Tiny Gambia's Big Export

ABCDE MONDAY, JUNE 15, 2015 EXODUS Desperate migrants, a broken system Tiny Gambia’s big export Cellphones, smugglers and rising expectations engender a flight from Africa by Kevin Sieff percentage of the total, with about 64,600 IN DAMPHA KUNDA, GAMBIA arriving last year. This year, the figure is expected to be even higher. Gambia, one of he village was losing its young men. Africa’s smallest nations, is a big contribu- Hundreds had left their thatched- tor to that flow. Troof huts and tiny squares of farm- To deter the arrivals, European poli- land for the promise of Europe. About 40 cymakers have proposed reinforcing their had died on the way. naval forces in the Mediterranean, con- Susso knew nearly all of them. He had ducting mass deportations and destroying prayed at the funerals after their boats cap- smugglers’ boats. When Susso turns on the sized or their smugglers stranded them in radio in the bedroom he shares with his the desert, ceremonies with mourners but wife and six children, he hears all the ways no bodies. The grim toll complicated his Europe is trying to dissuade him from leav- plan, turned it into a secret he hid from ing. almost everyone. But it has never been so alluring — or He, too, was preparing to join the exo- so easy — to begin the trip. Over the past dus from Dampha Kunda. two years, sub-Saharan Africa’s smuggling Africa has never seen such a flood of networks have expanded, as Libya has young men heading for Europe. The num- descended into chaos, leaving its coasts ber of migrants crossing by sea to Italy, a unguarded as migrants set out for Italy, a top entry point, nearly quadrupled from few hundred miles away. 2013 to 2014, reaching about 170,100. Stories of Gambians arriving on Ital- Sub-Saharan Africans made up a growing ian or Spanish shores now reach even MONDAY, JUNE 15, 2015 KLMNO PAGE 2 PHOTOS BY JANE HAHN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST At top, Susso, 38, plays with his children, niece and nephew at home in Gambia. He has saved $500 to travel the “Backway” to Libya and then Europe. Above is the bus he will take to a way station in Niger. MONDAY, JUNE 15, 2015 KLMNO PAGE 3 remote Dam- he Western Route,” experts call A perilous pha Kunda via the web of migrant trails from Facebook and “T Gambia, Senegal and Mali that path out text message, now lead to North Africa. But Gambians like rumors of a have a different name for the dangerous of Africa gold rush. Most path to Europe: the Backway. men keep their “Say No to the Backway,” reads a gov- to Europe plans a secret ernment banner near Susso’s village, with a until they leave, picture of a boat capsized in the ocean. fearing an out- “Backway bad way,” says a song funded cry from worried relatives or arrest by the by the U.S. Embassy in Gambia and played country’s authoritarian government. Susso on the radio here. asked that only his last name, common in Across Africa, there are different paths eastern Gambia, be used in this article. to Europe and different reasons for leav- In the weeks before his trip, he veiled ing. In Somalia, refugees flee the brutal al- himself in routine, waking every day at 5 Shabab rebels, following an “eastern route” and working on the rice farm of the vil- winding through Sudan. In Eritrea, they lage’s richest family. He played with his escape a harsh military regime. children, most of them half-clothed in torn And Susso’s reasons? He walked by shirts and underwear, telling them nothing them one day in the scorching heat shortly of his plan. before he would depart, homes in sandy Then, one day in May, Susso opened a lots with numbers painted on the walls. drawer hidden under a yellow blanket and House No. 1027, a mud-baked hut, was removed a small metal box with a silver getting a cinder-block addition, thanks to padlock. He counted the money: 17,000 money from a relative in Spain. House 301 dalasi, about $500. It had taken him three boasted a flat-screen television, thanks to years. It was enough to begin the journey. remittances from Germany. And House 311 Twice a week, a bus called the “TA had a big red tractor. Express,” full of young men wearing san- “So much money,” he sighed. dals and carrying small bags, clatters past Poverty had once imposed a kind Dampha Kunda on its way to Agadez, a of uniformity here — every house with a desert city in Niger that smugglers use as thatched roof and dirt floor, every meal a a way station on the route to Libya and small portion of rice and okra, every job Europe. tending to patches of rice on a small sub- Soon, Susso told himself, he would be sistence farm. on it. Then the wealth gap that had always separated Europe and Africa began to MONDAY, JUNE 15, 2015 KLMNO PAGE 4 PHOTOS BY JANE HAHN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST The market in Brikama Ba, a village in Gambia. insinuate itself here. If you had a rela- ambition yielded almost nothing. tive in Europe, you were rich. If not, you A growing number of Gambians are remained stuck on the edge of survival. It literate, but with “little chance at employ- filled Susso with an envy that bordered on ment that matches their skills, just like anger. He was 39, broad-shouldered and China by the 1960s and India by the 1970s,” sleepy-eyed, older and wearier than most said Joel Millman, a spokesman for the of the men making the journey north. International Organization for Migration. Susso could afford only two meals a “So they do the rational thing and they day for his family. He knew he would have leave.” to pull his four sons out of school in their The Gambian government hasn’t early teens, so they could work his small helped. Its longtime dictator, President rice field or make money elsewhere. He Yahya Jammeh, has preached a life of sub- shared his two-room home with 12 people, sistence. He has created a bizarre mythol- including his brother, nieces and nephews, ogy around himself as a man who could a bedsheet hanging where the front door cure AIDS and threatened to personally should be. slit the throats of gay men. He has brushed Like so many Gambians, no mat- off the thousands of men fleeing his coun- ter how much he was willing to work, his try as failures and bad Muslims. MONDAY, JUNE 15, 2015 KLMNO PAGE 5 PHOTOS BY JANEPHOTOS HAHN BY JANE FOR HAHN THE FOR WASHINGTON THE WASHINGTON POST AboveAt top, the right, market a tractor in Brikama in the Ba, avillage village inof Gambia. Dampha At centerKunda right, owned a tractor by a in Gambian the village ofwho Dampha lives Kunda in Europe owned by a Gambian who lives in Europe and driven by Susso, who plans to take the “Backway” to Europe with andmoney driven saved inby a Susso, small metal who box, plans center to left. take The the tractor’s “Backway” owner, Alagi to Europe Ceesay, with has sent money home enoughsaved moneyin a small that metalhis family box, tore center down their left. home The andtractor’s built two owner, large buildings Alagi Ceesay, of concrete, has including sent home a room, enough above, money where Ceesay’s that his familyphoto is tore displayed. down “Life their has home been good and to built us,” his two brother large says. buildingsI For more of photos,concrete, go to including washingtonpost.com/world. a room, above, where Ceesay’s photo is displayed. “Life has been good to us,” his brother says. IFor more photos, go to washingtonpost.com/world. But even the farmers of Dampha valuable natural resources, where the gov- Kunda knew migrants were the true suc- ernment dominates what little private sec- cess stories. Twenty percent of Gambia’s tor exists. gross domestic product now comes from “The only people who can make any remittances, according to the World Bank, money in the Gambia are those very close one of the highest percentages in Africa. to the president. If not, you’re making $100 It’s a nation with almost no industry or a month, if that,” said C. Omar Kebbeh, an MONDAY, JUNE 15, 2015 KLMNO PAGE 6 economist and expert in Gambian migra- rice fields atop a big red tractor. The new tion, now at the U.S. Bureau of Economic two-story houses rose above the old, mud- Analysis. colored huts. Across much of the cropland, Not far from Susso’s house, there was plants were ailing. With the rising prices, a massive billboard with a picture of Jam- few people could afford fertilizer. meh, smiling in a white cap. “Grow what The tractor was an extraordinary lux- you eat and eat what you grow,” it said. ury in a place where almost no one owned a For Susso, that policy had one palpa- car. But it didn’t belong to Susso. Its owner ble impact. “We’re hungry,” he said. “We’re lived in Europe. always hungry.” The first major wave of Gambians left villages like Dampha Kunda in the 1990s, usso had memorized the way Dampha mostly for Spain. By 2010, there were Kunda looked from eight feet off the 65,000 Gambians abroad, around 4 per- Sground, as he bumped through the cent of the population.

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