| Recently I received this report from a Spanish woman in Sevilla and one of her Senegalese colleagues. Both work for an association set up to facilitate the settling in of immigrants. Together they went to Senegal, in order to get a more accurate idea of the situation of young people determined to emigrate. The following encounter took place at St Louis in Senegal in December last year. The President of ANAFA, the immigrants’ association, Mrs Finda Soumaré, is a very dynamic young woman. When she heard of our arrival, she invited Ousmane Ndiaye to the meeting we were to hold. He is a social worker in education, down in the fishermen’s area of St Louis. She assured us that he is seen as a genuine spokesman by the local authorities, the various NGOs working in the area and by the inhabitants themselves. While waiting for Ousmane to arrive, we asked her about the views of the local people with regard to the massive departure of the young. The answer was that it is seen as a chance to take. People say: “God has descended here in St Louis for the young. Families sell what they have and give the money to the fishermen, asking them to take their sons to Spain. The father of one of my friends, Abdel, had a big shop here, which worked very well. He sold it all, so that his son could leave for Spain. But Abdel had bad luck, was not allowed to enter Spain and was sent back. Now his father sits at the doorstep of his former shop and holds out the Koran to passers-by. (The Koran is not sold, it is offered with the hope of receiving alms in return.) …/… At five p.m. we went to the local committee’s meeting quarters, a large room with benches, slowly filling up. 20 minutes later there were already about 30 people and more continued to arrive, until there were more than 50, most of them men. The chairman of the local committee opened the meeting. An alderman (by tradition the one who has authority) started out on a long story. In a strong and peculiar voice – it sounded as if he were angry with us – he welcomed us. He thanked us for having taken the trouble of coming from far away to see for ourselves what happens on the spot. This is a summary of his words, as translated by N’Demba: “Our young leave, because there is no work here; this used to be a prosperous area, always. People had work. Some went off, far away, on big fishing boats, and stayed out for a week; others went out fishing every night and in the morning they had a sufficient catch for the women to sell during the day. The fish was sold not only in and around St Louis, but all over Senegal. The last few years have been disastrous. The white people fish at high sea, right in front of our coasts. Their big fleets rake off all the fish there is. We can see their lights from here, as from “big cities”. It is their ships that stay out there for months … they have all they need to live on board. Their boats are as big as a town, as the whole area here … And we, we do not ask them for “their papers”. They come, they stay and they catch all our fish. If our young people are forced to emigrate to your countries to look for work, it is because first those out there have come to our country and taken away a job that we know how to do and an occupation that we have always had. Our young do not want to leave, not even this area of St Louis, imagine if they want to leave for Europe! If they do it, it is because there is no other way, because they have reached a time when they are to have a family, they have their parents to feed, sisters, small children. And they cannot sit all day long at the beach and look at the sea.” The gruesome tale of this old man moves the heart. After him, the local council’s delegate took the floor and the chairman of the local committee. The essence was the same: “There was, around fishing, a traditional structure for fish distribution and sale. It has now been destroyed, due to a lack of fish. The paradox is that even if one of our ships has luck and brings back a catch, they can no longer sell it. The distribution network has gone. We do not have refrigerators and trucks and an entire infrastructure adapted to present times. Those who used to build ships continue to build ships. Captains are still captains on boats, but they no longer go out at sea to catch fish, they go with a cargo of young men heading for the Canary islands … In these past years it has become very difficult to obtain a fishing licence to go to Mauritania. When a fisherman, who has been working for years and years and has long experience of the sea, does not obtain a new licence and therefore can no longer fish, he becomes a trafficker. That is to say using a boat of his own, or buying one, he decides to go into transporting emigrants.”
The strategies appear to be the following: a man who has a small amount of money buys a boat and hires a captain, who goes to find “clients” able to pay and then buys food for 8 to 10 days. Sometimes the boat is handed over to the captain himself, as payment for a debt or young people get together as a group, manage to buy a boat and find a captain who will take them. It is no more complicated than that. The meeting room continued to fill up, there were very few women, but more than 50 people turned up. None of the participants had made the journey themselves, but assured us that most of them would be ready to go, even straight away. “Barça o Barsat! - Barcelona or Death!” That is the battle cry of the young trying to leave. (Barsat is the realm where Moslems go after death to await the Last Judgement). (to be continued) Dakar, 5th December 2006 R.G.C. and N.D.M.B |
