The 'Water Project', the initiative for migrants to learn to swim after crossing the Atlantic in a small boat

When he turned 18, Mamadou left behind his native country, Mali, to travel a route of thousands of kilometers by land until he reached Mauritania, where he boarded a small boat without knowing how to swim and sailed for five days across the Atlantic Ocean to the island of El Hierro.

Now he is in Tenerife, a year after surviving one of the deadliest migratory routes on the planet, where he has learned to swim and has been able to disconnect for a few hours from the new challenge he faces: waiting for the bureaucratic resolution of his legal situation and starting to work.

"When you don't do anything, you think a lot," explains the young Malian during an interview with EFE on the beach of Las Teresitas, where he is participating in the Water Project together with two groups of migrants from different sub-Saharan African countries.

This initiative, carried out between the NGOs Proemaid and Accem, seeks to use swimming as a vehicle to reconnect migrants with the sea after a traumatic experience, through different dynamics and games that try to reverse this initial fear situation.

"I didn't know how to swim before, but now I'm learning little by little. I am very happy, as are my colleagues, because we can also relax and play. The rest of the time, while we are in the reception camps, we don't have many activities to do other than wait and these outings are very good for the body and mind," Mamadou details.

The project coordinator and member of Proemaid, Jorge Balcazar, explains that they work with about 15 groups during the week, where they first focus on organizing the participants into different levels, from the most initial, which includes issues such as buoyancy or breathing, to the most advanced, which focus on improving the technique.

"The Water Project, which takes place in summer in Tenerife and in winter in Seville, lasts about six weeks and we work with both adults and minors from 7 to 17 years old. Everyone puts a lot of energy and enthusiasm into it, they are also super grateful and we always leave with our hearts full," says Balcazar.

Francisco Navarro, head of ACCEM in the Canary Islands, explains that this is the fourth year that this initiative has been carried out with people arriving on the coasts of the Canary Islands, especially with adult men who are staying at the Las Raíces facility, but also with other profiles that include family communities or women hosted on the island.

"The initiative is from Proemaid, but we are helping in everything we can. This year we have carried out a fundraising campaign to support them with everything we have raised and to encourage them to continue developing this beneficial project," concludes Navarro.

To which, Balcazar continues, are added the donations from members and associations such as Nos Seus Pes, who hold an event in Galicia every year to give visibility and economic sustainability to the project.

For the moment, Water Project continues to move forward and will complete this edition in mid-August, a time during which people like Mamadou will be able to participate in activities that come as a breath of fresh air in months of intense heat and that, in his particular case, have motivated him to want to make Tenerife his home in the future, to work and, now also, to enjoy its beaches.