Refugee

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A harrowing and insightful memoir about a migrant's six-year journey from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the NetherlandsPersecuted for political reasons, Emmanuel Mbolela left the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2002. His search for a new home would take six years.Mbolela endured corrupt customs officials, duplicitous smugglers, Saharan ambushes, and untenable living conditions. In his firsthand account, he relates not only the storms of his long journey, but also the periods of calm. Faced with privation, he finds comfort in a migrants' hideout, overseen by community leaders at once paternal and mercenary. When he finally reaches Morocco, he finds himself stranded for almost four years. And yet he perseveres in his search for the offices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees-always closed indefinitely just before his arrival in a given city-where a migrant might receive an asylum seeker's official certificates.His account is of an experience both private and collective. As he testifies, the horrors of migration fall hardest on female migrants, but those same women embody the fiercest resistance to the regime of violence that would deny them their humanity. While still a migrant, Mbolela became an advocate. He tells the story of how he founded and headed the Association of Congolese Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Morocco to fight for migrant rights. Since obtaining political asylum in Holland in 2008, he has remained a committed activist. In Refugee, he provides an overlooked perspective on a global crisis.