“Lord Jesus, give my children and me something to eat today. Amen!”
This is how my mother often ended her morning prayer.
I heard almost the same words with a few slight nuances from Auntie Blandine, Auntie Anata and even Auntie Philomène.
If you went outside and walked around my neighborhood of Fanta Citron in Mvog-Ada in Yaoundé, Cameroon, at that early hour, you would hear almost the same prayer in all the houses.
In the evening, most often the prayer was devoted to thanks to the Lord for having lived another day and to the hope that his son, Jesus Christ, would come to change our lives and move us up in the socio-economic ladder. This hope was palpable everywhere. At the local market, you could hear women bursting out in dialect if anything unusual was a sign that Jesus Christ was going to appear in our lives. At songo’o, the transitional game that men played back then, when one of the players scored successive victories, he wondered whether it was not due to divine intervention. In our improvised football stadiums, we children were looking for signs from above.
We all hoped for the arrival of a messenger of God, a messiah who would come and put an end to our misery. For most of us, only divine intervention was capable of getting us out of the poverty in which we were plunged. We were convinced of this. We repeated it to each other, from children to adults, so that sometimes, when someone indicated that they were going to try to join the army or the police, for example, it was often initially greeted with mockery. When one of us tried to dream of a better life through individual merit and effort, it was greeted with total indifference. There was no encouragement because for many, there was a social determinism that could only be broken by the hand of God. This said a lot about our despair and hopelessness.
There was an equivalent despair that I detected during my stay in a small French village around Christmas. I had never seen so much lack of hope among some of my countrymen and countrywomen.
“We need a dictator,” Bruno Baudouin, a 75-old white man, said. “We need someone with balls. We need a strong man.”
“Are you ready to sacrifice some of your freedoms?’ I asked him.
“Yes,” he responded. “I won’t be able to do certain things anymore, I know. I know I’m going to suffer but we need it.”
Seeing my dazed expression, Bruno ignored it and continued.
“Nothing is going well in this country anymore. We have fallen to the bottom. There is no more respect. We need discipline.”
I remained quiet, listening to him.
“Sorry if I offended you, but that’s what I think,” he continued. “I speak my mind. Sorry, if you don’t like it, but it’s me. It’s who I am. I am fed up of being silenced.”
On this Christmas Day, the discussion quickly turned to politics in this large house lost in the countryside. We were in the small village of Saint-Martin-en-Bresse, in Burgundy, a region of great wines and gastronomy, four hours by car from Paris, heading south-east. It was “apero time”, a French tradition of having drinks and snacks before a meal.
I knew the host, Daniel, a sixty-some white male. He was having friends and family over and invited me to attend. As soon as I arrived, the discussion dove into politics. A little over 48 hours earlier, Francois Bayrou, the new centrist Prime Minister had announced his government composed of old bigwigs of the French political scene. It was an understatement to say that he did not convince the guests at this Christmas party. There was Bruno, a former policeman, Nadine, a pharmacy employee, Daniel, an architect, and Sabine, a housewife.
France entered political instability this year, after the parliamentary elections, called to everyone’s surprise by President Emmanuel Macron, resulted in a hung parliament, where no political party has a majority. Which means that the government can be censured at any time, which was the case for Mr. Bayrou’s predecessor, whose government lasted only three months and eight days. The far-right and the extreme-left are almost calling the shots.
“Only old people. They’re bringing out mummies,” said Sabine, an elegant woman in her fifties. “They’re mocking us. They don’t give a damn about us. All they care about is power. Look at us.”
“Poor France. We’re not even a country anymore. This is all [Emmanuel] Macron’s fault. He is the worst thing that has ever happened to this country,” Nadine agreed.
The magic of Christmas could not erase the reality of a country where the elites have never been so despised. The large table in the center of the large room which combined the kitchen and the living room had been elegantly decorated. On the kitchen island, plates of oysters, foie gras, bread and bottles of wine were laid out. The oven was running. The smell of the stuffed guinea fowl had filled the house. Children were playing with their new toys, while Teddy, the dog, went from room to room, sporting his bow tie.
Bruno, Sabine, Nadine and Daniel were fuming at those in power. In some way, they pity them. They have turned their backs on Paris and its political maneuvering. They no longer expect anything from the politicians, whom they hold responsible for their social decline. For them, France is in a very bad shape. The country is sick. A sickness caused mainly by immigration, its leader’s weakness and their inability to enact charge. Immigration is their number one target.
Between 2013 and 2023, the number of immigrants in France increased by 2.1% per year on average, compared to 0.3% for the entire population, according to official data. In 2023, 7.3 million immigrants lived in France, or 10.7% of the total population.
“We can’t welcome everyone,” Nadine asserted. “That must be said to civil rights non-profits because they continue to push for more immigration. We French nationals are struggling to make end meet. Why do we have to take care of other people? Let’s take care of our own people first.”
“Macron, he’s showing off," Sabine chimed in. "He’s telling people in all countries to come here. We’re letting everyone in. It’s not possible. We must close our borders.”
“Macron takes us for fools. He only cares about the rich. He doesn’t care about the little people,” Bruno said.
Rejection of immigration, rejection of the elites, nostalgia for the past. Sabine, Nadine, Bruno and Daniel are, in a small-scale, the symbol of a country where the divorce between its political leaders and the working and middle classes is now a reality. They have become a couple which continues to live under the same roof even though the two no longer share anything.
For the elites, the country is doing well. There are just a few hiccups. Consequently, they do not think that a deep overhaul is needed. They continue the same ideological quarrels and propose almost the same solutions as several decades ago because, they say, we are not in a state of decline. Some elites have distanced themselves from President Macron, whom they accuse of a certain form of arrogance, a lack of leadership and an absence of a clear vision for the future.
But for all that, these same elites reject the complaints of the little people. These little people, like Sabine, Bruno, Nadine and Daniel, on the other hand, think that France is no longer France. They are desperate.
“Marine Le Pen doesn’t have the balls. She won’t change anything,” Bruno said when I asked them whether the leader of the far-right National Rally could be the one who could straighten out France, the leader they need.
“No, we need a strong man,” Nadine interrupted me. “Someone like [Donald J. ] Trump.”
“Why Trump?” I asked.
“Because he puts his country first. What matters is his country. He puts his country before everything else. He cares about his country. If only we could have someone like him,” Nadine explained.
“Trump is a strong man. He doesn’t joke around. He wants to protect his country. He wants to impose order. He has sent the message to people everywhere that you don’t mess with the United States. Look, he says he’s going to mass deport illegal immigrants. Even if he doesn’t do it, it’s scary. People wouldn’t come anymore. That’s what a leader is,” Bruno argued.
Daniel, the host, intervened.
“Even so, Trump is a big racist.”
“He takes care of his country," Sabine retorted without letting Daniel finish.. He defends his country. If we had someone like him here,” Sabine retorted without letting Daniel finish. “I would have voted for him.”
“Me too,” Nadine said.
“Me too,” Bruno chimed in. “If you ever see Trump, tell him that we love him and that we want him here in France.”
In his eyes, the U.S. President-elect is the new strongman the world needs, the one that Western countries should copy. The one who, according to him, would put an end to the culture war, which in France has manifested itself in the #Metoo movement which has shaken centuries of “the French seduction game,” that is killing France and the rest of the west.
Everything is mixed up for them.
The ills of France are immigration, the #MeToo movement and the elites, according to these “little people”. Their only hope is a strong man, a “dictator” as they put it. Not even the far-right is enough, they say. Is there a profile that is currently emerging, I asked them.
“No, I don’t see anyone,” Sabine responded.
The others nodded in agreement.
“If only Trump was French,” said Nadine.
What a change from 2016, when the 45th President of the United States was mocked by the majority of the French people.
A little over 24 hours later, I heard the opposite at a dinner party in Paris. Trump was still unwelcome. But Paris has never reflected the real France.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Luc Olinga's work on Medium.