An Indelible Humanitarian Gesture

Bulltin

Mamoudou Gassama! This is the man whose name would have entered the bad books of French history for sneaking into the country without official documents. The young Malian man is now a household name in France and beyond for braving the odds to save a four-year-old child hanging from a fourth-floor balcony in Paris. Mamoudou Gassama single-handedly scaled the facade of the building and hauled the youngster to safety while a mammoth crowd of people stood shouting and hooting their cars without taking further action.

This spectacular rescue captured on film has and continue to be viewed several million times on social networks. The film of the rescue shows Gassama, 22, pulling himself up from balcony to balcony with his bare hands as a man on the fourth floor tries to hold on to the child by leaning across from a neighbouring balcony. On reaching the fourth floor, Gassama put one leg over the balcony before reaching out with his right arm and grabbing the child. Fire fighters arrived at the scene just to find the child had already been rescued. This earned him the name “Spiderman.”

Many people including heartless ones have described the act severally, but it all boils down to one thing; that it was a veritable humanitarian act coming from an African immigrant.  French President, Emmanuel Macron could not remain indifferent to the heroic act, and so responded immediately by inviting the young man to the Elysee Palace. Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo praised the young migrant on Twitter for his "act of bravery" as well as phoning him personally to "thank him warmly". She equally promised helping him settle in France.

All these rewards are a product of bravery coming in as compensation for someone...