MORE INFORMATION
The story of the Africa that rises and walks
Children and grandchildren of the Maghreb, or the intimate and collective memory
Karura Forest, a walk through the lungs of Nairobi
Marceline is a Malagasy teenager who leaves her home in the village of Antanifotsy every morning carrying bales of firewood that she carries to the market in the town of Betafo, where her school is also located, almost two hours away on foot. When the classes are over, she goes back another two hours to take care of the housework, cultivate, fetch water, pick up the animals and do her homework, already approaching midnight. She harbors the desire to become a teacher, perhaps a nun, and for this reason, her life goes by in a dance of tasks of all kinds that complicate two unforeseen factors: climate change and deforestation. Both phenomena put Madagascar, the island where he lives, to the limit, altering his route to school in the process to put it on the edge of a narrow gorge,Between crumbling rocks and ravines when it rains.
Marceline's story is part of the latest project by Xavier Aldekoa and Alfons Rodríguez, transmedia, which has spanned more than two years of her life and is called
Indestructibles
. Collect eleven stories of children from ten African countries: Cape Verde, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Chad, Ethiopia, Uganda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique and Madagascar. They are children who survive traumatic or difficult conditions, while still showing hope and resilience. The objective of the project is to go beyond the injury and present not only the difficult scenarios these children experience but also their ability to overcome and strength. Always with a realistic and positive message.
The version of
Indestructibles
published in
National Geographic
with the headline
Africa. A future with names and surnames
has just won the III Saliou Traoré Prize for Journalism in Spanish on Africa, organized by the EFE agency and Casa África. In addition to the project website, Casa África and in the magazine itself, you can also read pieces from
Indestructibles
in La Vanguardia. And you can see his images traveling through different exhibition spaces in our country.
These images show the passage of time in other adolescents and children such as José Albino, a pigeon boy or street boy in Mozambican Beira, or Rodrigue and Gloire, two child soldiers in a rebel group in the Congolese jungle, or Hawa , an apprentice photojournalist on the beach at Tandji, The Gambia. The early marriage of the Ugandan Margaret, the passion for music of the Cape Verdean Giovana and the struggle of the Chadian Djibrine to forget her abduction at the hands of Boko Haram also figure in this project, with other stories among which Aldekoa and Rodríguez find it impossible to name. a favorite. The two, enemies of haste and facilities, have tried to follow those stories over the years, successive trips, WhatsApp and social networks. They are presented with a lucid and clean look,poetic language and images taken with precision and lyricism that are also permeated with light and emotions.
The jury highlighted the quality and approaches of the stories, a new commitment to long-distance journalism, in the line of those previously awarded: a collection of daily chronicles by José Naranjo in the local newspaper
La Provincia
and a report on a young man Congolese migrant who decided to stay in Morocco, signed by Carla Fibla for Mundo Negro. As usual, the ruling was made public on World Africa Day and the president of the agency, Gabriela Cañas; the general director of Casa África, José Segura Clavell; María Teresa Fernández de la Vega, president of the Council of State, and journalists Nicolás Castellano and Felipe Sahagún.
Instituted by EFE and Casa África in 2018, this award recognizes every year good journalism about Africa, regardless of the country it comes from and in any format, as long as it is carried out in Spanish.
Its vocation is to encourage reporters to continue transferring the continent's current affairs, without stereotypes, to the Spanish-speaking public.
Rodríguez and Aldekoa will receive him in October at the Casa África headquarters, as did his predecessors.
Ángeles Jurado
is a Communication Technician at Casa África.
You can follow AFRICA IS NOT A COUNTRY on Twitter and Facebook.
