The Gold of Gandiol

I forget how many days it’s been. All I know is it’s been too many.

Yet I remember as clearly as if it were yesterday, the worry on my parents’ faces, standing in the doorway of our crumbling home, with its sand blocks split like lightning strikes from the constant assault of whipping sea air and brutal heat, the corrugated tin roof rusted completely through in spots so it looked like stars shining in. My mother swallowed back tears, praying to Allah to protect me. My father stood proudly like a brick wall, belying the fact he’d taken out a loan against every last brick they owned. I could taste the ocean salt on my lips and the air smelt of woodsmoke from the village kilns. The crispy leaves of the acacia trees sang in the breeze.

My father had sold his precious outboard motor too, meaning he would no longer be able to fish the open Atlantic waters. Not that he caught that many fish anymore. The decline had started eight years ago, when he could barely catch enough sardines to feed our family. But over the last two years, he had regularly returned home, after fourteen hours at sea, with empty nets, unable to compete with the industrial Chinese and Spanish trawlers that now ransacked the waters. His wooden pirogue would become yet one more added to the collection of abandoned boats decorating the coastline like antiques. My mother had already sold her wedding chariou of filigree earrings and thin bracelets to a gold merchant in Saint-Louis the year before to keep us alive. She got less than half of what it was worth and was grateful that her own mother wasn’t alive to see the gift be sold for so little.

We had been living off boiled rice for the last few months, occasionally flavoured with a sardine if we were lucky. I was now their life raft. They had sold everything, begged and borrowed and pinned their hopes on me. A distant cousin of my mother whom I had never before heard mentioned, a taxi driver in Dakar, had lent her twenty thousand dërëm. My father sold the small arid plot of land he had inherited to a peanut farmer for a pittance. And the tontine had nervously agreed to let my mother have the community-run savings on the basis she would pay it all back the moment I arrived in Spain, got work and could wire them big fat euros. The women all understood. All the families in Gandiol were in the same dire situation. And if I could make it, it would give hope to them. Their sons could follow. The chants of barça ou barzakh filled the air in the run-up to my departure. Barcelona or death. All of the Senegalese fishing villages sing it.

My father had met the coxeur in the crowded bus depot in Saint-Louis. The man had taken his slice of commission immediately and directed my father to the hawala in a nearby shop selling colourful Ankara wax cloth. In exchange for handing over the rest of the money, the hawala had given my father a scrap of paper with a scribbled code on it, which didn’t seem like a particularly fair exchange. The hawala must have taken pity on my father because he also gave him a length of cloth.

“Small present for your wife.”

So, yes, I remember my parents’ troubled faces and the taste of salt and the smell of woodsmoke and the rustling acacia trees as clearly as if it were yesterday. And yet it seems a lifetime ago. All I have left is my backpack with one change of clothes, a waterproof jacket, a woolly hat, my mobile phone, charger, spare battery pack, and a five-litre jerrycan which currently only holds less than half a litre of clean water. I use the word clean loosely as even after all this time and refilling it I don’t know how many times, the water still tastes of warm plastic and diesel. But it’s kept me alive in some dark and lonely moments. That and my mobile phone.

I was nervous that day. Nervous, but also excited. And carrying an immense pride about the responsibility on my shoulders to save my family, possibly my whole village, from poverty and destitution. The journey to Dakar went as planned. A taxi rapide to Saint-Louis then the Globe One bus from there. It didn’t have air-con, but it was the cheaper option, and it’s only a five hour journey. Well, it should have been, but we had drawn-out document checks at two roadside checkpoints and the rush hour traffic approaching Dakar was gridlock chaos. I half-slept with one eye open in the bus station that night, my backpack firmly wedged under my head and the straps wound tightly around my wrists. I shared another taxi rapide in the early hours of the morning to take me across town to Gare Routière des Baux Maraîchers to catch the bus to Bamako.

From that point on is where I lost count of the days. I lost count of the checkpoints, the document checks and the bribes, the small amount of seefa I was carrying already disappearing too quickly as yet another official required payment to let me and my fellow passengers back on the bus and continue on our journey. Although there were times when I really didn’t want to get back on that overcrowded vehicle. It was gruelling. It was hot. It was smelly with people’s stale sweat and animal excrement. Babies wailed, chickens clucked and flapped their wings in protest, sending clouds of feathers into the air, and goats kicked and bleated. Everyone was irritable, tired, anxious. The driver had to stop for several hours to let the overheating engine cool down as the air filters clogged up with sand and dust. Twice, we had a tyre blowout, as the bus strained under the excessive weight along the potholed dirt roads.

We crossed the border into Mali with more document processing fee bribes. Further along the route, we were held at the Sandaré checkpoint overnight due to the curfew. It was for our own safety against the militia. It didn’t feel safe. It felt like I would suffocate from the dead air on board. My water had all but run out and I made the last two sips last all night. My hawala had told me not to get off the bus under any circumstances - even if I needed to pee. But the other passengers were getting off when they needed to relieve themselves. So, I stepped off into the dark rocky terrain, using the torch on my phone to avoid scorpions, horned vipers, jagged boulders and gaping holes in the earth. I had to pay another bribe to get back on the bus – to a soldier casually swinging his gun around.

When we finally arrived in Bamako, I phoned my parents to let them know I had arrived safely. I told them the journey had been fine. It had been fine. I was alive and in Bamako and that was all that counted. I received the instructions an hour later in a text message, along with a new code.

“The stall selling aluminium cooking pots behind the Great Mosque at the Grand Marché.”

I posted my ID card back home to my parents. From now on, ID was a liability that could get me deported back to Senegal if I was picked up by the authorities. I travelled anonymously, endless blisteringly hot days and freezing nights through Mali, Algeria and into Morocco. Endless different faces - mostly terrifying and battered by the elements. Endless hawalas with new codes and new instructions. Endless desert trucks and drivers. Endless dodging the police. Endless delays, slight changes of plan and layovers, locked up in empty warehouses not knowing if I would ever see daylight again. I just did and went where I was told. No questions asked.

And now, here I am. Me and about thirty other men. I’ve made friends with Ousmane as we’ve travelled the last part of the journey together, from Oujda to Fnideq. I say friends. If it comes to a fight between me and him for the last space on the boat, I know there will be no friendship.

We are all under threat of death if we make a sound or move a muscle. We are all lying pressed so flat against the earth, it looks like we are trying to bury ourselves. It’s bitterly cold, despite the fact I’m wearing both sets of clothes, my jacket and woolly hat and I am concentrating so hard on not shivering or letting my teeth chatter, that the concentration itself hurts. I have to let the mosquitoes dine out on my skin and there is something thorny digging into my right shin.

It’s pitch black but I’ve been lying here for so long, my eyes have accustomed to the dark and I can make out the silhouettes of the rocks and bodies lying next to me. I can hear my heart beating and the other men trying not to breathe. The waves are lapping against the rocks below – it sounds peaceful, not angry, alhamdulillah. That’s why we’re going tonight. The Levante wind dropped yesterday, the sea will be like glass apparently. I can smell the salt water and the pine trees and the acrid stench of men who have not washed and have been wearing the same clothes for weeks.

I think we’re about two hundred metres from the shoreline. The mokhaznis are patrolling it for illegal migrants trying to make the crossing. We’re waiting for the signal for the all-clear, once the mokhaznis have received their bribe and instruction to monitor another part of the beach for a specific half hour window. It will be a human avalanche when we get the signal, as we all go hurtling and sliding down the rocks, racing to the RIB waiting for us in the water.

I can’t hear the mokhaznis talking now. I can’t see the orange glow from their cigarettes. I can see the diamond lights of the Spanish coastline glittering and dazzling in the distance. They look near enough to reach out and touch. Now, here comes the low chug-chug rumbling of the idling motor, slowly getting closer. I am holding my breath. I know it’s nearly time. There is no ready, set, go in this race though. There ‘s only the go, and I have to stay motionless and silent in my preparation. Just like all the other men who are thinking the exact same thing as me in this very moment.

“I must get on that boat.”

They all have families somewhere. Waiting to hear that their son or husband or father has made it to Europe. Waiting to send the money that will pay off the debt. That will save their home. That will put food on the table at last.

For the briefest of seconds, a pinpoint green laser light shines from the shore, indicating the direction we must run to.

“Yalla, yalla!”

And the avalanche begins.