Waiting for Moses: African children in the Russian war | Russia-Ukraine war

Douala, Cameroon Mama Regina’s house is located between the main port of Douala and the main slums of the city. Cargo ships come and go. Trucks rumble past carrying lumber, cocoa and fuel toward the Atlantic. In his house, time passes with difficulty.

On the wall is a picture of his son, Moses.

“So beautiful,” he whispers, almost to himself.

His smile is for another life.

Grief comes in waves. Like the Atlantic Ocean beyond the port of Douala, it returns for a long time to give him a break before returning with the same force. Whether under the gray sky full of unrelenting rain or under the hot Cameroonian sun, there is no shelter. In dealing with the first things, and the real time, they are powerless.

For more than a year, he has been waiting.

Not for his son. For his body.

He said: “He left the world as he entered it. “Suffering, without saying a word.”

His voice is no longer angry. Just tiredness.

He describes the phone casually, as if the repetition removes everything but its weight. The call came from thousands of miles away, not in Cameroon, not in Africa, but in the war in Europe.

His son was fighting alongside the Russian army when he was shot in Ukraine. They shot him as he ran towards the tunnel.

As he speaks, silence fills the gaps between his sentences. I find myself imagining the unspeakable violence of his final moments. The violence of a battlefield thousands of miles away from home.

He presses his hand to his chest.

“He left me,” he says quietly. “For us.”

“To fight another man’s battle,” he adds.

New migration

As I listen to him describe the canals, my mind goes to another generation of Africans who were sent to the battlefields of Europe. I think of the Senegalese Tirailleurs who crossed the Mediterranean to fight and die for France, in wars that were not theirs.

According to Ukrainian officials, about 3,000 Africans from 35 countries are fighting alongside Russian troops, which Kyiv says is the reason for recruitment across the region.

Former Russian army chief Sergey Elidonov is contesting the case.

He said: “All this is false. “These stories about Russian Houses or recruitment networks in all African countries – they do not exist. Russia offers wages and conditions. If people want to come, they will find a way for themselves.”

I will meet him in Dakar.

He is friendly and articulate, with the easy confidence of someone who has spent his life around the military. When he’s not talking about war, he’s talking about philosophy. He worked in Europe, Africa and Asia, although he is not consciously aware of his role.

Elidonov says Cameroon’s popularity among African recruits has a much longer history than illegal recruitment.

He said: “The relationship started again in the Soviet Union. “Many Cameroonians studied there. For many years the Cameroonians have been outside Russia.”

For him, economics explains everything else.

“People are depressed, they want to take care of their families.”

For Professor Aicha Pemboura, who has been researching this event, the issue goes beyond military recruitment.

Most of those going to Russia are experienced Cameroonian soldiers, who have years of experience fighting Boko Haram, separatist groups and piracy.

But they are not alone. Students, unemployed graduates and young men are also making the journey, often believing they are going to work or study, before they find themselves signing military contracts.

He said: “What we are seeing is unusual migration. “People leave with hope for a better future.

For Pemboura, the war in Ukraine is quietly draining African countries of soldiers, students and skilled workers.

“All this represents the loss of Africa,” he says.

The forgotten soldiers

For most of us, war only happens through television news and the endless scrolls of social media. We know the sound of artillery and see trenches without standing.

It wasn’t always like that.

In the second world war, hundreds of thousands of African soldiers crossed into the countries of the continent to fight for the freedom of Europe. The Senegalese Tirailleurs reached the coast of Provence, passed through France and Germany, and helped liberate a continent that would later be difficult to remember.

I know how to forget.

When I think of the liberation of Paris, I naturally think of white American, British and French soldiers. It took me years to realize that my uncle was there too – a brown-skinned man from colonial Bengal, fighting a European war that would be someone else’s story.

History has a tendency to sanctify its heroes.

I wonder whose faces will be missing from the pictures when this war is remembered.

Waiting

Today, another war in Europe is drawing young Africans to the north. Not to liberate the continent, but to fight its bloodiest war since 1945.

Some will return transformed.
Some will return quietly.
Some will never return.

Mother Regina is expecting a body. Without one, there can be no funeral. There is no grave. There is no final prayer.

The body is proof that the child was there.
Evidence that they fought.
Evidence that he was loved.
Evidence that this distant war has entered African lives.