Actor Thimbo Samb, a role model for the youth of Senegal, has just faced the experience of telling his mother that he slept on the street for weeks after arriving in Spain in a canoe in 2006, that he ate from the garbage, that he was arrested for making a living as a street vendor, and, above all, that he feels guilty for those who die following in his footsteps.
"There is so much that I have not told my family..." It is one of the phrases that captivates the viewer in Los cayucos de Kayar, a documentary short film nominated for the Goya Awards in which the Madrid filmmaker Álvaro Hernández Blanco and Samb himself portray from the beaches of the actor's hometown in Senegal the daily drama of the Canary Route in an intimate tone, in which everything is implicit.
Los cayucos de Kayar is a documentary about emigration where those traditional West African boats so present in the political conversation in Spain only appear filmed in their original fishing functions, but in which hope, uprooting and tragedy are breathed through the conversations of Thimbo Samb with his family and with the boys of the village.
In fact, some of the boys who appear - it was filmed in 2022 - are no longer there, the Atlantic swallowed them in canoes bound for the Canary Islands, or died of thirst after being adrift and appearing in Cape Verde. All of them were acquaintances of Thimbo Samb; some, very dear friends.
"When I come across a Senegalese person in Madrid or Valencia who recognizes me, they sometimes say to me: "'I came to Spain because of you'. And that kills me inside. I know it's their way of saying thank you, but it makes me think about how many people I have inspired to take the canoe that never arrived," reflects the actor, in an interview with Efe.
"I have never recommended anyone to take a boat"
Recognized for his work in theater or in series such as Riot Police, by Rodrigo Sorogoyen, and for his permanent work as an activist for the rights of migrants, Samb feels guilty.
He has never recommended anyone to take a boat or a canoe, quite the opposite: he makes a permanent effort to dissuade anyone who asks him. But the reality is that few listen to him, not even his brother, who risked it in a canoe to El Hierro last year.
It can be seen in the documentary. In a scene on the beach, Samb asks a group of teenagers, many of them minors, about who wants to go to Spain in a canoe, thinking of telling them about the reality of the life of the emigrant, but they all raise their hands, regardless of what he tells them; what is more, they laugh at him, at Thimbo, the one who was a fisherman like them, but "has turned white".
"I understand them perfectly. I have been telling them on networks for years that things here (in Spain) are not as they think and sometimes they end up insulting me, my mother or my grandmother. Why? Because they don't want to listen to that Thimbo who tells them not to come, with everything I have achieved in this country. '"How come you tell us not to come? Is that so or do you say it because you are a bad person?'", they ask me."
However, he knows that they will soon see the reverse: "Most of the people from Kayar who are already in Spain tell me: we should have listened to you". For him, the equation is simple: if Europe did not deny visas to young people from Africa who dream of prospering, people would not take a canoe, they would take a plane and, many, seeing the harshness of the life that awaits them, would return home "in three months".
But after exposing the life, the pride and the heritage of the family, it becomes impossible to return. This is what Samb confesses in this documentary to his mother and sisters, in which he tells them about everything he has suffered, the racism that he still has to endure in some contexts and how much he misses his wife and son, who are still in Kayar. They have not yet been able to accompany him in Spain.
Uprooting
In Wolof, his mother tongue, to explain that the family is well, it is said that the family is together. It is the same expression. "This blocks me", Samb points out in the film, while bathing his baby in a basin, "because most of the year we are not together".
However, he speaks from a declared love for Spain. "In this country I was born again", he proclaims without hesitation, because it gave him the opportunity to develop his vocation when he had already hit rock bottom, through the theater group of the Spanish Commission for Refugee Aid (CEAR).
These flashes of rootedness and uprooting are what attracted Álvaro Hernández, a Madrid filmmaker trained as a documentary filmmaker in Los Angeles, to his story, who had already explored these same feelings between Tijuana and California with the Mexican community settled in the US. He captured it in the book 'Migrants' (Rialp, 2023).
"In Senegal there are many people who feel very capable of going further, of prospering in life. And I am not talking in terms of having a bigger or smaller house, but of growing. In Kayar I did not see people who were starving. Perhaps we have that stereotype that they come here because they are starving in their country and it is not always like that," he explains.
A defeated champion
In his documentary, an almost artisanal work filmed in a week with four hands (his and Thimbo Samb's), there is another character that overwhelms: Boy Cayar. He is the champion of Senegalese wrestling in the region, the one with all the records, a young and strong guy admired by everyone, who does not lack money or heritage.
On the beach, Thimbo asks him: "If you saw a boat leaving now?". Boy Cayar, who has already tried nine times, does not even think about it and replies, with his gaze fixed on the horizon: "I would leave in it with my whole family. I swear. With my whole family."
"On that date, Boy Cayar had five children," Hernández emphasizes, "and he answered us that, out of pure desperation. Being a man with success and reputation, you know? That's what killed me (...) I don't blame him, he's a guy who, with his way of being, would do very well in a fairer place. It's a topic that kills you. He's smart, hardworking, sacrificed, but he's in an absolutely sterile place."
