In March 2017, a man from Ivory Coast
named Mamadou crossed into Quebec
from the United States in the middle of
the night. Only days earlier, he’d walked
up to the border station at Lacolle and
attempted to apply for asylum. When
border agents turned him away, he
decided to sneak across instead. RCMP
officers would later find him collapsed
in the woods in -15 C cold, having
twice waded through freezing water
along his journey. As he lay in the forest,
Mamadou had thought to himself,
“That’s okay. I want to die. Let me just
die on my way. I don’t want to go back.”
94 may 2020
reader’s digest