of pineapples.

Today, the AFXB operates in 17 countries with 1.4 million people and has implemented 87 programs.

L'

originality of our program is to donate to families a small plot of land, a cow, a sewing machine or a bicycle to go to the lake and catch the fish to sell it in town, in order to they begin their activities.

In the first year, the foundation covers all costs.

And I make this gift a development paradigm.

This is the added value of our foundation.

How are you feeling today?

I am in tune with the youth of my time.

I have 25,000 followers on TikTok and 4 million views on my memoir.

About my book, young people often tell me: “I don't like to read but I want to read yours”, “I want to give it to my mother”.

I find that very touching.

But I am very pessimistic about climate chaos.

There is talk of finding solutions by 2050, but it is far too late.

The cosmos needs centuries and time to repair itself.

I hope that there are still some opportunities, some openings that we will be able to seize before it is too late.

We must work with young economists to imagine a green, circular and social economy.

Today we are 8 billion, whereas we were 2 billion at the end of the war.

They must be housed, fed, educated in a world in crisis.

I would have preferred to be born into a cohesive and warm family.

I have always wanted to try to be useful on this earth and to make amends, as the Talmud says.

For this, I took an inventive path and out of the nails.