WEDNESDAY’S STRANGER – WEEK FOUR

Posted on June 6, 2018 by Yann Tromeur

In this new section, I am not going to talk about myself or any of my work / self-improvement / techno obsession (just a little).

Here is week four “WEDNESDAY’S STRANGER”.

Every Wednesday on the iooikos blog, I will talk about a personality. Someone you might know, but most of the time no. Because I like surprises, I will try to surprise you every week and treat you with discovering a personality, a character I found interesting, that struck me during the week, in the past year, someone I might know personally as well… or not !

So, without further ado…

About ten days ago, Mamoudou Gassama, a 22 year-old Malian, saved a kid dangling over a balcony. This brave man made the headlines around the world for his courage.

The savior is an illegal immigrant and he was almost imme-diately given French Citizen for his oustanding behaviour. Highly deserved right!

In a world where immigrants are rejected and people seem to care less and less about each other, this kind of moment gives us hope for the future.

But Mamoudou Gassama is not my stranger of the week. Too obvious…

Neither is, for negative reasons, the father of the “Balcony Kid”. This guy represents a lost generation, too occupied by its always-on mobile screen, unable to achieve awareness of the surrounding world. Most of them seem to prefer to live through a simulation. And TV was thought bad for kids… Well Pokemon GO is worst !

So no, that guy, whose name remains secret, will confront a judge soon. He might be condemned to two years in Prison. In that case, the system works.

But in the case of my stranger of the week, the system / the french state did not apply.

Aymen Latrous is a Tunisian. As you might have guessed he is also an illegal.

Aymen Latrous save two kids from a burning house. A baby and his older brother saved.

Same story, but not the same ending.

Aymen Latrous is on the verge of being deported back to his country.

But because no one filmed his act, because there was not twitter / facebook / instagram to diffuse the act, no one knows about him.

I hope French Gouvernment will apply the same right to Aymen Latrous as they did to Mamoudou Gassama. But sometimes our society can be so biased, because like the dangling kid’s father we only care about what we see in our phone.