A repatriated migrant's tale

By Tidiane Sy
BBC News, Yoff

Alkaly Sarr is angry to have been denied a better life

Twenty-four year old Alkaly Sarr remains desperate to leave Senegal despite his recent ordeal.

He risked his life in an Atlantic Ocean voyage aboard a small boat and made it to Spain's Canary Islands.

But he is one of some 4,000 mainly young men flown back to Senegal from there since September.

Alkaly is angry with Senegal's government over its politically controversial repatriation agreement with Spain which denied him the chance of staying in Europe's "promised land".

Despite the deaths of thousands on the perilous boat journey he doesn't regard himself as a lucky survivor - as he did not achieve his goal.

"I am fisherman, and can only earn money through this activity... The sea is now barren and my father and mother are old now and I have brothers and sisters, and the country, as you know, is not prosperous", he said to explain why he was and still is so desperate to leave.

Journey

Because of a crackdown on human trafficking near the capital, Dakar, which led to hundreds of arrests, Alkaly travelled from his own village of Yoff for more than two days before catching a boat from the southern city of Ziguinchor almost 500 km south.

"I paid 400,000 [CFA Francs, $800] to a man in Ziguinchor, but don't expect me to give his name", Alkaly told the BBC, as these human traffickers are hunted by police.

Young men are idle because fishing no longer earns them a living

The money he got "partly through savings, partly through family contributions".

"After two days in Casamance, we left and sailed for nine days. It was a long way before we reached the Canary Islands," he says.

He admitted to having been afraid at times at the thought of dying on the journey, despite being used to the sea.

At the time of their departure from Ziguinchor, there were 172 people from all parts of Senegal, packed in two separate boats, he said.

They would later learn that one of the boats ended its trip in Mauritania.

Pick-up

"On the ninth day, a surveillance jet flew over us twice and left. Less than five minutes later, a boat came and accompanied us. A small Red Cross boat took over and guided us," he said.

He recalled disembarking on Gomera Island where the Red Cross took care of him and his fellows offering them food and clothes.

The next day they went to Tenerife in a small boat.

"After a few hours we were taken to the police where we stayed for three days."

He remembers camps and centres filled with thousands of migrants tightly watched by security officers during his short Spanish stay.

There was no physical mistreatment though, and his belief that they would finally be taken to "Barcelona or Malaga" when they were being registered was shattered when he realised that the registration exercise was to take them back to their home country.

His return trip was followed by a painful reunion and the flowing of tears as he was reunited with his wife, mother and sisters again.

Only his father comforted him saying, "this is God's will".

As for his mother he said: "She was crying, my mother was crying. I think both of pain and of pleasure, for seeing me back. So many went and never came back. Thousands, in fact no-one knows how many."

Have you been repatriated? How did you face your family? Tell us your experiences.

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