At the age of 22, Salamba Ndiaye set out for Spain with dreams of working as a real estate broker. She secretly boarded a pirogue, a small fishing boat, but was intercepted by the Senegalese police.
She tried again a year later and this time she successfully reached the shore although violent storm forced the boat to halt at Morocco where Ndiaye and other passengers were returned to Senegal.
However, despite her two failed attempts, the 28-year-old remains determined. “In fact if you told me that there is a ship going to Spain I will just leave this interview and go there,” she said.
Each year thousands of young Senegalese like Ndiaye attempt to escape poverty and lack of job opportunities in their country. Most head for the Canary Islands which is an archipelago belonging to Spain located off West Africa thereby serving as a gateway into continental Europe.
Statistics released by Spain’s Interior Ministry indicate that over 22,300 individuals have landed on the Canary Islands since year’s start, representing a 126% increase compared to last year’s number.
According to aid workers in the Canary Islands, this trend is also causing young women like Ndiaye to put their lives at risk.
Earlier this year, the EU signed a 210 million euro deal with Mauritania aimed at stopping smugglers from launching boats bound for Spain. As of now, though, it has had minimal impact on migrant arrivals.
This week, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez of Spain will visit Mauritania and Senegal and Gambia in order to curb irregular migration. These West African nations are the main take-off platforms for seafaring migrants.
One of the world’s most deadly sea crossings is across the Atlantic from western Africa to the Canary Islands. The Spanish migrant rights group Walking Borders estimatesthat thousands were killed only in this year with no accurate death toll because of not having any information regarding departures from West Africa.
Some of the migrant boats that go astray or run into difficulties disappear in the Atlantic Ocean, some float for months over to Caribbean and Latin America before being discovered with only dead bodies inside them.
But dangers of the route are not a reason why people like Ndiaye cannot attempt it as they struggle to find greener pastures for themselves as well as their families in Europe. On this dangerous route, slogans such as “Barsa wala Barsakh,” which translates to “Barcelona or die” in one of Senegalese major languages called Wolof can be heard.
“Even if we stay here we are still at risk,” said 46-year-old Cheikh Gueye, a fisherman from Thiaroye-sur-Mer, who comes from the same village on Dakar’s outskirts as Ndiaye.
“You are unwell and you don’t have money for treatment; ain’t you at risk? So we take risks whether we can make it or not,” he added.
Similarly, Gueye tried to make it through the Atlantic route to Europe but stopped in Morocco due to bad weather and was returned back home in Senegal.
Like other people living in Thiaroye-sur-Mer, he used to earn good income by working as a fisherman until fish population started depleting ten years ago because of excessive fishing.
“These gargantuan water crafts have changed things, before even children could cast a net and trap some fish,” he told me pointing at the shallows.
“Now we must go over 50 kilometers away to find any fish and still they are scarce,” he adds.
Gueye argues that the fishing agreements between Senegal and European Union (EU) and China were responsible for these problems, especially because such contracts permit foreign industrial trawlers into Senegalese waters. The agreements come with quotas, but monitoring what Europe’s, China’s and Russia’s big boats harvest had been difficult.
Fatou Niang is also concerned about her son ahead of the Spanish prime minister’s visit to the West African country on Wednesday. She thinks that governments of Spain as well as Senegal should focus on giving job opportunities to young people within the West African country so as to prevent them from migrating.
“If you can do something for youth” she suggests “they will never leave”. These kids know nothing else than sea life; yet it has disappeared.
“At least not us. You can’t make people stay. There is no work here.”
