Alpha, a cabby in New York, comes from Batama, a village in the poorest region of Mali. Since the drought of 1973, the men of Batama have gone abroad to earn enough to keep the women and children alive.
In New York and Tokyo, they earn double of what they would in other cities. But not everyone can go to Japan. "In the past," says Alpha, "we went abroad to keep the village alive. But today we are finding that abroad is 'closed'. And if 'abroad' is closed, then we are all closed."