Eloy Vera |
Antigua (Fuerteventura) (EFE).- Rowland Olajide put his mother, Rachael, in front of the camera one day, pressed the record button and asked her about the trip they made together 20 years ago from Nigeria to the Canary Islands… and in that moment he began to feel more proud of having been a “patera boy”.
The young man was three years old when he got on that boat near Agadir, in southern Morocco. Now, he has turned 22 and studies Audiovisual Graphics at the Fuerteventura School of Art after finishing the Photography cycle.
As an end-of-term project, the teachers proposed recording a short documentary as part of the “Intrahistory” project, promoted by the center to search for representative testimonies of the island’s intangible heritage.
Rowland’s light bulb went on: his story was on the trip he and his mother made from Nigeria to Fuerteventura in 2003, with the final stage in a boat with about 50 other people on board. A few weeks ago, they were able to see the result on the big screen.
Sitting in the armchair at home, Rachael remembers those days again, this time for EFE. She doesn’t mind doing it, she is not ashamed of having come in a boat or of being an immigrant, she assures her.
When you have, you have the family
“I came to have a better life, for me and my family”, because, “in Africa, when you have, you have the whole family”.
A teacher by profession and daughter of a soldier, she grew up under the umbrella of rectitude and rules in a house with eight other siblings. She belonged to the Nigerian middle class, but her desire for freedom and the siren songs that came from Europe encouraged her to emigrate. “Many young people were leaving. They talked about Europe as if, when you walked, you were collecting money on the street, ”she explains.
She hid the trip from her father, but she did tell her mother, who died in 2008. The last image she has of her is crying and praying that nothing happens to them on the way.
Rachael took Rowland in her arms and began to cross borders: Niger, Algeria, Morocco… her intention was to reach Ceuta, but in Morocco she ran into difficulties with the fence and had to look for another option. “In the south, if a road closes, you discover that there is another on the other side,” he says… and, in his case, that road was a boat that left from Agadir.
Shortly after boarding, her son began to vomit; Hours later, the water entered the boat and four of the crew drained it with bowls. “I was thinking, where have I been? My God, what am I doing!” she recalls. She had paid 700 euros for the trip.
“I was very scared, I thought how I was going to survive and save my son if something happened, if I don’t know how to swim… We received news of the deaths at sea, but one already has the idea of coming,” he explains. After a day of sailing, a radar detected them, a Civil Guard helicopter appeared, then Salvamento arrived and, from the boat, someone yelled “baby first!”
The treasure of a photo on the pier
At the pier, a civil guard took Rowland in his arms to get him off the Salvage boat and a photographer captured the scene. The baby and his mother went to the Civil Guard barracks to have their data taken and, from there, to the Red Cross center.
Someone gave him a copy of “La Provincia” those days where the photo of Rowland in the arms of the guard appeared. Twenty years later, the newspaper page has turned yellow, but Rachael keeps it as a “treasure”, because that piece of paper “was proof that he had arrived, it was like a Spanish passport”.
As the weeks went by, she began looking for a life: first she cleaned houses to pay rent, then she found a job as a chambermaid and with the money she was able to pay for Rowland’s studies. Every day she cherished the European dream a little more.
The imaginary camera now focuses on Rowland, it’s his turn to speak: “I had heard the story of the trip and, from time to time, I asked him questions, but I didn’t go deeper because as a child I didn’t give it importance until I started to grow up and ask myself questions about my origins, about the people in Nigeria or the context of my country”.
understand, respect
For him, it was not hard to listen to his mother’s story from the other side of the camera, “but it was strange because there were certain topics that he did not know, such as the time we were in the boat or the countries through which he had to go before, or even how she felt about having to risk her son’s life.”
“It helped me understand many things and, above all, to respect her for what she did,” she continues.
Rachael feels bad for having risked her son’s life that September 2003. Instead, he thanks her: “I am in the first world and I can enjoy things that in Nigeria would have been impossible for me.”
But, above all, he acknowledges that “making the documentary has helped me respect myself and feel proud of who I am and where I come from because, although I haven’t told my mother much, it is true that when I was little I felt inferior. to others for the fact of being an immigrant.”
Before leaving the conversation, Rowland recounts one of the few memories he has of that voyage at sea: himself vomiting in the boat, while someone gives him Coca-Cola. His mother corrects him: “It wasn’t Coca-Cola, it was a liquid yogurt that I bought him so he could take it on the road.” The two laugh. EFE