Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. Bernard is busy scrubbing the body of a car with a dripping sponge, but a clock keeps ringing in his head, tormenting him. Tick tock, tick tock … In four days, this 30-year-old Ghanaian, who arrived in Lanzarote by boat a little over a month ago, will be on the streets because of the center where he is , must leave stay in Almería. He doesn’t know anyone who can accommodate him while he finds a job. He has no contacts or money. “They told me I had to go as quickly as possible, but I don’t know where,” he says. Your countdown is that of hundreds of people who, after landing in the Canary Islands, will have to leave the reception centers that welcomed them and start a new life. Now his second odyssey begins, life after the canoe.
The Ministry of Migration changed the admission deadlines in its humanitarian care centers this week. Due to the crisis in arrivals in the Canary Islands, the usual length of stay was shortened from three months to 30 days, now it has been extended again to three months for particularly vulnerable people with illnesses or without acquaintances or family members.
The car that shines on Bernard belongs to María Navarro, a 23-year-old student who lives in Retamar, a tourist town on the Almería coast. Navarro is very stressed and vulnerable. Very close to his house they built one of the hotels to temporarily accommodate the almost 16,000 people who arrived in the Canary Islands in October alone, and one day the idea came to him to ask the newcomers how they were doing goes was. Then he realized that dozens of the children living there have no friends and that in a few days they will need a (secret) source of income and a roof to sleep on. There are also no signs that the majority of those who have arrived in recent weeks want to leave for other countries, as suggested by the Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, José Luis Escrivá.
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The young woman has insisted on helping them and has created a WhatsApp group, which already has over 100 participants, to connect them with people who can give them a sofa or find them a job, but it is a huge task. This is the case in Almería and in many other host provinces, where the number of cases like Bernard’s is already constant. “There is no plan. “It sucks to see people suffering like that, but there’s not much more I can do,” laments Navarro.
Some cities in Almería are inherently good places for undocumented immigrants who urgently need to get to work. There is a large diaspora from many African and Latin American countries and an area that drives the economy that almost always needs hands. But the image we have of places like this as a land of (dangerous) possibilities is sometimes a mirage.
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Falu, a 30-year-old Senegalese who arrived in El Hierro in early October, was exploring the market in Níjar in the middle of last week. He then had nine days to find an alternative plan to the road. They cannot imagine that in just one month it is possible to start a life in a foreign country, living in reception centers and being able to cover their basic needs (food and clothing). “Can they really kick us out? Even if the alternative is the street?” he asks. This is a relatively common question among the dozens of Senegalese EL PAÍS has interviewed over the past three weeks. Before arrivals in the Canary Islands exceeded forecasts, the deadline was three months, but in any case hundreds of people boarded the canoe without knowing exactly what awaited them at their destination.
The reality is much harsher than what is sold on social networks. The very lucky ones will be able to apply for asylum and perhaps have access to a refugee reception center in a broken system that doesn’t provide appointments. They will hopefully be able to work legally after six months pending a decision on their file. But the majority of new arrivals are sentenced to at least three years of secrecy and exploitation, the period specified by law before the possibility of legalization is opened up.
Bernard didn’t really know what to expect either, but it was unlikely to be worse than what he expected. Orphaned by his father and mother, he decided to leave Ghana and crossed the Ivory Coast, Mali and Algeria until he reached Morocco. His plan was to work and stay there, but as he describes, he suffered an anti-black hunt. “The police are always raiding and driving us out into the desert,” he explains. He ended up begging and a boss, who gave him some money to wash cars, eventually brokered to get him out of that life and put him on a boat to the Canary Islands for free.
Cheap labor
The sun is setting and Roquetas de Mar is full of immigrants returning from the pit on bicycles. Some of the newcomers to the Canary Islands have set out to find their fortune. José, a farmer drinking coffee in a bar, gives the first clue: “It’s not like it used to be. The farmers are afraid, don’t you see that they are facing a fine of 10,000 euros for having undocumented people? but between them [los inmigrantes] Yes, they repair themselves, they let each other know what’s coming out.” The farmer gives clues as to where to find the Senegalese, a group of apartment blocks where, at dusk, dozens of sheets with slippers, old clothes and utensils are nearby of scrap metal are spread out. The working day in the greenhouses has just ended and the streets named after planets are full.
There, leaning back against a corner, stands Moustapha, another Senegalese whose countdown ended more than a week ago. The boy decided to go to Roquetas, attracted by the supposed demand for seasonal workers, but his story disappoints all expectations. “I came here not knowing anyone, but I didn’t know what else I could do. I slept on the street for two days. Now I’m in a man’s house, but I don’t know for how long,” she explains. Moustapha, a fisherman, goes early every day to the roundabouts where cheap labor is hunted for the greenhouses, but he has not yet received a single wage. With a bit of luck, he’ll find something while picking zucchini for five euros an hour, a daily wage with which he can pay the 100 euros a month they charge for a room for three.
The seasonal workers, who squeeze into apartments and huts as best they can, confirm a common maxim in the region: “You might find a job, but what there isn’t is accommodation.” And so the demand for a bed in them is growing irregular settlements that stretch between the plastics.
In a shop full of boxes of basic foodstuffs, the president of the Association of Senegalese Immigrants of Andalusia, Gabriel Ataya, admits to being exhausted. At 59 years old and three decades in Spain, he has already experienced too many “migration crises,” too similar, “without anyone suggesting solutions.” Now that the new arrivals have arrived, he spends the day expanding the Senegalese community’s networks to accommodate the few children leaving the reception centers. The community is also tired and it is becoming increasingly difficult to convince them to reopen their homes. So difficult that he even had to set up a cot in his small living room to accommodate the last boy who asked him for help.
Abdolaye Thiandoum, a 30-year-old Senegalese fisherman, staying in a house in Roquetas de Mar.MM
It smells like stew in Ataya’s house, a cellar in an apartment block where a corrala is hidden. Abdolaye Thiandoum, a 30-year-old fisherman, prepares food in a kitchen also full of boxes. Thiandoum arrived in Tenerife in September and passed through Gran Canaria, Malaga and later Almería. When his time in the reception center was over, a relative who lives in Madrid told him that he could find a life in Roquetas, but the only contact was Ataya. The boy shyly talks about his greatest success to date: “I feel encouraged. Today I went looking for a job and met a Senegalese man who was in my midst and who offered me to reinforce the plastics in the greenhouses.” The last person who took this job couldn’t stand it, but the offer came through and Thiandoum is still there.
Bernard is always smiling, but when no one is looking at him, his expression changes and he becomes serious and worried. María Navarro tearfully offered him to go to his family’s house, but the Ghanaian did not want to bother and accepted an acquaintance’s offer to accommodate him, but ended up in a hut made of wood and cardboard, without bathroom, without water and in the cold. . A week later he was able to return to the hotel where he was received. The countdown activated again, but he gained a little more time to think about the plan to continue surviving.
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