The day Mor Mbengue turned 18, at the juvenile detention center in Tenerife where he resided, he was invited to pack his bags, as was his companion Brehima Niakate. The two avoided being left on the streets thanks to the generosity of some friends and have both started building their lives in an apartment of Messengers of Peace.
Mor (Senegal, 2005) and Brehima (Mali, 2006) arrived in a cayuco in 2020, the first to the port of Los Cristianos, in Tenerife, and the second to that of Arguineguín, in Gran Canaria. And until only a few months ago they were part of the list of almost 6,000 African children and adolescents who are under the tutelage of the Canary Islands Government.
Their experience well summarizes the lights and shadows of a reception system that has not stopped growing for four years, of a network of centers for migrant minors overwhelmed for too long and where the majority of educators try to help the children as best they can, with some cases of misery and abuse that the president of the Canary Islands himself admits embarrass him.
Like all minors who arrive in Spain in a cayuco, Mor and Brehima were offered a roof, food and education on the islands until they reached the age of majority; both took full advantage of the Spanish classes and both went through training modules designed to facilitate future employment in trades such as hospitality, agriculture or construction.
However, like many others, they turned 18 without having regularized their documents, despite having been under the tutelage of a public administration for four years, which in practice means having all the tickets to fall into marginalization as soon as you leave the minor network. That day they ceased to be minors in distress and became, directly, irregular migrants.
Saved from the streets by other emigrants
One of their counselors at Messengers of Peace recalls that Mor arrived at the Emancípate program with tears in his eyes, ashamed to admit that he had been sleeping for weeks on the sofa in the living room of an acquaintance from Senegal who lives in Tenerife and that he did not know how much longer he could continue in that house. The same thing happened to Brehima: he was taken in by a classmate. Venezuelan. Emigrant. Like him.
"The day I turned 18 was very sad, because I had nowhere to go. A friend helped me. It was difficult, because I had to leave his house at 8 in the morning and then walk the street until 8 at night to be able to return to eat and go to bed in a room. Then I met a girl who brought me to Messengers of Peace. And I was lucky to be able to enter their apartment," says this young Senegalese man.
Currently, he works as a mediator at a reception center in Tenerife with boys recently arrived from Senegal, Mali, Morocco, Burkina Fasso or Mauritania anxious to work and send money home. He knows that they all need a mirror to look into, someone with authority to ask them for patience, to encourage them with his example to study and train as much as they can while they are minors.
Mor knows the pressure they are under: the juvenile detention center is very hard for them, because they are all used to working and contributing to the family economy from a young age. "In my center," he says, "on Fridays they sometimes gave us seven euros. I saved and saved. When I collected 100 euros, I sent it to my mother."
These weeks, with the debate on the guardianship of migrant minors present throughout Spain due to the failed reform of the Immigration Law, Brehima and Mor are hurt that some relate boys like them to crime and say that "they come to steal."
"Who do they think is going to spend eleven days at sea to come and steal? Nobody. I came to find a better life for myself and my family," replies Brehima, who remembers each of the nights he lived at the age of 14 in the cayuco, finally without food or water, until Maritime Rescue rescued him. They also had no gasoline left.
To the cayuco without them knowing at home
The boy studied in his town in Mali and helped his father with the field and the cattle, until he went to look for something better in Kayes, a city on the border with Senegal, and someone encouraged him to risk it in a cayuco. He embarked without saying anything to his parents, because they would not have allowed it at home. Mor did the same.
Before returning to the juvenile detention centers as an educator, the young Senegalese man has gone through very hard jobs, such as carrying bunches of bananas of several tens of kilos in plantations in Tenerife or attending a chicken farm at night. He didn't like them, but he learned; among other things, that he doesn't "steal work" from anyone either.
"It is rare to find a white person working on the farms. If you enter one, here you will only find blacks. They cannot say that we come to steal work, we take the most difficult jobs until we get what we want. I was working on the farm. I know it's very hard. There were no white people there, only the blacks carried the pineapples," he remarks, before adding that he is very grateful to Tenerife and that his life plans are on this island.
Brehima has not done badly either since he is in the Emancípate program. He studied a mid-level FP degree and works as a kitchen assistant in a guachinche, cooking Canarian food and serving the locals the inevitable glass of local wine, to accompany it.
Can one integrate more into the Canary Islands? "When I don't work, I train. I was with Guamasa for two years and now I am in the team of the University of La Laguna," explains Brehima. His thing is Canarian wrestling, the sport that has among its stars another Malian, Mamadou Camara, the powerful puntal A of the Tegueste Wrestling Club.
Like him, Mamadou arrived in a cayuco. It was in 2008, at the age of 15: he was also a child under guardianship.
