Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. Bernard is concentrating on 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 street because he has to leave the center where he is sheltered in Almería. He doesn’t know anyone who can put him up while he finds a job. He has no contacts, nor does he have money. “They told me I have to leave as soon as possible, but I don’t know where,” he says. The account behind him is that of hundreds of people who, after landing on the Canary Islands, must leave the centers where they were welcomed and look for a life from scratch. His second odyssey, life after the canoe, begins now.
The Ministry of Migration has modified the reception deadlines in its humanitarian care centers this week. With the arrival crisis in the Canary Islands, the usual three-month stay was reduced to 30 days, but has now been extended again to three months for vulnerable cases, those with illnesses or those who lack acquaintances or family members.
The car that Bernard shines belongs to María Navarro, a 23-year-old student who lives in Retamar, a tourist town on the coast of Almería. Navarro is very stressed, susceptible. Very close to her house, they have set up one of the hotels to temporarily accommodate the almost 16,000 people who, in the month of October alone, have arrived in the Canary Islands and one day it occurred to her to ask the new arrivals how they were doing. . She realized, then, that dozens of the kids staying there have no acquaintances and that, in a matter of days, they will need a source of income (clandestine) and a roof under which to sleep. There are also no indications 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.
The young woman has insisted on helping them and has created a WhatsApp group, which already has more than 100 participants, to connect them with people who can give them a sofa or find them a job, but it is an enormous task. It is the case in Almería and in many other host provinces where the trickle of cases like Bernard’s is already beginning to be constant. “There is no plan. It’s screwed up to see people suffering like this, but I can’t do much more,” Navarro laments.
Some towns in Almería are, a priori, a good place for undocumented immigrants who urgently need to get to work. There is a large diaspora from many African and Latin American countries and a field that drives the economy and that almost always needs hands. But the image we have of places like this, as a land of (precarious) opportunities 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 street. It does not occur to him that it is possible to start a life in a foreign country in just one month, the period in which they can be in reception centers with their basic needs (food and clothing) covered. “Can they really kick us out? Even if the alternative is the street? ”He questions. It is a relatively frequent question among the dozen Senegalese interviewed by EL PAÍS in the last three weeks. Before the arrivals to the Canary Islands exceeded the forecasts, the deadline was three months, but, in any case, hundreds of people have 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 request asylum in a collapsed system that does not give appointments and, perhaps, have access to a reception center for refugees. They will, hopefully, be able to work legally after six months until their file is decided. But the majority of newcomers are condemned to at least three years of clandestinity and exploitation, the period established by law before opening up the possibility of regularization.
Bernard didn’t really know what awaited him either, but it was unlikely to be worse than what he had. 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 a hunt against blacks. “The police always make raids and expel us into the desert,” he explains. He ended up begging and a boss, who gave him some money to wash cars, ended up mediating to get him out of that life and put him on a boat for free to the Canary Islands.
Cheap labor
The sun sets and Roquetas de Mar is filled with immigrants returning from the pit on bicycles. Some of the newcomers to the Canary Islands have gone there in search of their fortune. José, a farmer who drinks a coffee in a bar, gives the first clue: “It’s not like before. The farmers are afraid, don’t you see that they are putting some barbs 10,000 euros fine for having someone without papers? but between them [los inmigrantes] Yes, they fix themselves, they let each other know what is coming out.” The farmer offers instructions on where to find the Senegalese, a group of apartment blocks where at dusk dozens of sheets with slippers, old clothes and utensils close to scrap metal are spread out. The day of work in the greenhouses has just ended and the streets, named after planets, are packed.
There, with his back leaning on a corner, is Moustapha, another Senegalese whose countdown ran out more than a week ago. The boy decided to go to Roquetas attracted by the supposed demand for temporary workers, but his story deflates anyone’s expectations. “I came here not knowing anyone, but I didn’t know what else I could do. I’ve been sleeping on the street for two days. Now I am in a man’s house, but I don’t know for how long,” he explains. Moustapha, a fisherman, goes every day to the roundabouts where cheap labor for the greenhouses is hunted on the fly early in the morning, but he has not yet gotten a single wage. With luck, he will be able to find something picking zucchini for five euros an hour, a daily wage that will allow him to pay the 100 euros per month they are asking for a room shared by three.
The seasonal workers who squeeze themselves into flats and shacks as best they can, confirm a maxim that seems common in the region: “Maybe you can find a job, but what there is not is accommodation.” And so the demand for a bed grows in the irregular settlements that extend between the plastics.
In a store packed with boxes full of basic foods, the president of the Association of Senegalese Immigrants of Andalusia, Gabriel Ataya, confesses to being exhausted. At 59 years old and three decades in Spain, he has already seen too many “migration crises,” too similar, “without anyone proposing solutions.” Now, with the latest arrivals, he spends the day stretching the networks of the Senegalese community to accommodate the trickle of kids who are leaving the reception centers. The community is also tired and it is increasingly difficult to convince them to open their homes, once again. So difficult that he himself had to plant a cot in his small living room to accommodate the last boy who asked him for help.
It smells like stew in Ataya’s house, a basement in an apartment block that hides a corrala. Abdolaye Thiandoum, a 30-year-old fisherman, is preparing food, in a kitchen also full of boxes. Thiandoum arrived in Tenerife in September, passing through Gran Canaria, Malaga and, later, Almería. When his time in the reception center was up, a relative of his who lives in Madrid told him that he could find a life in Roquetas, but his only contact was Ataya. The boy shyly tells of his greatest achievement so far: “I’m encouraged. Today I went out to look for work and I met a Senegalese man who was at my center and he offered to reinforce the plastics in the greenhouses.” The last one who accepted that job couldn’t stand it, but the offer came through and Thiandoum is still there.
Bernard always smiles, but when no one looks at him, his expression changes and he becomes serious, worried. María Navarro tearfully offered to offer him to go to his family’s house, but the Ghanaian preferred not to bother and accepted the offer of accommodation from an acquaintance, but ended up in a wooden and cardboard shack, without a bathroom, without water and being cold. . A week later, he was able to return to the hotel that hosted him. The countdown has been activated again, but he gained a little more time to think about the plan to continue surviving.
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