North to Paradise

by Ousman Umar

Our distant ancestor founded the Kingdom of Wa, and his descendants became the four branches of the family—known as the four gates—that take turns governing. We belonged to one of those gates. The Wala have their own unique form of identification: a small scar on the right cheek, a small cut we’re given when we’re born so we can recognize each other. It’s important: in a fight, it may mean the difference between being taken down as an enemy or protected as a fellow tribesman.

My father believed that the gods are everywhere—in nature, in rivers and mountains—and that all things have a soul. Growing up, I was always confused because I shared his religion at home and the Muslim religion in the community. Even as a child, I could tell people thought of Islam and Christianity as somehow superior to the ancestral religion. My father wasn’t even allowed in the mosque.

There was so little artificial light that at night, you could see millions of stars shining in the sky, like burning embers dotted across the heavens. When I was a boy, on nights with a full moon, the light was so strong we could play outside. “If you stare at the moon too hard,” the elder women told us, “a witch will come and kill you.” They also warned us not to point at graveyards. That could kill you too—unless you swallowed a pebble first, of course.

Children are just work mules; nobody pays much attention to them. Elders are the wisest because they have lived the longest. Since knowledge is hard to come by, the best way to learn something is to ask an elder.

I remember a story about a man-spider who was the wisest in his village. He wanted to make sure no one could ever be wiser than he was, so he tried to collect all the world’s knowledge, put it in a gourd, and hang it from a tree where no one could ever reach it. He tried to climb the tree with the gourd hanging from his belly, but it was too heavy, so his son, Kuakuata, suggested carrying it on his back. This enraged the father because he realized he hadn’t collected all the world’s knowledge after all—his son knew something he didn’t! The elders used that story to teach us that you can never know everything.

My village is in a remote region of Ghana, and Ghana itself is remote relative to the Land of the Whites. The elders said the whites lived very far away, that they lived like gods, and they were all pilots, engineers, doctors . . . I wanted that to be me, I wanted to be white. I watched planes plow across the African sky, and listened to stories about the whites: strange, terrifying, wondrous stories.

As a kid, I thought movies were real, that it was all true. When I learned the characters were actors, I was very upset. How could they pretend like that? They were imposters! How could you trust people who pretended to cry, who pretended to be happy?

We didn’t have much in the way of material goods—we wore several pants at once to cover each pair’s holes—and seeing the white people’s movies made us long for things we couldn’t afford but didn’t need. If you don’t know something exists, you can’t want it.

Looking back on my childhood, I can see these lofty ideas about white people and Europe seem absurd because of course talent, intelligence, and strength have no color. But these attitudes didn’t take shape overnight: they are the product of centuries of enslavement, exploitation, colonialism, and what ultimately amounts to a white-supremacist marketing campaign to convince Black people to undervalue their own worth.

village rumors: “The whites are so strict that if you marry a white lady and then cheat on her, she’ll kill you, because white people all have guns.”

But even the trees became fewer and smaller as the climate changed around us: slowly but surely, the landscape shifted into harsh desert. Sand, sand, sand. I had no idea that entering the desert was like passing from life into death.

As the bus was approaching the city, we were stopped at a military checkpoint. We were forced off the bus and made to line up. A military official grabbed a fistful of sand, and we watched as it sifted through his fingers. “Is this the sand from your country?” he asked. “No.” “Then you’ve got to pay to set foot on it.” Without waiting for a response, the officials began to beat the strongest person in our group, to teach the rest of us a lesson. And it worked, we paid what they asked. Meanwhile, our driver, accustomed to these extortions, had decided to leave us there so he wouldn’t fall behind schedule. We walked the final two hours to the city.

Agadez is a converging point for migrants from several countries to the south, like a bottleneck.

Agadez is the unwitting home of many “sinkers,” migrants who ran out of money. They can’t afford to continue, and they can’t afford to go home: stuck forever, like ghosts. I saw them everywhere. They live in extreme poverty and survive by finding clientele for the smugglers: they try to convince you to cross the desert with them.

They packed forty-six men and boys into three cars like sardines.

After five or six hours, we stopped somewhere in the middle of the desert. The smugglers told us to wait while they went looking for water and gasoline. This seemed strange, but we stayed, waiting, waiting, waiting . . . until a whole day had passed. No one came back for us.

The smugglers’ cruel business consisted of promising to bring people across the Sahara, collecting their fees, and then abandoning them in the middle of nowhere. Murder on a massive scale.

“Forward ever, backward never.” I took refuge in that sentence. Just keep moving forward, without indulging negative thoughts.

I started to realize that the desert was like a mass grave for migrants on their way to a better life. The mountains were pure rock: it felt like if you removed a single stone, it would set off an avalanche and crush us. The ascent was difficult: it wasn’t a question of walking up the mountain, but of scaling it, step by step, rock by rock, looking for a passage through wherever you could, often retracing your steps, with your body in a constant state of tension. The mountain seemed to go on forever; we climbed and climbed, and it remained before us, indifferent to our efforts.

Survival seems impossible in these conditions, but when we encounter physical challenges, our bodies adapt in astonishing ways. The man with the swollen feet was the first to choose to die—he was the one who sat down in the sand, alone, waiting for the end. He couldn’t bring himself to walk any farther, and he gave up: his fatigue and despair had become so great that he preferred a slow, certain, agonizing death.

Of the forty-six of us who had been abandoned in the desert, only six reached the village. The other forty had died in the sands of the Sahara. It was heartbreaking, excruciating. We cried our hearts out. We had traveled along the path through hell for three weeks.

One of the saddest things I learned on my journey is that in this life, no one gives you anything for free. They always want something in exchange: it’s human nature. Or at least, it’s the nature of the system that humans live in.

With every passing day, my skin grew a little thicker. On one hand, I knew I could die, but on the other hand, I had nothing left to lose except my life. Despite all the hardship, I didn’t regret making the journey. I never once considered going home, never felt nostalgic, never felt homesick. On that path, there is no turning back. You either make it alive or you die trying.

But on the journey north, you adapt to sadness just like you adapt to everything else.

On the journey north, people are constantly trying to cheat you. Everyone’s trying to survive, even at someone else’s expense.

as soon as they set foot in Libya, these women essentially become human merchandise. The men who smuggle them into the country act as their pimps, and they’re bought and sold in connection houses throughout the country. It was hard for male immigrants like me to earn enough money to survive, but at least we could look for voluntary work. With the extreme gender discrimination in Libya, these women couldn’t find jobs and had no choice but to work for the men who tricked them.

It means someone who belongs to Libya’s class of somewhat well-established Black people, migrants who have been in the country for a few years. The opposite of a Takum is an abba fresh, a Black migrant who only recently arrived, with no money and no connections. I was an abba fresh.

On my journey north, I saw so many people behaving worse than animals, motivated by such greed that they had no humanity. But then a person who was more vulnerable and exploited than I was reached out and shared what little she had. These are the moments that I try to remember, moments of our shared humanity.

There was an elderly woman in that house, who was also working for the pimps. I don’t know how long she had been forced to work that way. She mocked me whenever I started praying: “Don’t waste your time,” she’d snap. “Your God doesn’t listen to prayers from a place like this.” I had seen a lot of suffering by that point, and I had experienced a lot of suffering myself, but I still prayed five times a day, and I still believed in God. My faith was what had made so many parts of this journey bearable.

I would have ended up in a Libyan prison, probably one of the most wretched places in the world. In Libya, there is no concept of human rights. If they catch you, you die in prison.

Even though we encountered a lot of cruelty, there are kind and caring people wherever you go.

There are several different kinds of police in Libya. They say that the cops with the red berets are accountable to no one, they can kill you on the spot. When Qaddafi is in town, they are the ones who protect him.

When I talk about smugglers like this, it’s not what you’re imagining. Europeans always picture hardened criminals with AK-47s like in the movies, but that’s not the case. They’re just people with connections, and together they make up a vast, loose network that shuttles migrants north. They don’t trick or pressure anyone into traveling to Europe; they’re simply responding to a demand.

In that basement in Casablanca, we met several women who had been trafficked and subjected to unspeakable sexual violence. Many had become pregnant and were now traveling with newborn babies: children of the connection houses. Even with all the suffering I experienced, I know that my hardship pales in comparison to what female migrants endure. At least I had some freedom. But in a country like Libya, where women must be accompanied in public by a male family member, it’s impossible for female migrants to find work, and they have no choice but to enter de facto slavery in the country’s forced prostitution networks. Otherwise, they don’t eat. Rape is so commonplace along the journey north, in and out of the connection houses, that these women have to find ways of coping with it; if they didn’t somehow adapt to their reality—if they fully acknowledged and processed this violence—the trauma could kill them.

I was happy because suddenly someone with no ulterior motives was taking care of me. The difference between this and the way I’d been treated by the smugglers was jarring. These white people even welcomed us with a certain amount of kindness: they smiled, spoke to us in a friendly tone, and asked us questions about our journey and how we were feeling. It was true: Paradise was a wonderful place.

Where were we? I didn’t know. I just knew that I was in Paradise, in the Land of the Whites, on the other side of the ocean. They told me I was in a country called España, on an island called Fuerteventura, part of the Canary Islands. I had thought Paradise was all one big country.

You can’t see anything from inside the detention center; you’re completely walled in. Even so, it felt like a five-star hotel to me, especially compared to the places I’d been living: the floor of a desert cave, the cramped apartment in Casablanca, the Libyan brothel. Here, I had a bed all to myself. Later, living in Spain, I learned that the place is considered a prison.

Sometimes, the smallest detail in the present can determine your entire future.

They gave me a train ticket, a water bottle, a banana, and a tuna sandwich, as well as a document saying I was number 101. That reminded me of the concentration camps I had seen in World War II movies. I want to believe they gave us numbers because our names were hard for them to pronounce, but I’d like to know for sure one day. That was all I had as I started a new life.

The first hurdle I had to overcome was my fear of the enormous python that was the escalator. I remember that, far-fetched as it seemed, I wasn’t too surprised to learn there was a train that ran underground. Everything was already surreal, it was like living in an imaginary world, and I was getting used to it. But I still didn’t understand the concept of the metro: I had no idea that this tunnel full of people and trains formed a network that stretched underneath the entire city, or that you could use it to travel all over Barcelona. On the train, I watched the other passengers carefully to learn how they behaved in that underground labyrinth.

Meeting Montse and Eva had raised my hopes: there was humanity in this place, and I remained optimistic that one day I would be completely accepted, a full-fledged member of this prodigious society. It was comforting to know there are good people out there.

The caseworker explained that I had two options. The first was to get a birth certificate from Ghana in order to prove that I was really seventeen years old. The Spanish government would be obligated to take charge of me until I turned eighteen, but the tests the doctors had given me in detention weren’t good enough. Of course, I didn’t have a birth certificate, it didn’t exist; they don’t issue documents like that in Ghanaian villages. The other option was for Montse and Armando to adopt me and become my legal guardians until I turned eighteen. They didn’t even hesitate. Like a miracle, they simply decided that they would do it. The moment they agreed, the caseworker began to cry. “I’ve never seen anyone do something like this,” she said between sobs.

One of the judges solemnly read a text asking if I agreed to be Spanish and join this family. “Spanish? No,” I answered. “I want to be Catalan.” Of course, I had no idea that there was a conflict between the Spanish government and Catalans who want to be independent from Spain. I wanted to be Catalan because my family spoke Catalan, not Spanish, and I wanted to be part of my family. I didn’t have any political motivation. As if we were talking about Walas and Dagombas, it seemed strange to me that if my parents were from the Catalan tribe, they would make me become part of the Spanish tribe. Imagine: a seventeen-year-old boy, recently arrived from Ghana, in a Spanish courtroom, saying he wants to be Catalan. It was so strange that everyone fell absolutely silent. No one moved a muscle. As the seconds passed, I realized that I must have said something extremely offensive. But after a few moments of seemingly endless silence, astonishment, and confused looks, people’s lips began to curve upward, and soon everyone in the courtroom was laughing.

But even though I was so comfortable on the outside, on the inside, a storm was raging. The world was collapsing around me. For the first time since leaving Ghana, I was safe. No more fighting to survive. My future wasn’t uncertain. I was safe. I started crying like a child. I lay there the whole night, wondering why I’d had to experience so much suffering. It says in the Qur’an that all things are predestined. And here I was in Barcelona, with this family that was prepared to love me selflessly, unconditionally, just the way I am, just for the sake of loving me. Had these people been here all along, waiting? Was this part of God’s plan? If so, why had he placed so many obstacles on my path?

I took classes in the evening so I could work during the day. Everything sparked my curiosity and I was eager to learn. Some nights, I couldn’t even fall asleep because I was so excited about everything I would discover the next day. I don’t think it’s a very common feeling among students here, but I was eager to fill my mind with all the knowledge that I hadn’t been able to access before.

“I don’t believe you about aspirin,” I told our teacher. “You’re trying to trick me.” “Trick you?” “I’ve been tricked a lot in my life, but that’s all over now, I won’t be fooled anymore.” “But what is it that you don’t believe?” “Headaches aren’t cured with aspirin. They’re cured by my father’s rituals.”

At first, I had hoped to change programs after a few semesters, but I couldn’t afford it. And in any case, the classes and labs conflicted with my work schedule. As an immigrant without a Spanish passport, I couldn’t apply for public financial aid, and the degree programs aren’t set up for students who have to work to make ends meet. Don’t get me wrong, the education system in Spain is certainly better than Ghana’s; otherwise, maybe I could have studied there. But Spanish universities have their problems too.

I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time. There is no doubt in my mind that I’m one of the luckiest people in the entire world, if only because I’m alive and present, here and now. I will never stop being thankful for that.

Given all the hardship I’ve experienced, it would be easy to think that the world is full of bad people, but I prefer to think that most people are good. It’s just that the good people make less noise.

They do something in Ghana that, from a European perspective, could seem both peculiar and sad. Students learn how to use computers at school, but without actual computers in the classroom. The teacher draws everything on a chalkboard: the monitor, the icons and menus, the keyboard, the mouse, and so on. They teach Excel by drawing entire spreadsheets by hand. Students have to learn to use computers to pass the university entrance exams, but many Ghanaians won’t use these lessons until they see a computer. Some of them never will.