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BUMIDOM is a mysterious entity that lasted 20 years.
It was orchestrated by the French government and targeted the French overseas departments of Guadeloupe, Martinique, and La Reunion.
On paper, they were sold a one-way ticket to a better life.
With promises of a job and housing waiting for them in France.
False advertising and a brutal welcoming for those who volunteered to go.
I didn't travel 7,000 kilometers to be a housekeeper.
Workplace harassment and miserly pay, and subversive racism.
Tens of thousands of people must build a life on a shattered dream.
BUMIDOM: Overseas French citizens who leave their islands for France.
From the early 1960s to the beginning of the 1980s,
hundreds of thousands of Guadeloupeans, Martinicans, and Reunionese leave their native island.
This was France's most significant internal migration and lasted 20 years.
It's an unknown history despite having been executed from the highest echelons of the government.
These men and women have decided to tell their story 50 years later.
BUMIDOM: Overseas French citizens from Guadeloupe, Martinique, and La Reunion.
A film by Jackie Bastide
1950: The French West Indies plunge deeper into poverty each day.
The post-war baby boom negatively impacts family life compared to metropolitan France.
The larger families are the poorest and shantytowns expand.
I'm the oldest of 10 children.
We didn't have a lot of money.
It wasn't a happy time.
I had to work, take care of the children, and take care of father and mother.
My mother was a seamstress and I had to take care of my brothers and sisters who went to school,
I had to do this, I had to cook, I had to do everything.
I'm the oldest of seven children.
It was hard, very hard.
My father was a fisherman and my mother took care of the children.
She did some ironing for people here and there to make extra money for the family.
But it was a difficult life because there were a lot of children.
La Reunion is dealing with the same problems.
The average household has nine children.
All these hungry children are a problem.
My father built a cradle made of fish crates for me for when I was born.
We were very, very poor.
We had only one cooking pan. We had not much else.
And no furniture at all.
For me, it was intolerable poverty.
My parents were local farmers.
There were six of us at home by the time I was born.
We had 3,000 square kilometers of cultivable land.
My father worked per diem, selling his labor by the day, and mother took care of my brothers and sisters.
We lived just below the poverty threshold.
Birth rates in the French overseas departments are the highest in the world at the time.
In Paris, the French government begins to worry.
Dispatches from the islands are alarming.
All the more so as unemployment in the overseas departments reach as high as 40%.
La Reunion, Martinique, and Guadeloupe go from former French colonies to official overseas departments in 1946.
But the inhabitants' initials hopes soon turn to deception.
The islands' fragile monocrop sugar industry
is replaced by beet sugar produced in France.
When I was little, there were 32 villages and 32 factories.
Each village had a factory which, in one way or another, processed sugar cane for rum or sugar.
There were few sugar factories, but a lot of distilleries.
We also cultivated bananas at that time.
But everything was sold or closed down all at once.
We found ourselves with land but no work.
Unemployed farm workers begin gathering in the cities.
Despondency gives way to anger and rage.
The situation becomes explosive.
The three islands become unified.
Protests increase against white property owners.
The most well-known protest occurs in Martinique in March 1961.
Everyone met up there and had their sharpened machetes ready.
Sugar cane farmers demanded a salary increase.
The white owner drove by in his jeep and told them "No, no, I won't give anything, you'll get nothing."
Then they lifted the jeep like this and I said to myself, here we go.
Oh yes, there were a lot of strikes. Yes, yes, yes.
Martinique had a lot of strikes and demands.
In sugar cane, bananas, at the docks.
The young people were entering the job market,
and the government sensed that things were going to explode.
They were afraid that Martinique would revolt like in Algeria or Cuba or elsewhere.
Only hundreds of kilometers away, Fidel Castro takes over Cuba in 1959.
The following year, La Reunion's neighbor Madagascar becomes independent.
Algeria becomes independent in 1962 and France loses one of its last remaining colonies.
A weakened General de Gaulle refuses to allow France's remaining empire be overtaken by independence fever.
He goes to La Reunion and the French Antilles in person to try and appease a climate of revolt.
Good Lord, you are all French!
Martinique is a witness, a connection, a point where France should focus,
and it will be your duty to do so, my children.
There were people, children, from all the schools, and parents, all who had little French flags.
Which they waved in the air as he passed, I remember.
People of a certain age didn't call him General de Gaulle, but instead Papa de Gaulle.
General de Gaulle manages to momentarily calm their anger.
But even if his popularity is high, he knows nothing is resolved.
An important political movement led by the Communist Party
calls into question the role of colonial domination on the island of La Reunion.
Comparisons to slavery resurface and a desire for autonomy becomes a threat.
Social treason and political usurpation have demonstrated an urgent necessity!
We must end colonial oppression as soon as possible!
General de Gaulle sends his former prime minister, Michel Debre, to La Reunion.
Debre's mission was to win the local elections.
He throws himself into election campaigning upon his arrival.
He was the chosen man to represent the French republic.
People from the local town hall came to our house and told dad which ballot to vote for on election day.
He had no choice.
When they put that pink ballot in his hands, he better not change his mind, go to the ballot box and put a blue ballot in.
Barely elected, Debre decides to tackle unemployment, overpopulation, and the independence movement.
He creates an organization that, in his opinion, will solve all of the overseas departments' problems.
BUMIDOM opens its doors on June 7, 1963.
It's full name is the Bureau pour le developpement du migration des departements d'Outre Mer.
It proposes a public sector job in metropolitan France to the most impoverished.
Seduced by the idea, and seeing France as an El Dorado, young people begin lining up at the BUMIDOM.
It was like a dream. People were talking about France.
I heard about the Eiffel Tower.
All of it was unknown, it was mysterious.
I had a good image of France when I was living in Martinique because
I saw people from France who would come to the island.
They seemed better off compared to us.
I had nothing to lose.
It gave me strength. My only goal was to escape poverty.
And, fulfill my childhood dream.
Be able to feed my children and live a decent life.
Little by little, we got the idea that the BUMIDOM is what would save us.
The youth were told that there was no work and if they couldn't fine work
the only possibility available to you was to leave via the BUMIDOM.
Marketing campaigns are used to attract applicants.
Informational flyers are distributed by the local town halls.
News travels quickly and people begin lining up at the BUMIDOM offices.
Once there, they undergo medical exams and academic evaluations.
But in reality, no one will be turned down.
The goal is to transport a large number of people to metropolitan France.
I was told I would be given training since I had none.
The offered us training to have a career.
That's how it was presented.
So we said okay.
I filled out an application and was asked questions about my life and what I wanted to do.
There were four tasks to do along with a short speech.
Several days later a woman calls me and says I've been accepted
and that I would be going to France.
When my father found out, he said "Never."
"Never. Never will any of my children leave La Reunion to go to France"
"If you go there, you most certainly will end up homeless. Never."
I forged my father's signature on six documents.
It was a real escape. I was really running away.
My neighbor gave me a yellow hand-knitted sweater.
I put the sweater in a paper bag with a toothbrush and I left.
We had heavy hearts when it was time for us to leave
because it was the first time my two brothers and I were leaving our parents
without knowing when we would see them again.
It was difficult for us and especially for my parents
because they were watching their children leave for the unknown.
We were really...'sad' isn't the right word,
we were deeply emotional not knowing if we would see each other again.
We were asking ourselves the question of whether we would see each other again.
And we never saw our mother again.
Each Wednesday, there was a Boeing 747 that would leave full of young Martinicans and Guadeloupeans.
That lasted for awhile.
We were persuaded that they wanted to evacuate us from the islands.
That's the impression we had at that time.
The majority of those who left were between 18 and 25 years old.
They usually are the eldest of large, poor families and often don't have a diploma.
Once I was on the plane, I asked myself, why am I leaving?
Why am I leaving? Why am I doing this? Where am I going?
I asked myself so many questions, so many thoughts were in my head.
I feel very lost.
I left on September 12, 1972.
The date is burned in my memory, I can never forget it.
It was a special day.
My mother gave me a bracelet which I always kept.
My father gave me 100 Francs at the time.
That's all he had, there wasn't much else. He gave me a symbolic bill of 100 Francs.
Can you believe? I left with 100 Francs to a huge country that I didn't know anything about,
but he doesn't know either, no one really knows.
It's a mystery to everyone.
My father gives me 100 Francs, my mother gives me a bracelet.
My brothers and sisters look at me with sadness. Everyone is sad.
My mother...
I had a lot of dreams.
Have my own house, my husband, my children.
But I didn't know what I wanted to do for work.
I had just turned 23 years old.
I said to myself: I'm leaving.
The boat left on May 12th and we arrived on May 24th.
The voyage took 12 days.
I think we were the last, because everyone after us took a plane.
I don't know why we were sent by boat.
I thought the boat was going to arrive in Paris.
But since there's no ocean in Paris...when you know Paris,
we arrived in Caen and from Caen we took the train to Paris.
There were two women who met us to accompany us. Just to accompany us.
You see? Not even like a sheepherder bringing his flock.
Like cattle. Like a herd of sheep, now figure it yourself.
I was not happy.
I opened my eyes and saw that we were in Paris.
It was a shock because everything was gray.
I thought it was smoke, but now I know it's fog.
I said, why is there fire? I didn't understand anything.
I was cold.
I already didn't feel at home.
I felt like I was in a jungle. I say jungle because it was huge.
And there were so many different people.
We didn't know anything about France.
All we knew were from postcards.
We didn't have TV so we didn't have video images.
We only had postcards and newspapers and what we learned in school.
Once they arrived at the train station or at the airport,
the women and men are separated.
The men are sent to the suburbs to training centers.
The women are put on a bus towards an unknown destination.
No one spoke, we looked at each other.
We looked at each other, but didn't know what to say. No one knew what to say.
No one. We had the impression that everyone blamed themselves.
We blamed ourselves, we blamed, I don't know, the world.
I think everyone was scared.
After a one hour ride, the women arrive in Crouy-sur-Ourcq in Seine-et-Marne
to a training center specifically designed for them.
We arrived in Crouy-sur-Ourcq and I was cold, but really cold.
It seems like I could feel it in my bones, it was that cold.
Snow on my toes. It was horrible.
We went inside and the Director said, "Now that you're in France, you have to dress warmly."
"You can't go outside like that."
I was wearing my white dress and yellow sweater when I arrived in Crouy.
I told her I had my sweater.
She said, "No it's not enough, you need to unpack your clothes."
I didn't want to tell her that I didn't have any clothes.
There was nothing for us.
The beds weren't made.
The beds weren't made so we put two sheets on the bed.
We put sheets on the bed and we slept like that.
It was horrible.
And what were we given to eat?
Boiled beef. And we had never eaten boiled beef.
We ate pork, chicken.
And leeks in France are big.
But at home, the biggest leeks are this size.
No, no, there aren't big leeks in Martinique.
The next morning we started to learn how to peel potatoes.
They told us we were going to learn how to clean houses.
That was a slap in the face.
I said, it's not for real. I didn't do all this.
I didn't travel 7,000 kilometers to be a housekeeper.
I would have paid anything to go back home.
I really wanted to leave right there, I really wanted to leave.
I realized I couldn't because the ticket was one-way.
It wasn't round-trip.
No return is planned for immigrants arriving via the BUMIDOM.
These young women came with the hope of being trained in the field of their choice.
They dreamed of becoming teachers, secretaries, nurse or nurse's aide, like Jeronise.
Instead, each day is identical.
Planned in detail and carried out with strict discipline.
Their deception is immense.
Make people believe they're leaving to receive training
and you're thinking of a specific kind of training
and to find out it wasn't so was humiliating. I thought it was humiliating.
At one point I cracked.
Nothing was like how I had imagined.
They should have at least explained things better.
They taught us how to be well-mannered to become housekeepers
for politicians and their families and for families who could afford a maid from La Reunion, Martinique, or Guadeloupe.
We were promised jobs according to people's needs.
I stayed behind because the Director saw that I could manage the young ladies.
I wasn't lazy and knew how to work.
She asked me to stay and work as a trainer for the BUMIDOM.
She sent me girls to teach them how to peel vegetables, how to do this and that.
How to clean a chicken, how to clean a fish, how to dress a table, how to serve your employer.
There was a table and we would put the table settings.
Napkins, how to fold napkins, how to serve from the left, how to serve soup and crustaceans.
I don't remember being able to go outside.
It was a closed-in area. I felt like I was in prison.
Also, once we got to know other people, we heard stories.
If we fail, we can end up homeless on the street.
The fear, fear, fear. I was engulfed in fear all the time.
What will I do because I don't have any family?
It's difficult.
I saw fights, I broke up fights.
They didn't give us wine, they gave us beer.
They gave the girls beer.
Young girls, there were some that were pregnant when they came.
They didn't know. It was when they arrived, they found out.
Some left their children and their husband.
There's no man, so after they finish drinking beer, all it takes is one girl to insult another.
They would tear at each other's hair.
Sometimes, the fights would get bad.
The Director had to separate them and put them in quarantine.
Each Saturday, the Director asked us to make ourselves pretty.
For future employers who came to choose their personnel.
I had a friend who went to work for the Debre family.
I was chosen by Madame Messmer at the time.
I put my white dress and yellow sweater.
I was happy that day.
I was happy to know that I would be working for someone who had chosen me.
The employers were there while the young women were paraded out.
The employer was the one who chose the girl.
It was something that deeply made a mark on me
because I had just read several days earlier how slaves were presented to owners.
I said, it's ironic, it's exactly the same thing.
All these beautiful women from the 16th district were sitting there watching the women parade around.
It's an image that has stayed with me until this day.
Unions and the extreme left are cognizant of the subtleties.
The Paris BUMIDOM offices are ransacked in May 1968.
The graffiti denounces the colonialist mentality of the French state.
But nothing is done.
The BUMIDOM continues on and the government congratulates itself on its success.
Graphs, reports and numbers show the benefits of massive immigration.
After finishing their training, the migrants are released into Paris with only a metro ticket.
Now they have to figure it out on their own.
And forget about promises of guaranteed work and housing assistance.
After BUMIDOM allowed me to go to Paris and work as a housekeeper,
it was no longer their problem with whatever I did.
Whether I was homeless, afterwards it was just myself and myself.
What I'm telling you is true.
Whether I was homeless, a ***....teacher.
It was no longer their problem.
BUMIDOM said you had lodging, but when people arrived in Paris
they had a room that was 4 x 2.5 square meters.
That was housing.
You had to work for a certain amount of time to have enough money for an apartment.
I got up very early in the morning to get the Le Parisien newspaper,
I saw there was an apartment in such and such place. I called, they said, ok.
Once I arrived and they saw it was a black person, they said the apartment was taken.
It was The Glorious Thirty period.
A time of plentiful employment and large-scale construction projects.
Metropolitan France desperately needs the manpower.
The men find work, but not what they wanted and not what the BUMIDOM promised them.
It was easy to find small jobs here and there.
I was working on three streets.
I did small jobs left and right. I ironed. I did deliveries.
I did all of it to be able to continue my education.
Back then my dream was to be a public servant.
I started working in the hotel industry. Then at a factory.
Spent some time at Citroen, then at Citka.
Difficult to forget Citka because it was like prison, despite what they said.
France was in full development. You can't forget that.
The kinds of jobs offered to us were in construction, mechanic, administration.
BUMIDOM migrants also find work in public administration, which only recruits French citizens.
One in two West Indians and 1/3 of Reunionese become civil servants for the least qualified positions.
Back then, young white French citizens derided the public sector.
They didn't want to work in the public sector.
The majority of young metropolitan French people refused work in construction, transport, and hospitals.
So, they went and got French citizens in La Reunion and the West Indies to do those jobs.
We were given priority because we spoke French and were Christians.
That's why they gave us the privilege to hire us.
I had a friend who worked for the RATP.
She asked me, "Why don't you apply here?"
I applied and the RATP called me eight days later.
When I came, I didn't like the work, but I had to dig small holes.
I was digging holes, but I said to myself, at the same time I'm working for the administration.
I had my blue blouse, I was working, I was working. And people asked, "Is that what you're doing?"
I had friends. And when you're digging holes, they send you to all the metro stations.
They said, "That's what you're doing?" I said, "It's no big deal. I have a paycheck at the end of the month."
Do what you need to do. I have a paycheck at the end of the month. Don't worry about me.
You had to fight.
You had to keep your head above water to move forward.
I had to be an example for my brothers and sisters.
Where I'm from in the West Indies, we say that if the eldest takes a bad route, the others will follow.
I had all that to think about that as well.
Once the first generation of migrants settles in France,
the BUMIDOM moves to the next phase.
It encourages family migration.
Those who wish can sponsor a family member to come to France
to add to the increasing number of working class households now living in suburban neighborhoods built just for them.
The BUMIDOM contacted me to see if I was settled in.
When I said I was settled in, they proposed to bring my girlfriend and child, who had stayed in Martinique.
I said yes and they handled the paperwork.
If you have a brother living in La Reunion and offer him a job in France,
you go to the BUMIDOM and fill out the paperwork and voila.
The BUMIDOM pays for his trip and it's your problem from that point.
Whether he finds a job or not is not their problem.
The BUMIDOM is just reuniting family members.
The BUMIDOM did this a lot.
For example, my sister came to live with me for three years.
This new wave of manpower adds to the ranks of the first migrants.
Auto factory workers, transport agents, construction workers, administrative workers, or postal workers.
All work in accordance with the needs of the economy.
People quickly forget that these migrants are overseas French citizens.
They're confused with immigrants who come to France during the 1960s and 70s.
Because of La Reunion's history and different ethnic groups, we look like North Africans.
They're surprised when they arrive and North Africans approach them to say hello and they don't understand.
The Reunionese says he's French and the North African doesn't understand because they look alike.
Here in France, people don't differentiate between the West Indies and Africa.
You're black, you're black. They lump everyone together.
They don't see the difference.
I wasn't an immigrant in my head.
For me, the Africans were immigrants.
It's weird, huh?
I wasn't an immigrant because I was French.
But I was an immigrant because it was a sort of migration.
What I learned in school was that my ancestors were the Gauls.
Now, it's stupid to think that your ancestors are Gauls.
When you're a little girl and are told a story, you remember what you've been told.
These overseas immigrants whose history is absent from school books cannot find their place amongst their fellow citizens. 0:38:13.133,1193:02:47.295 In addition to identity problems come issues about feeling culturally isolated and dealing with racism.
They're not seen as being related to French people.
To deal with daily life, Reunionese, Martinicans, and Guadeloupeans meet up
in each other's homes, in associations, and during celebrations.
As soon as we met another West Indian, we created a little family.
It made us happy and helped us deal with the fact our parents were so far away.
It wasn't like a clan, but I think at the time it was important for us to be together
because everything was unknown to us at the time.
And we didn't really know any white French people who welcomed us.
So I think it was inevitable at the time.
We said hello to each other, we would talk.
Since she was single and I was single, I said, well, it's time for me to settle down.
I didn't want to end up as an old idiot.
I got my driver's license, car, husband, and son all in the same year.
Everything happened in 1978. Everything was okay.
I don't believe white French people knew how to welcome us because
no one explained to them why there were so many West Indians.
Because they asked themselves why there were so many West Indians.
What is this guy doing here? Why are there so many blacks? Etc. etc.
If people had been well informed, those are questions we wouldn't have had to deal with.
Hospitals are where many least qualified migrants find work,
and where the majority of Reunionese and West Indians are directed to apply.
There was a hospital building boom during the 1970s,
and they were looking for housekeepers, attendants, or stretcher bearers.
We arrived in mass to the small hospital.
It was a lot of people of color who were all arriving at the same time.
I was one of those with the lightest complexion.
But there were Guadeloupeans, Martinicans, and Reunionese who were darker than I was.
One day, I wanted someone to cut off a part of my arm because a woman spit on me.
She did it intentionally. It wasn't like she could avoid it.
We were alone. With no family, who can I share this with?
It was very difficult.
In our group, I had a friend who committed suicide.
She threw herself out of a window in Lyon.
More suicides follow.
The press reacts.
It denounces the BUMIDOM and criticizes social inequalities whose victims are overseas French citizens.
In particular, they criticize the miserly pay that doesn't allow them to go back home.
In 1961, we earned 350 to 400 Francs per month.
A plane ticket home cost 7,500 Francs.
7,500 Francs. Or, 20 times our salary.
Twenty times more. You needed to work 20 months to be able to buy a roundtrip ticket.
We were supposed to have a distance bonus of 15% to be taken out of our salary.
Which would have allowed us to go back home more often.
Because white French people living in the overseas departments benefitted from this bonus.
It took me six years to return back to Martinique to see my family.
My father died the following year.
It was a very, very difficult time.
I said to myself that if I didn't go back home this year, I wouldn't see him anymore.
To make up for their sacrifices, the government institutes a holiday leave bonus.
The state pays their plane ticket every three years where they can stay for up to two months visiting their family back home.
People didn't know how to talk to us when we would go back.
We were seen as inaccessible because now we were rich.
I was shocked because my friends didn't understand. No one understood it wasn't true.
It's the same everywhere. This famous myth.
The image of France.
People look at how you're dressed.
Oh look, he's dressed this way and that way.
We dressed well to travel.
My cousins were interested in the BUMIDOM. They absolutely wanted to come to France.
They wanted to go because, like me, all they saw were nice things.
They also had friends who came back on vacation,
and everyone knows that when you're on vacation, you like to show off and show we're successful.
So we usually show more than what we really are.
I told them, "If you come to France, here is what's waiting for you."
And even when you tell them the reality, like I told my cousins,
they don't believe you.
They have a dream in their head and aren't ready to hear the reality.
Unemployment rose in the 1970s, putting into question the use of continuing with the BUMIDOM.
The government slows down immigration.
Francois Mitterand shuts it down completely in 1982.
But the final tally is staggering.
During a period of 20 years, 160,000 West Indians and Reunionese left their native islands.
Even if a number of them managed to integrate into metropolitan France,
they never lost hope of one day returning home.
When I left, I told my mother that I would return in six months after finishing my training.
I stayed much longer, but during my entire life in France, I always wanted to go back.
I feel exiled in France.
Since I left my country and was uprooted, I feel like I'm in exile.
The goal is to leave and end your days at home.
This generation of migrants had to wait until retirement to be able to realize their dream of returning home.
But even back home, things don't work out as they hoped.
Deep down, there's a feeling of not belonging here or there.
In Martinique, I'm told that I'm not West Indian.
Because I took what was good, what was good, not what was bad.
They think that I'm too 'French'.
I'm the Frenchwoman.
The black Frenchwoman.
Because I have French mannerisms and not West Indian mannerisms.
They call us 'negropolitans'.
Negropolitan. I don't know who invented it, but it doesn't bother me.
I feel like they blame us for leaving the island.
We shouldn't have left. They say, you left and you should stay over there.
The return from exile is more painful than the unemployment they rediscover upon their return.
It reminds them of the 1960s.
The BUMIDOM didn't change anything. Unemployment is still 40-50% for young people on the islands.
Impossible for them and for their children to live and work in their own country.
There's less work now than when I left with the BUMIDOM.
The factories belong to the same people.
It's a small caste, a word I don't like, but it's a small caste that owns everything.
You're dependent on them.
Nothing changed. I find that nothing's changed.
As in the 1960s, people are dissatisfied and anger builds up slowly.
Protests take place in January 2009 in Guadeloupe, Martinique, and La Reunion.
Repetitive strikes and protests reveal the bad relations
that France continues to maintain with what's left of its former empire.
All this rage carries with it consequences, deceptions, and injustices from the past.
It's young people again who break through barricades during protests.
But 30 years after the end of BUMIDOM, the government has no plans of offering them a one-way plane ticket.
Instead of bringing jobs and a better standard of living to the young people in their own country,
the government brought them the BUMIDOM to empty the islands.
Obviously it wasn't a good thing for the country
because if we had been given jobs and a better standard of living,
the country would have been better off.
Especially since there were things we could do.
But we didn't want to do it.
We'll always remember the BUMIDOM as a manipulation.
Because everything was dumped on us.
There may have been good intentions, but it was in the way it was carried out.
We were like pieces that changed places.
We had to adapt, but without a real explanation of what was happening.
The gulf between hope and reality is perceived as a violation.
The impression that one had been fooled persists
and the desire to forget the past takes over.
It's only been a short while since I've been able to talk about the BUMIDOM.
It was something I buried deep inside of me, whether intentionally or not,
I don't know, but it was buried because it was so painful
and I had to tell myself it was the past, but the past always comes back.
Walled into silence, the women and men of the BUMIDOM often hide their pasts from their own children.
Because admitting one was a BUMIDOM migrant means admitting one was poor, without a diploma, without training,
and that one was a tool within a colonial political machine that dare not say its name.
Over time, the silence turns into family secrets that weigh on the successive generations.
Which is why Jeronise had decided to reveal the missing pieces of her story to her oldest daughter Corrinne.
Mom, why didn't you talk about it earlier?
I don't know. Maybe because there's so much pain.
I didn't want to talk about it because I didn't want to suffer anymore.
I didn't want to tell my mom.
There you go. What I thought about today is that at the time you might want answers to your questions
and I wasn't able to give you answers because it was so painful.
Everything was buried and my brain couldn't process it.
I lived like that, but it was all there.
I remember when you started kindergarten,
you came home crying and you said, "Mom, they called me the black Aude."
I told you it wasn't so, I tried to put things into perspective.
And at the same time, maybe it wasn't something you wanted to hear.
It wasn't a big secret. I was in conflict with myself.
It's like when we try to solve a puzzle and find the missing piece which completes the puzzle.
It's reassuring.
I think it will help me gain confidence. That's how I feel.
I feel like I can now move on and feel more at peace.
Because for a long time I didn't think it was possible to know things about my own family.
I thought everything was a secret, things had to remain a secret. You couldn't talk.
I feel like this is something where I can finally feel like an adult.