NEWS
African Refugees Dream of Simple Life
Source: Washington Post
BY DANIEL WOOLLS



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October 16, 2005
MELILLA, Spain -- Patrick Thomas speaks so softly I have to crane my neck
to hear. He is alone, far from home and scared.

"My life is in a miserable way because I have no one who will help me,"
says the tall, thin man from Gambia.

Thomas risked his life to reach this Spanish city on the Mediterranean
coast of Morocco, only to be told that Spain has changed its policy toward
migrants and he may be expelled.

On Sept. 27, some 1,000 African men seeking work in Europe tried to scale
two 10-foot razor wire fences enclosing Melilla. Thomas, 25, is one of
about 300 who succeeded.

Now he's behind another fence, this one surrounding a tent city housing
the illegal immigrants, whose numbers have grown to 700 since the initial
rush on the frontier. Most are from nations south of the Sahara, meaning
they had to cross the desert to make it here.

I ask Thomas if he would like to come over to my side of the fence so we
don't have to speak through the metal mesh. But he won't budge, and
clutches the fence with both hands.

It took him three years to travel to Morocco from Gambia, where he was the
oldest of eight orphaned children. He spent more than a year of that
hiding from police in a forest in Morocco, venturing out at night to
scrounge for food and water.

His long journey may have been in vain.

The port city of Melilla has long been a lure for Africans seeking a
better life in Europe, and in the past Spain did not deport many, having
no repatriation agreements with their home governments, which do not want
them back. The migrants eventually were taken to the Spanish mainland and
turned loose _ without work permits or residency papers, but free to look
for jobs in the unofficial economy.

But facing a flood of illegal entrants, Spain now is expelling some recent
arrivals _ not to their homelands, but to Morocco, under a 1992 treaty
that had never been implemented.

Other residents of the camp wander in and out, playing soccer in a dusty
lot just outside the fence, but Thomas is terrified of leaving. "I'm
afraid the police will get me and deport me," he says.

So we talk through the fence.

Thomas says none of his siblings know where he is. "Every day and night I
think of my younger sisters," he says.

I ask him how long he spent in the forest in Morocco.

"One year, six months, 15 days," he says.
"You're good with numbers," I say.

He explains his accounting method. While living in the bush, he made a
pile of pebbles, one for each day of his private purgatory.

"Just like that," Thomas says, pointing at a hill of gravel and rocks used
to cover the ground at the refugee camp.

The men haven't given up hope of making it to Europe but for the moment
they aspire to simpler things.

They all want to borrow your cell phone and call home.

Misa Rada, also from Gambia, wants a Spanish-English dictionary to start
learning a new language.

Mahamed Diarra of Mali wants a pen and a notebook.

Fanny Ibrahim of Ivory Coast, a decorator who specializes in plaster,
wants to know how to say this word in Spanish. I tell him it is "yeso" and
offer him a pen and paper. Instead, he writes it on the palm of his hand,
in big, blue ballpoint letters. That way it does not get lost, he says.

Thomas just wants information. Does the outside world know of their plight
and does anyone care? Will the United Nations send delegates to visit them
at the camp?

"How can we have contact with them so they can help us?" he asks.



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